CentOS Stream Announced As Developer-Forward Distribution, Rolling Release Of RHEL

[Templar82]

im looking for a rolling release that reduces the need to install a new distro for every major upgrade. Frankly it needs to do so without constant breakage. I’d like to go two years between major distro reinstalls. Frankly Rawhide is an example of exactly what I don’t want in a distro (at least on a laptop).

Have you tried OpenSUSE Tumbleweed? it sounds like what you are after.
I don't think Rawhide is even supposed to be used as an everyday OS, it's really only for testing and developing.

[cynic]

no sane person could stick with the lack of security and flakeyness of the version of PHP originally released on RH7.

Redhat provides security patches for every package they ship, for the whole distribution lifetime.
There should be no (known) security vulnerability in the PHP package provided with RHEL 6 and 7.

[MadeUpName]

There is some more info here on the new relationship between H, Centos and Fedora.

https://fedoramagazine.org/fedora-and-centos-stream/

[GdeR]

There is some more info here on the new relationship between H, Centos and Fedora.

Never seen RHEL being further abbreviated with just H. Is this a mistake or .. ?

[Guest]

Not really! Especially one that sounds like it will be as unstable as hell. Now a rolling release that offered up sound upgrades and bug fixes would be great but that means well tested releases. The way this sounds in the article you could be getting several updates a day for the same application. Some may like that in a rolling release but I don’t.

im looking for a rolling release that reduces the need to install a new distro for every major upgrade. Frankly it needs to do so without constant breakage. I’d like to go two years between major distro reinstalls. Frankly Rawhide is an example of exactly what I don’t want in a distro (at least on a laptop).

It might sound like shilling, but you should give Arch a try. I'd have one installation from 2015 working to this day if it wasn't for a dead hard disk. The only major issue I ran into was the 4.18 Core 2 Duo HPET problem, but that was in upstream, and Arch users actually reported the bug because of how quickly they get upstream software. Everything is tested before it's put in main repos, and maintenance is minimal. Whenever something requires attention, information about what exactly needs to be done is posted on the website. Sometimes you need to forcefully reinstall a package or remove an .so file before upgrading.

[torsionbar28]

Not really! Especially one that sounds like it will be as unstable as hell. Now a rolling release that offered up sound upgrades and bug fixes would be great but that means well tested releases. The way this sounds in the article you could be getting several updates a day for the same application. Some may like that in a rolling release but I don’t.

im looking for a rolling release that reduces the need to install a new distro for every major upgrade. Frankly it needs to do so without constant breakage. I’d like to go two years between major distro reinstalls. Frankly Rawhide is an example of exactly what I don’t want in a distro (at least on a laptop).

I've never had a positive experience with any rolling release. IME they are all dependency hells with constant breakage. You spend more time tinkering with your OS getting it work properly, than you do actually using the computer to get work done. Maybe this is attractive to a hobbyist or software developer, but the vast majority of folks are not going to be using any rolling release distro. Clearly this CentOS Streams (and Fedora Rawhide) are not targeting end users, but rather it's intended for folks who are developing software and software components of the OS.

IMO Fedora does it best, with a new release every ~6 months, and a very easy in-place upgrade from one release to the next. I built my current primary workstation on F24 back in 2016. It has been upgraded in-place to F25, F26, F27, F28, F29, and F30. It's really nice having such a clean upgrade process without having to do a full fresh re-install. And the six month release cadence is a good balance of being on latest versions vs keeping dependencies and compatibility in check.

[RahulSundaram]

I think you didn't understand my point. Debian stable is supposed to be... stable. Debian testing is not. CentOS is supposed to be stable, as RHEL is. Saying you're making a rolling stable distribution is a contradiction in terms.

I think you are missing the point of CentOS stream. It is for people developing on top of CentOS. Regular users will stick with CentOS. There is no contradiction.

[angrypie]

The name sounds like a weather phenomenon.

From dream to dream
We have always been
Like an ever flowing stream

[starshipeleven]

I think you didn't understand my point. Debian stable is supposed to be... stable. Debian testing is not. CentOS is supposed to be stable, as RHEL is. Saying you're making a rolling stable distribution is a contradiction in terms.

You are mixing up "stable" with "frozen release".

Stability is "not breaking". Freezing is "not changing".

Easy way is freezing everything and not changing it, but it's not the only way. Tumbleweed for example employs additional automated testing to catch breakage before stuff hits the repos. So it usually lags a few weeks behind bleeding edge distros that just throw stuff over the wall like Arch, but it's far more stable.

[starshipeleven]

im looking for a rolling release that reduces the need to install a new distro for every major upgrade. Frankly it needs to do so without constant breakage. I’d like to go two years between major distro reinstalls. Frankly Rawhide is an example of exactly what I don’t want in a distro (at least on a laptop).

OpenSUSE tumbleweed is the answer.