CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream • Hacker News Board

Re: CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream

#391

Post by teilo » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 10:07 PM UTC

lutorm wrote: post #250

teilo wrote: post #20

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I read this, CentOS Stream will still serve as a stable clone of RHEL just as it always has. The rolling distro will be tagged at a certain point in time for a RHEL release, and you can still choose to use that state as your production base, and be locked at that tag. Presumably there will be a CentOS Stream 9 tag that you can use for production. The difference will be that CentOS…

It seems that if you do that, you will not get any updates, including security updates?

Not true.

Q4: How will CVEs be handled in CentOS Stream? A: Security issues will be updated in CentOS Stream after they are solved in the current RHEL release. Obviously, embargoed security releases can not be publicly released until after the embargo is lifted. While there will not be any SLA for timing, Red Hat Engineers will be building and testing other packages against these releases. If they do not roll in the updates, the other software they build could be impacted and therefore need to be redone. There is therefore a vested interest for them to get these updates in so as not to impact their other builds and there should be no issues getting security updates.

Re: CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream

#392

Post by arbitrage » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 10:08 PM UTC

awill wrote: post #109

This is awful. It's proof of the downsides to the IBM acquisition, which I think we all knew was coming. Imagine if you were running a business, and deployed CentOS 8 based on the 10 year lifespan promise. You're totally screwed now, and Red Hat knows it. Why on earth didn't they make this switch starting with CentOS 9???? Let's not sugar coat this. They've betrayed their users. I personally run a CentOS 7 server (as…

Running a business on a free product. That you knew RedHat acqui-hired. That you knew they had a history of using products such as to wedge people into a paying bracket.

Cry me a river.

Re: CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream

#393

Post by teilo » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

StillBored wrote: post #344

lutorm wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that if you do that, you will not get any updates, including security updates?

Yah, it sounds that way. Rolling forward to the head is required to get the most recent security updates. Which isn't that far away from how centos works today. With rhel you get security updates for the point releases (8.1,8.2,etc) for a while after the new point release comes out. With centos, the day that the newer version drops, they don't tend to roll security updates into the older ones.

These are not frozen releases. They are parallel streams that each get their own CVE updates from the corresponding RHEL release.

Re: CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream

#394

Post by arbitrage » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #354

bonzini wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not about IBM. It may not be a pleasant change for everyone, but it's a change that has strictly technical motives. CentOS was acqui-hired because Red Hat's upstream for layered products (at the time mostly RDO/OpenStack and oVirt/RHEV) could not use Fedora because it was too far from RHEL a year of two after RHEL was released, could not use RHEL because upstream contributors would have to pay, and could not…

That in no way explains why they don't continue to have both. They indeed will have both for another year. There was no requirement the Stream product even use the CentOS name. CentOS was a community project whose leadership and control was taken over (acqui-hired as you say) by Red Hat and then it's core use case for the majority of people actually using it was discontinued. That is a statement of facts that happene…

> That in no way explains why they don't continue to have both.

They're a business ... are you honestly and in good-faith actually confused about this outcome?

Re: CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream

#395

Post by whatsmyusername » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 10:10 PM UTC

briffle wrote: post #86

em500 wrote: post #69

To me this news is at once shocking, and blindingly obvious in hindsight. Shocking, because I'd never imagined they'd kill off CentOS 8 so early. CentOS 8.0 dates from Sept 2019, so it's killed in just the 3rd year of its presumed 10 year lifespan. I could read the tea leaves when they announced this Stream thingy recently, but I'd thought they would at least hold off till RHEL9 to pull the lever. Blindingly obvious,…

Its time for a new internet rule. If Oracle or IBM buys your vendor, you should be migrating.

This isn't a new rule. This has been the standard for a long time.

Re: CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream

#396

Post by DCKing » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 10:12 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #256

DCKing wrote: post #199

What was the point of Red Hat taking over CentOS then? If they're just transparently killing of the "free version of RHEL", that surely won't work in anything but name? There's an obvious need for a 1:1 RHEL clone, and due to the license of all software that RHEL builds on, there's no way IBM or Red Hat can stop people from actually building their own "new CentOS" and many companies and communities have done so in th…

> All we have now is Red Hat taking the CentOS branding and running with it. And even that point I don't get - they could have done this with plain RHEL or Fedora branding too. Yeah, it's all very confusing. The only thing I can think of at the moment is that CentOS has so much mind-share that RHEL wants to tap into that and funnel it back to themselves more effectively. It used to be people knew what Red Hat was and…

That's a good explanation, but I'm sad they're committed to just wasting everybody's time.

Re: CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream

#397

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 10:13 PM UTC

Thaxll wrote: post #304

Just move to Ubuntu / Debian it's the logical choice here. Ubuntu is already the #1 distro on server, it will consolidate that poistion even more.

[deleted]

Re: CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream

#398

Post by toyg » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 10:17 PM UTC

DCKing wrote: post #199

What was the point of Red Hat taking over CentOS then? If they're just transparently killing of the "free version of RHEL", that surely won't work in anything but name? There's an obvious need for a 1:1 RHEL clone, and due to the license of all software that RHEL builds on, there's no way IBM or Red Hat can stop people from actually building their own "new CentOS" and many companies and communities have done so in th…

Companies’ strategies change with time. RH took over CentOS in 2014, but then was itself bought by IBM last year. So what was the plan (and the leadership) in 2014 is not necessarily the plan (and the leadership) in 2020.

Also, conditions change. RH might have decided that Centos had become a bit too successful and was cannibalizing actual RHEL sales (covid year, everyone is hurting, people try to skimp on licenses...).

Re: CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream

#399

Post by symlinkk » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 10:19 PM UTC

Twirrim wrote: post #369

symlinkk wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will almost certainly be slower than Ubuntu just because of the extra layer of work mentioned above.

Canonical are also fairly actively involved in security fixes and among those brought in to the various security embargoes. They usually ship packages the same day embargoes drop.

Interesting, who else are involved in the embargoes? Anywhere I could read more about this?

Re: CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream

#400

Post by toyg » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 10:23 PM UTC

em500 wrote: post #197

Twirrim wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should be. It's CentOS packages with rebranding and maybe some custom fixes on top. There are two kernels that ship with it, either the RedHat Compatibility Kernel (RHCK), or the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK). I would point out, I'm not in the OL org, I have absolutely no idea what this change means for Oracle Linux. Oracle Linux is based off the CentOS sources as that's the only way that RedHat was making the…

I didn't know Oracle builds from CentOS rather than RHEL sources. Nor that RHEL doesn't release sources anymore? If that's true, I wonder how Oracle got some of their 8.x releases out much earlier than CentOS. (Oracle Linux 8.3 2020-11-13 vs CentOS 8.3 2020-12-08, Oracle Linux 8.0 2019-07-19 vs CentOS 8.0 2019-09-24.) I'm assuming here without verification that both track the RHEL 8 point releases.

if i remember correctly, RHEL source dumps always lacked some machinery to actually produce a working release; that’s where CentOS were doing actual work, painstakingly replicating all the compilation quirks to end up with RPM builds that matched RHEL. That’s likely why another clone might want to start from CentOS rather than RHEL sources.