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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

#361
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lately it seems to me Debian and Ubuntu have made some strange package decisions. They have morphed into a desktop oriented build with snap packages and auto-updates enabled by default (among other strange decisions). There's a ton of stuff we always end up disabling in the new release because it's super buggy and doesn't work well (I work at a small MSP). I'm not sure who replaced Ian Jackson, but Debian seems rudde…

Snap is an Ubuntu thing. It's basically a client for the Canonical app store.

Snap is proprietary and has a fairly broken implementation. Seems impressively good at preventing machines from booting, polluting the filesystem namespace (who wants 100 lines in every df?), doesn't seem to handle versioning or garbage collection well.

Server side isn't open, and Canocial repeatedly claims wide industry support ... despite not having it.

I recommend the first step in any Ubuntu system you use is to disable snap. Use something portable like flatpak that does at least have some support, is open source, and seems to have a healthy eco system.

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

#362
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's a bit too obvious to spell it out, but 1. Red Hat Inc. does not want people to build and/or distribute gratis RHEL8 or clones. It would be trivial to just put the actual RHEL8 iso as an unsupported download on their ftp/www server and sell the support separately, like Oracle or Canonical do. Instead, they kept this ridiculous make work project called CentOS around, that involved non-trivial manual labor me…

> If you think I'm wrong, just put up a mirror of the RHEL8 (not CentOS8) SRPMs and see how long it stays up. Clearly they're not acting in the spirit of the GPL, even if they are in the letter. The GPL doesn't require you make the sources public to everybody , just the people to whom you are distributing your software. But Red Hat does provide sources, to everybody . They go above and beyond what the GPL actually re…

The ftp site does not contain sources for RHEL 8 (it's just sources for a bunch of add-on packages). The RHEL 8 sources are in git.centos.org, though not in SRPM form.

I know that GPL only requires Red Hat to provide sources on request to those receiving their binaries. But in principle the receiver can then legally redistribute those sources. Now AFAICT nobody's actually doing that redistributing. I don't know whether that's due to lack of interest, or due to some Red Had shenanigans that makes redistribution illegal/unattractive.

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

#363
post #335
post #196

I think the name and the logo is good. Don't listen to the people who just keep talking and not helping! Good to see that CentOS cofonder picked this up and now became a founder of Rocky Linux. This shows dedication and rock solid background. Rocky Linux will be a project to follow, help and use in production environment. Thank you for all your hard work!

Reminds me about how people don't even give CockroachDB a chance because of it's name. Every time it's mentioned on HN, people can't help but to bring up it's name.

Yeah, Cockroachdb - I don't like that name at all.

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

#364
post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a use-case for CentOS Stream, and if all Red Hat did was announced CentOS Stream and kept CentOS proper NO ONE would have any issue with that. There is also a use case for a production fork of RHEL as well. That's now gone. People who migrated to CentOS 8 because they thought they were getting a decade of support - that's now gone. So what are you arguing, that the second group somehow doesn't get it?

I can’t defend cutting support for CentOS 8. That’s super shitty and I don’t really understand the move. The part I don’t think people really get is that if your goal was to have a fork of RHEL that was as close as possible to RHEL itself in absolute value that CentOS Stream is much better than CentOS is/was. CentOS always tracked far behind RHEL and now CentOS Stream will track closely in front of RHEL.

CentOS will be useless as a replacement for RHEL. Without the guarantee of binary compatibility, any CentOS Stream update may break your locally installed applications.

And I only recall CentOS significantly trailing RHEL at the major version updates (e.g. 6 and 7). Other updates seem pretty timely, and the major version lag doesn't leave me vulnerable.

I can see this being useful for developers who are building something that needs to be compatible with the next major release of RHEL, but I'm not sure who else it will be useful for.

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

#365

I'm so glad I build all my servers on Debian.

Me too. but unfortunately, not all 'corporate' software runs or finds all the libs on Debian based distros.. which sucks I know, because I too find this whole 'corporate blessed linux' thingy really unproductive.

I work on servers used in VFX rendering pipelines and some software will simply refuse to properly run if I don't give it at least a CentOS. And if I do manage to get it running on Debian/Ubuntu, automatically I'm voiding the company's support because I'm using an 'unsupported Linux distribution'.

sux.

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

#366
post #335
post #196

I think the name and the logo is good. Don't listen to the people who just keep talking and not helping! Good to see that CentOS cofonder picked this up and now became a founder of Rocky Linux. This shows dedication and rock solid background. Rocky Linux will be a project to follow, help and use in production environment. Thank you for all your hard work!

Reminds me about how people don't even give CockroachDB a chance because of it's name. Every time it's mentioned on HN, people can't help but to bring up it's name.

But.. why did they have to name it that?

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

#367
post #360
post #196

I think the name and the logo is good. Don't listen to the people who just keep talking and not helping! Good to see that CentOS cofonder picked this up and now became a founder of Rocky Linux. This shows dedication and rock solid background. Rocky Linux will be a project to follow, help and use in production environment. Thank you for all your hard work!

> I think the name and the logo is good. Don't listen to the people who just keep talking and not helping! Agreed. It's funny that people here are complaining "Rocky Linux" isn't a professional name and they won't be able to convince corporates clients to use it. Yet, there exists a billion dollar revenue company named "Red Hat" which clearly is a "professional" name.

"Ubuntu".

It's widely accepted nowadays, it was pretty weird in 2004. I got my fair share of jokes in 2005-2007 from friends when talking about that "ubuntu" thing, and I'll spare you the examples.

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

#368
post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me about how people don't even give CockroachDB a chance because of it's name. Every time it's mentioned on HN, people can't help but to bring up it's name.

Same happens with GIMP, it’s just not smart marketing.

in GIMP's defense, GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program, whereas names as Red Hat, Ubuntu and many others are not acronyms

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

#369

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…

> Whats missing is an analysis of why CentOS failed.

nah, it's not missing. Red Hat bought the project and more importantly the trademark, domains etc.

And it was mostly fine.

Then IBM bought Red Hat and things went south.

CentOS did not fail, CentOS was killed. It's different.

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

#370
post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me about how people don't even give CockroachDB a chance because of it's name. Every time it's mentioned on HN, people can't help but to bring up it's name.

Same happens with GIMP, it’s just not smart marketing.

Ironically the same badass developers
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