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SUSE is forking RHEL

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231–240 of 307 posts

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#231
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better let Oracle know!

An interesting thing about Oracle Linux... $ ssh me@myol7.myplace.com cat /etc/oracle-release /etc/redhat-release Oracle Linux Server release 7.9 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 7.9 (Maipo) $ ssh me@myol8.myplace.com cat /etc/oracle-release /etc/redhat-release Oracle Linux Server release 8.8 Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 8.8 (Ootpa) $ ssh me@myol9.myplace.com cat /etc/oracle-release /etc/redhat-release Ora…

My understanding is /etc/redhat-release needs to be there because some (dumb) blob drivers specifically check that file to see if you're running a compatible RHEL system before it'll even attempt to install.

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is there evidence that rhel is more stable than debian? Well, yes Debian versions are supported for 3 years, RHEL for 10+. "Stability" means changes, not crashes (although they can be caused by changes). A piece of software compiled 10 years ago will still run today and the systems can continue to get security updates, without needing to change the rug.

> Well, yes Debian versions are supported for 3 years, RHEL for 10+. if upgrade path is easy and stable, it is obviously more sustainable to upgrade versions every N years, compared to situation when you got 10yo EOL infra far behind mainline with no clear way to support it in the future.

It's not that simple. Sometimes you care less about the OS than you care about the app. If your app vendor built against a specific version of an OS, you can't just upgrade the OS. You have to stick with the original OS to keep the support contract from your app vendor.

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#233
I've been saying RHEL is only relevant because it's an agreed-upon standard with an adequately slow rate of change. Entities want to be able to easily use code and documentation from elsewhere, and easily hire experts to support it (1). Some of that is inertia driven, but nothing else about it really matters. Thinking they can generate their own network effects is a really classic IBM blunder (2).

Much of RH's historical relevance was basically "RedHat exists to launder Linux for the National Labs" and that basis is not a terribly deep moat - hell the big physics centers maintained their Scientific Linux fork for 16 years before fully shifting onto CentOS then getting rug-pulled... which is not the kind of relationship maintenance you want to do with the customers whose network effects create your value proposition.

The death condition for RH is if the Alma/Rocky CentOS community successors and the Oracle type commercial clones all agreed to a different reference point for "Standard Enterprise Linux"(3), and the big producers of code people want to use (your large Physics centers and and NIH scientific compute projects, and/or the shared infrastructure like OpenHPC) tracked that other reference point, suddenly RH brand EL is mostly irrelevant.

SuSE running their own EL fork is interesting because there was not an obvious successor reference point to coordinate the non-RH ELs and/or major users if they have trouble tracking RHEL, and now there kind of is - it'll be really interesting to see what happens if there is any divergence.

(1) The support point is "why not Debian," they've never had the commercial support partners, certs, etc. Having that was a huge part Ubuntu/Canonical's proposition, but they never really got the enterprise/scientific compute/HPC penetration that RH has.

(2) Ya'll remember PS/2 and MCA (Micro Channel Architecture)? IBM was gonna take back control of the PC industry by setting an new (much more license controlled) standard and... the PC cloner industry set up outside coordination points and end-ran them with EISA/VLB and eventually PCI.

(3) It might not get called SEL for SuSE or Standard because that would be confusing/trademark problems with the adjacent-industry Schneider Electric. I half jokingly translate the "Enterprise Linux" terminology into "Srs Bsns Linux" some of the time anyway, so the name game will surely be funny.

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unsubstantiated claims from a single ex-employee. If the claims had merit he should have taken his evidence to the German government instead of a blog rant.

Did they ever issue a release saying, that they were baseless claims by an ex employee? It's a bad look to say absolutely nothing.

Ignoring it is the correct move. They aren't serious allegations, otherwise they would have been made in a serious manner.

The guy claims that he was wrongfully terminated for antisemitism in Germany of all places. Do you really think the German government wouldn't take that seriously and investigate? But all he decided to do was blow hot air on his blog, because his allegations are nothing more than a cynical lie meant to hurt his ex-employer.

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#236
post #57

What is this supposed to be? SUSE responding to Red Hat obstructing RHEL clones by creating a new RHEL clone? Or are they forking RHEL into something that will try to remain compatible, while not being a clone? The latter is what Red Hat seems to want: a broader ecosystem that competes with Debian on community, while allowing Red Hat to sell RHEL with an "original recipe" sticker. SUSE coming out with an announcement…

Yea, we are going to destroy RHEL by doing what they want us to. RH wants more people using and building distros off of centos stream instead of using RHEL clones. I don't think they see this as a negative, especially since it devalues suse in the process because they are basically admitting RHEL is more desirable.

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#237
I still don't forgive SUSE for buying Rancher and then unceremoniously killing k3os. They just left the website up and everything, made no announcement, made no attempt to help the community take over, just left the Github repo to rot: https://k3os.io/

Hard to have confidence in SUSE's commitment to another open source operating system side project after that. SUSE's announcement at the time:

Like SUSE, Rancher is 100% open source and equally as passionate as SUSE about true open source innovation, community empowerment, and customer success. SUSE and Rancher share the same goal – happy and satisfied customers.

https://www.suse.com/c/suse-acquires-rancher/

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#238
post #214

This is just a weak PR statement. Alma and Rocky already revealed that these things are not trivial to maintain and I fail to see beyond pure fork how on earth would SUSE maintain RHEL compatibility and avoid litigation from IBM at the same time. And then SUSE might be sold off again to some predatory company similar to IBM. What's even the point then of not using pure community distros like Debian?

Support and long term stability. You can hire a sysadmin to do everything manually, but it is worth the money to a lot of big businesses to have somewhere to call when things get screwey. Also having a server that doesn't need to be turned off for ~10 years is a huge W for businesses as well.

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#239
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red Hat announced that they are no longer providing updates to the downstream repo at git.centos.org and blamed that a lot of people are taking the sources and not contributing back, essentially just rebuilding and rebranding "their code". To obtain access to the git repo you now need to subscribe to Red Hat Developer Portal, but there are other ways to obtain the package sources as Rocky Linux is going to do in the…

> […] essentially just rebuilding and rebranding "their code". Thereby creating an eco-system of RH-based systems that people learn about and get familiar with, so when it comes to going into production the natural default is to just purchase the official RHEL for those systems. I think RH/IBM are being short-sited on how useful the free eco-system is.

This gets stated a lot, but I don't think it's actually true and RH has stated they don't see an actual benefit from this. Plus, they already have that ecosystem that isn't just free-version of RHEL with CentOS Stream and Fedora.

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are already excellent libre systemd-free distros, with release cadences ranging from rolling (Guix) to RHEL-level glacial (Slackware). That's not a hole in the market right now.

The need for systemd-free distros in the market is probably more from the embedded space rather than people who hate modern technology.

Last I checked the most popular container distro is Alpine; the slimmer options definitely have their place. But then Guix is the opposite of a slim distro...
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