Fedora 33's "Enterprise Linux Next" Effort Approved - Testbed For Raising CPU Requirements, Etc

[Spooktra]

If y'all don't know that y'all don't deserve to be an industry leading Linux distribution.

They're not.

[CommunityMember]

I don't know how big of a problem this would be. I think we don't have any machine left who wouldn't be able to run this, and RHEL8 is still some time to go.

While Red Hat might choose the timing differently, if one presumes that RHEL9 is released somewhere between three or four years from now most servers will have been replaced at least once, if not twice. Sure, there will be some small businesses who are trying to continue running their ten year old mini tower system in the back closet as a server, but they typically are not Red Hat customers anyway.

[Britoid]

They're not.

It kinda is.

RHEL and associated software set the direction of pretty much all distros. systemd, dbus, etc. Plus, nothing beats RHEL for enterprise, with SUSE coming second.

[CommunityMember]

I don't know what RHEL specs are.

Red Hat has always provided a set of "validated configurations" from a partnership with various enterprise hardware vendors (the Dell's, the HP's, etc.). These are (big) server class systems that Red Hat and the vendors have extensively tested with and against, and continues to do so with changes. That vendor end-to-end QA give businesses that have no interest in being crash test dummies great comfort in selection, as those business value add is typically not being able to do operating system development and hardware support (they have a business to run, and the server should just be reliable and invisible).

[nils_]

Totally agree. I also know that a lot of places tend to buy the cheapest workstations available for their office workers, secretaries, etc and that the AVX/2 limitations will effect that part of the bottom line. Westmere/hardware AES is the lowest common denominator if AVX/2 is taken out of the equation which is why, IMHO, it makes the most sense to go with.

I have never seen a place where regular office workers and secretaries (few as there are) use a Linux Deskop. Not saying it doesn't exist.

Unless they can talk Intel out of ISA market segmentation, ELN will do nothing but increase the cost of doing business with Red Hat since ELN will force people into buying midrange and better CPUs for even the most mundane of tasks.

Obviously I'm using the desktop user's point of view here.

RHEL has very long release cycles. I wouldn't expect RHEL 9 before 2024, and even then you can still keep on using RHEL8 until 2029. And you can always buy AMD instead, pretty much everything they put out has AVX2 I think.

[CommunityMember]

RHEL and associated software set the direction of pretty much all distros.

Which is a reflection of who (which company) is actually contributing to Linux's entire ecosystem. Those that can, do, those that can't, follow, and those that can't do, and don't want to follow, rant on Phoronix.

[starshipeleven]

Dammit IBM Hat, -march=westmere is the farthest back you can go unless you intentionally want to lose customers who use cheap Intel workstations

You can't lose what you never had to begin with.
Those "cheap Intel Workstations" with Pentium/Celeron are office machines with Windows.

[CommunityMember]

I'm personally hoping that there will still be support for generic x86_64

No matter what RHEL ships for their official product, it is possible that CentOS will offer alternative builds, which may satisfy some needs. Remember that CentOS has historically rebuilt for a number of ISAs (such as i386 and armv7) that RHEL never supported because the CentOS community found it useful.

[CommunityMember]

I have never seen a place where regular office workers and secretaries (few as there are) use a Linux Deskop. Not saying it doesn't exist.

CERN has initiated a project to move off of Windows. However, (a) they are not a typical org (there is only one CERN), (b) it is admitted it will take a long long time, and some apps will force them to continue to use Windows or Mac or to to give up tools that make them productive, and (c) they are using the project partially as part of their physicist full employment principal (physicists believe in giving jobs to physicists).

And the city of Munich ditched Windows for Linux, but had encountered a number of practical issues to the point they decided to move back to Windows.

The Linux desktop does exist, but not so much in the real corporate world for all sorts of pragmatic reasons.

[cb88]

Dammit IBM Hat, -march=westmere is the farthest back you can go unless you intentionally want to lose customers who use cheap Intel workstations since new Celerons and cheap Pentiums are essentially -march=westmere on an updated platform 'cause Intel uses instruction sets as a way to fragment the market.

If y'all don't know that y'all don't deserve to be an industry leading Linux distribution.



Well, at least one of y'all over there ain't retarded.

Or.... maybe Intel doesn't deserve to be the leading CPU manufacturer if it is going to continue manufacturing shitty CPUS, while AMD is trucking a long making quad cores and 8 core APUs super affordable... if you have end users on practically vintage machines at this point upgrade... westmere as you have mentioned is over 10 years old.