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Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

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Re: Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

#291

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

symlinkk wrote: post #157
mmrezaie wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For packages like Kubernetes or big data packages one should not use anyone else's builds. I have been finding problems in Cray's modules and eventually we are using our own builds we can reproducibly support using Spack.

I would say for any piece of software, if the vendor themselves provide a package for your distro, use that, not the distro version. In fact I’ll go a step further and say Windows and macOS got this right, in that third party developers should do the work to “package” their apps. It would be insane for Microsoft to maintain packages for every piece of software that ships on Windows, but somehow that’s the situation w…

> It would be insane for Microsoft to maintain packages for every piece of software that ships on Windows, but somehow that’s the situation we’re in with Linux.

And this is why installing ex. Filezilla on Linux is safe and easy, and doing the same on Windows is neither.

Re: Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

#292

Post by strenholme »

syshum wrote: post #275
nickysielicki wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most frustrating thing about this is that Redhat was making a profit before IBM bought them. They had existed for 20 some years on a business model that business people didn’t understand, and they were able to do that because they understood what open source would become and how they could play a role in that. One of the things that YC is always talking about is that founders looking for ideas should look to iden…

No the most frustrating part is all the Red Hat employees attempting 1. Claim "IBM has no influence, this was all our own independent action, honest, believe use guys.... 2. Red Hat employees instance that "CentOS 8 was never officially supported until 2029 so we did not go back on anything" if people believe either of those I really need to get in real estate and start selling bridges

>CentOS 8 was never officially supported until 2029 so we did not go back on anything

The thing though is that RedHat is responsible for that impression. Every previous version of CentOS before 8 has been supported until the upstream RHEL pulled the plug. CentOS’s official page said it would be supported until 2029 ( https://archive.is/7Qmtw ).

A reasonable person would infer that CentOS (now controlled by RedHat, so, yes, RedHat) made the same promise that they made (and kept) with every previous version of CentOS: That it would be supported for 7-10 years. Not just over 2 years.

I definitely inferred a decade of support. If I would had known that CentOS 8 would be cut off at the end of 2021 this summer, I would not had installed it. I would had installed Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

Indeed, replacing my CentOS 8 installs with Ubuntu 20.04 is exactly what I have been spending all last week doing.

Re: Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

#293

Post by paulryanrogers »

kbenson wrote: post #139
anonymousiam wrote: post #132

I have not seen much mention of alternatives to RHEL besides Oracle Linux. Another excellent alternative exists here: https://scientificlinux.org/

Scientific Linux/Fermilab did not release a version 8, and instead opted to install CentOS 8 on their clusters instead of roll their own version.[1] 1: https://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=SCIENTIFIC-LINUX...

There is also Springdale Linux

Re: Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

#294

Post by em500 »

netzvieh wrote: post #264
em500 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share your disappointment. Out of 150+ comments so far, I believe there has not been a single technical comment about the actual work involved in building a version-pinned RHEL clone. Without any experience myself (beyond some kernel build maybe 10 years ago), I gathered (from https://wiki.centos.org/About/Building_8 ) that the majority of work involves manually de-branding the RHEL sources. This apparently can't b…

> 1. Where do the upstream RHEL sources live? CentOS sources are in https://vault.centos.org/8.3.2011/BaseOS/Source/SPackages/ , but where do they get them upstream? I believe they're only available to RHEL subscribers, does this give RH a way to block clones? Red Hat publishes it's sources on https://git.centos.org . Those are then used to build CentOS Linux packages. In the future they'll do their development there…

> Red Hat publishes it's sources on https://git.centos.org. Those are then used to build CentOS Linux packages.

Have you checked if this repo actually works as intended? Because I was wondering if the git repo has RHEL or CentOS sources (or both). So I tried to find out myself instead of just throwing the question out there. It went roughly as follows:

- Let me check the sources of dracut (the RHEL installer) in https://git.centos.org/rpms/dracut. Files: empty, Commits: empty, Forks: empty, Branches and Releases: judging by the names they seem to be CentOS, not RHEL sources. And they're using git.centos.org just as a code dump, not for development. Fair.

- Let's see the actual code.

  git clone https://git.centos.org/rpms/dracut.git
  Cloning into 'dracut'...
  remote: Counting objects: 1673, done.
  remote: Compressing objects: 100% (1632/1632), done.
  remote: Total 1673 (delta 82), reused 1446 (delta 0)
  Receiving objects: 100% (1673/1673), 1.60 MiB | 2.08 MiB/s, done.
  Resolving deltas: 100% (82/82), done.
  warning: remote HEAD refers to nonexistent ref, unable to checkout.
??? There's nothing there.

- Back to the web interface, https://git.centos.org/rpms/dracut/tree/c8 Reading .dracut.metadata, I guess the source is in SOURCES/dracut-049.tar.xz. But browsing the directory https://git.centos.org/rpms/dracut/blob/c8/f/SOURCES lists only patches, not the presumed source dracut-049.tar.xz

- Maybe it's under Releases? Let's check imports/c8/dracut-049-95.git20200804.el8 Clicking the source tree gets me back to the SOURCES dir with only patches, not good. Maybe the floppy-save button? https://git.centos.org/rpms/dracut/archive/imports/c8/dracut... -> 404-Not-Found. https://git.centos.org/rpms/dracut/archive/imports/c8/dracut... -> 404-Not-Found.

I'm not a professional dev, maybe I just don't understand. But is there a way to actually see/browse/download the dracut source code from CentOS 8.3 (let alone RHEL 8.3) from git.centos.org?

Re: Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

#295

Post by smarx007 »

dralley wrote: post #166
the8472 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not a good thing. RH frankenkernels can contain subtle breakage. E.g. the Go and Rust standard libraries needed to add workarounds because certain RH versions implemented copy_file_range in a manner that returns error codes inconsistent with the documented API because patches were only backported for some filesystems but not for others. These issues never occurred on mainline. And for the same reasons that th…

True, but it is a matter of weighing risks. I can't find it now, but I remember a few years ago there was a news story about how an update to Ubuntu had caused hospitals to start rendering MRI scan results differently due to differences in the OpenGL libraries. For those sorts of use cases, stable is the only option.

I think this is a perfect use case for CentOS/RHEL as opposed to Ubuntu when the machine has only one job and nothing shall stand in its way, ie when you expect everything to be bug-for-bug compatible. But I fail to understand why a vendor of an MRI machine charging tens of thousands for installation/support cannot provide a supported RHEL OS which costs $180-350/yr in the cheapest config [1].

[1]: https://www.redhat.com/en/store/linux-platforms

Re: Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

#296

Post by CoconutPilot »

Whats missing is an analysis of why CentOS failed. I think Rocky Linux needs to put out a plan how they will make themselves financially viable as we've had 3 high profile RHEL respins go down in the last 10 years.

CentOS failed twice, it ran out of money in 2014 and was rescued back then by Redhat sponsership. Again in 2020. Another widely used RHEL respin was Scientific Linux which mothballed when RHEL 7 was released.

There seems to be lots of potential users but not lots of potential money for a RHEL respin.

Re: Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

#297

Post by effie »

sp332 wrote: post #112
nps1 wrote: post #90

The next CentOS will be where the core developers who are actually contributing to project will move. However, branding does matter if you want enterprise following. Rocky does sound unprofessional.

Good. That means it's less likely to sell out to some suit farm and get cancelled like CentOS did.

> suit farm

I love new language gems. Thanks!

Re: Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

#299

Post by jessaustin »

effie wrote: post #283
throwaway201103 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I've used and advocated for RHEL/CentOS at work since version 5 because it was stable and predictible. That's gone now, and many of my users would prefer Ubuntu anwyay because it's what they use on their personal machines. So I'm making plans to move all our compute resources to Ubuntu LTS.

I'm wary of doing that, because in near future, Microsoft is likely to take over Canonical. You don't put all eggs into one basket. Always plan for escape, always have a plan B. Preferably one not relying on crystal-balling whims of a for-profit corporation. Rocky Linux, Alpine Linux, Debian, Gentoo, BSD, etc.

Moving a server from Ubuntu to Debian doesn't seem a very arduous task? I've got a box in a rack that came from the factory with Ubuntu installed, but there are Debian addresses in /etc/apt/sources.list.d

Besides isn't that pretty much the exemplar of FUD?

Re: Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

#300

Post by fierarul »

CoconutPilot wrote: post #296

Whats missing is an analysis of why CentOS failed. I think Rocky Linux needs to put out a plan how they will make themselves financially viable as we've had 3 high profile RHEL respins go down in the last 10 years. CentOS failed twice, it ran out of money in 2014 and was rescued back then by Redhat sponsership. Again in 2020. Another widely used RHEL respin was Scientific Linux which mothballed when RHEL 7 was releas…

It's not really surprising that a project that companies use since they don't want to pay RedHat licenses will not get any money at all...
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