What Would You Like To See Out Of Fedora Server In The Future?

[pal666]

Red Hat already has an open source server OS. It's called CentOS.

obsolete server os. some people need less obsolete software. and btw, centos is not a server os

[torsionbar28]

I think the thing that people forget a lot of the time is that CentOS (and its big brother, Red Hat Enterprise Linux) don't appear out of nowhere. Fedora Server is the public upstream for both of those OSes. Fedora Server isn't a solution in search of a problem, it's a place where the R&D happens. It's where ideas get tried out, tested, (sometimes abandoned) and evolves into the rock-solid enterprise distributions that you know and love.

I think this is the part where many people (myself included) are confused. Fedora Server did not exist until very recently, Fedora 21 or 22 I believe? Yes Fedora acted as the public upstream, that periodically was forked into RHEL/CentOS. But again, the concept of a Fedora "server" product is not something that has been part of the RHEL development cycle until very recently.

For students, home users, hobbyists, and others who do not wish to pay for commercial support, CentOS has historically been the go-to open source operating system from Red Hat. I guess I'm just not understanding why someone would select Fedora Server over CentOS in these use cases. Is it for the newer kernel and system libraries? I think there's only a very small number of server applications that require a kernel or system libs newer than the RHEL7 baseline.

Plus the fact that with Fedora you have a far shorter product life than you do with CentOS. I have about a dozen server VM's at home, and all of them are CentOS because I don't want to have to upgrade the OS every six months.

Again, not trying to bash Fedora Server in any way, just having a hard time rationalizing why someone would choose it over the more stable and much longer lived CentOS releases.

[torsionbar28]

obsolete server os. some people need less obsolete software. and btw, centos is not a server os

Wrong, wrong, and wrong? You're O for 3. CentOS is based on RHEL, which is supported for 10 years. CentOS 6 and 7 codebases are both still actively maintained and supported upstream by Red Hat. So no, it's pretty far from obsolete. It sounds like you don't know what 'obsolete' means. BTW, CentOS, as built from the RHEL upstream code, is indeed a server OS.

[pal666]

CentOS is based on RHEL, which is supported for 10 years. CentOS 6 and 7 codebases are both still actively maintained and supported upstream by Red Hat. So no, it's pretty far from obsolete.

lol. show me gcc7 in centos 6. "maintainted and supported upstream" does not make 10 year old software less obsolete

It sounds like you don't know what 'obsolete' means.

unlike you, i know. it means no c++17 in 2018

BTW, CentOS, as built from the RHEL upstream code, is indeed a server OS.

btw, rhel is not a server os either. you can use it as a server, but you can use it as destkop too. they are called enterprise for a reason, unlike fedora server. next time educate yourself better before posting

[Zan Lynx]

lol. show me gcc7 in centos 6. "maintainted and supported upstream" does not make 10 year old software less obsolete
unlike you, i know. it means no c++17 in 2018
btw, rhel is not a server os either. you can use it as a server, but you can use it as destkop too. next time educate yourself better before posting

You need to look at Red Hat Developer Tools which do let you use more modern compilers.

In a way the whole point of server operating systems is to be obsolete. Also known as stable.

Your definition of a server OS not being able to run a desktop is quite lame. Do you think Windows Server is not a server because you can install the Desktop Experience?

Say that you install Debian Server Minimal. And then you begin adding packages to it. At what point does it, by your own special definition, stop being a server? As soon as you install Xorg? Gnome? KDE?

The ONLY difference between server OS and desktop is a few tuning settings. That's true for Windows, RHEL or any other version of Linux.

[pal666]

You need to look at Red Hat Developer Tools which do let you use more modern compilers.

i've developed commercial software with devtoolset, so this is not a news to me. it still lags: it does not contain latest gcc and it boasts eclipse 4.4 screenshot(server app, lol), while my current eclipse is 4.7 (3 years difference)
i think now it lags less than it used to(i.e. they used obsolete screenshot), but still it does lag and it is one package set, it upgrades only what tools are part of it, everything else is still 10 year old software. and this is not part of centos/rhel, it is external package. anyone could build his own package for any distro. to make non-obsolete os you need to upgrade all packages, which takes us back to fedora

In a way the whole point of server operating systems is to be obsolete. Also known as stable.

in biology it is known as dead

Your definition of a server OS not being able to run a desktop is quite lame.

you said that, not me. desktop is a supported usecase of rhel

The ONLY difference between server OS and desktop is a few tuning settings

while difference between centos/rhel and fedora is obsoleteness, or as you've put it, stability

[sgallagh]

I think this is the part where many people (myself included) are confused. Fedora Server did not exist until very recently, Fedora 21 or 22 I believe? Yes Fedora acted as the public upstream, that periodically was forked into RHEL/CentOS. But again, the concept of a Fedora "server" product is not something that has been part of the RHEL development cycle until very recently.

Well, Fedora Server as a separate deliverable is a relatively recent change (well, four years ago now!), but it was more about capturing the reality of the situation. Fedora was always the upstream R&D for RHEL... but over time as Fedora became more known as a desktop OS, contributions towards server-oriented technologies had begun to drop. The creation of the dedicated Fedora Server project was at least partially intended to reassure contributors (and potential contributors) that there was a place for them and that their ideas wouldn't be drowned out by the folks working on the desktop.

[gilboa]

I think Fedora Server's biggest problem is that its an answer in search of a problem. Red Hat already has an open source server OS. It's called CentOS.

Actually, I use Fedora for (100's) of *production* servers, as RHEL (and CentOS) are two damn old and stable (API wise).
Had we chose to base our product on RHEL, we'd be forced to create an alternate tree of 100's of RPMs that we require, that are either missing from RHEL or too damn old.
... Let alone the fact that we actually require certain kernel functionality that's missing from v3.10.

To the subject, I'd love to see Fedora server support update and upgrades (from one release to another) in RPM collections, as opposed to random RPM upgrades. (E.g. being able to move from Fedora 28.0 to Fedora 28.1 and then Fedora 29.0). I would imagine that it will require far too much QA time and effort to realize this dream, but I can still hope...

- Gilboa

[phrx_reader]

To remove all systemd code...

[Exospecie]

sgallagh

One of the things I would like to see in Fedora Server is to have a more functional and feature rich Cockpit. If you compare what NethServer's WebUI can do compared to Cockpit, Cockpit seems incredibly limited and light-years behind. To me, Cockpit also feels more awkward and disjointed. Yes, NethServer is geared primarily towards home, SOHO, and medium sized businesses but if there is to be a WebUI in Fedora Server, it needs to address the needs and use cases from the guy trying to just setup a simple homebrew NAS all the way to an enterprise deployment. While I am discussing Cockpit, can we get a better KVM VM management solution? When compared to Virtual Machine Manager, here again Cockpit comes out looking the lesser of the two.

Another thing I would like Fedora Server to accomplish is better "legacy" support for enterprise HBAs. I put legacy in quotes because many of those HBAs are still functioning perfectly and are actively supported by their respective manufacturers. For example, many of our Dell 610s have the LSI 9201-16e HBA in them connected to Dell MD1000 disk arrays. Fedora Server 27 flatout refused to acknowledge the device even existed as evidenced by the fact that none of the disks in the array attached to it were visible. Load up CentOS 7, however, and there the disks are and the correct SAS driver module loads. I replicated this on four different systems with four identical HBAs. Likewise, the 9202 series fails to show up as well. Could I have done the module load after install and walked through setting up disks by hand after initial install? Yes, I could have, but that's a giant pain in the ass and not something that I should be required to do when Fedora's own sister OS supports it out of the box.