CentOS 8 Ending Next Year To Focus Shift On CentOS Stream

[cjcox]

IBM is attempting a "power play", remember, IBM doesn't do "win - win" and they never lose. Their hope is that this will turn into a huge request for RHEL subscriptions. They are banking (pun) on corporate pundits not wanting to make any major changes. So, they'll press the "Easy" button and send money to IBM. And right now with companies shedding employees, etc.. they may feel they have no choice. Btw, this is also a huge major win for IBM as this allows them to "reduce" (fewer CentOs employees).

[dovla091]

The main issue is that so called "stable" distro's are not at all stable... Exactly how many Ubuntus are there? Redhats? SuSe's? etc... So called stable distributions are -THE-worst cause of fragmentation that exists -anywhere- in -any- software.

The -entire- ecosystem that revolves around linux is rolling release. To support so many "stable" distro's means backporting to a dozen targets or more and that's not stable. Ask any company that has to support hardware on linux...

That's because RedHat like to play with new technology, instead of deciding to use one which is thoroughly tested and simply works. Let remember how they like to shuffle Fedora around. FS from ext3 to ext4 (which is OK as ext4 has benefits in comparison to ext4), then after some time, they have meeting and decide that default will be xfs, then after year or so we will switch to Btrfs... For f*** sake, choose one already and keep patching it... You know there are some of us who are using that distro as it suits our need and want to have stable OS instead some test bed of technologies, so that they can later incorporate them into their main product - RHEL. And before you start to cry about how it is free and they have right to do so, yes so are Debian, Ubuntu, Opensuse, etc... But they don't change their mind like some women in menopause...

[dovla091]

This is devastating. The company I work for is just starting to transition from CentOS 6 to 7 and now has no upgrade path from 7. We move very slowly so need 10 to 15 years of support. It will be curious to see what management does in light of this decision.

Similar case with me. I started to switch from C6 to C7 last year and next I wanted to migrate to C8 so I have less things to do after (as we seriously lack manpower and I have no desire to leave 40+ servers unsupported), now with this C-stream crap, I will seriously start rethinking to move everything to Debian or even Ubuntu server. CentOS with this decision has not an option for me anymore. 10 years of support would work great but support of C8 (as some servers are running that) till Dec 2021 is simply a joke. So "F" you IBM and RedHat

[Xaero_Vincent]

It looks like there may be an alternative to CentOS called Springdale.

http://springdale.math.ias.edu/

[dovla091]

Oh, I would love to know if you ever used Fedora... Pot, meet Kettle...

I did most of my life, so what's your point? RH already have test bed and now they want to make a "fine grain" test environment by adding CentOS into equation.

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

Well, let's not be too hasty, I'm optimistic in the sense that I guess CentOS will try to be not too reckless and will be judicious with the updates, I doubt it will become Fedora out of the blue and more like "Debian Unstable" which is 99.9% of the time rock solid.

Please stop repeating this garbage. Do you even use any of the distros you are talking about? You don't seem to understand any of them. CentOS Stream is nothing like Debian Sid. Packages in Sid are bleeding edge, and are typically even newer than Fedora. Debian also has an enormous universe of packages. CentOS has a tiny amount of packages by comparison, even with RPM Fusion etc. It's a server OS meant to run all your workloads in containers or VMs. CentOS Stream is essentially the alpha version of the next Red Hat beta. "Bleeding edge" Red Hat is still old as dirt and stable.

[dovla091]

Please stop repeating this garbage. Do you even use any of the distros you are talking about? You don't seem to understand any of them. CentOS Stream is nothing like Debian Sid. Packages in Sid are bleeding edge, and are typically even newer than Fedora. Debian also has an enormous universe of packages. CentOS has a tiny amount of packages by comparison, even with RPM Fusion etc. It's a server OS meant to run all your workloads in containers or VMs. CentOS Stream is essentially the alpha version of the next Red Hat beta. "Bleeding edge" Red Hat is still old as dirt and stable.

One question, will you then use it in production on all of your servers? Simple yes or no.

[onlyLinuxLuvUBack]

It looks like there may be an alternative to CentOS called Springdale.

http://springdale.math.ias.edu/

I think they just take the available centos and put it in a new gift wrap.
There used to be scientific linux as a gift wrapped centos also.
So I guess our gift from IBM this year is:
Centos RIP
Springdale RIP
Scientific Linux RIP

Thank you IBM.

[cynic]

I think they just take the available centos and put it in a new gift wrap.
There used to be scientific linux as a gift wrapped centos also.
So I guess our gift from IBM this year is:
Centos RIP
Springdale RIP
Scientific Linux RIP

Thank you IBM.

I wonder what Oracle will do with their Oracle Linux, since it is a rebranded CentOS as well (except for their kernel).

[rlx01]

I don’t really see the problem when Oracle has their free build, which provides updates long before CentOS does. 🤷🏻♂️