CentOS 8 Ending Next Year To Focus Shift On CentOS Stream

[brent]

And suddenly the USD 75 per year for Ubuntu LTS with extended support sound interesting!

[ezekrb5]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with a free and open source server distro. And if you're happy with Debian, which is a very fine distro indeed, good for you!

At the same time, Redhat is under no obligation to provide the world with such a free and open source server distro. After they acqui-hired CentOS, they were free to do whatever the heck they liked with it. Now they've done something which, as they certainly know, is against the interests of a large fraction of the existing CentOS userbase. But, you know, it's not the end of the world, people will adapt. Some will switch to CentOS Stream, some will buy RHEL subscriptions, some will switch to other RHEL rebuilds like Oracle EL or the upcoming rocklinux, and yet others will switch to some other distro like SUSE, Ubuntu or Debian.

You are right, they can do what they want, but promising 10 years of support and then say hey just 'til 2021, it's a pretty low blow IMO.
Legally-wise they are fully covered as far as I could dig on the subject, so they don't have to provide that support, although this is gonna hurt a lot of companies, specially small ones.

[ZebCarnell]

CentOS 8 never had an EOL confirmed. It was left blank and unspecified. If people assumed it would be 10 years that's on them.
Who knows how much influence there was from IBM or Red Hat but it was the CentOS board that made the decision.
Be interesting to see what Red Hat release next with hinting they are looking to bridge the gap/void left by no longer having free downstream CentOS. Maybe they should have released that news with the CentOS announcement...

[eidolon]

CentOS 8 never had an EOL confirmed. It was left blank and unspecified. If people assumed it would be 10 years that's on them.

https://wiki.centos.org/action/recall/About/Product?action=recall&rev=122

[ZebCarnell]

Interesting because on release it was never announced, Reddit had a few discussions around this.
Luckily those effected could use Cloud Linux or Rocky which should support a repo change and sync for existing servers.
Those who want faster updates (which CentOS was so slow with anyway and why Red Hat started supporting them) can use Stream.
People who want support can migrate or sync to RHEL.

And the world moves on.

[eidolon]

Interesting because on release it was never announced, Reddit had a few discussions around this.
Luckily those effected could use Cloud Linux or Rocky which should support a repo change and sync for existing servers.
Those who want faster updates (which CentOS was so slow with anyway and why Red Hat started supporting them) can use Stream.
People who want support can migrate or sync to RHEL.

And the world moves on.

That page was updated on the same day CentOS 8 was released (2019-September-24): https://wiki.centos.org/action/recal...recall&rev=102. The EOL info wasn't included in the announcement or release notes for 7, the announcement or release notes for 6, the announcement or release notes for 5, or the announcement or release notes for 4. In recent memory, that information has been provided elsewhere (e.g. elsewhere in the wiki).

As you said, the world moves on. I think what is chafing some people the most is the handling of it; e.g. giving an EOL date, then changing it 14 months later (particularly for those who had just deployed or were in the process of deploying CentOS 8), and stating, "CentOS Stream is parallel to existing CentOS builds; this means that nothing changes for current users of CentOS Linux and services, even those that begin to explore the newly-released CentOS 8", only to renege on that 14 months later.

[lsatenstein]

Centos was a blessing and a curse for RHEL. Most very small businesses and hobbiest had one Centos server per site. This is acceptable. But some companies have used Centos as a base and cloned that one server 25 times or more.

Why buy the cow(RHEL) when you get the milk(Centos 7) for free.

I am all for RHEL asking for a serialized copy of Centos at $10.00/ea. As a hobbyist, it suites me fine to pay $10/copy as I will do my own support. I feel that RHEL has much lost revenue due to the Centos based server park guys.

[eidolon]

I forgot to mention in my previous post the questionable messaging attached to this change as well, e.g. "...it removes confusion around what 'CentOS' means in the Linux distribution ecosystem."

CentOS used to mean "...a free enterprise class computing platform to anyone who wishes to use it . . . built from publicly available open source SRPMS provided by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendor's redistribution policies and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork.) CentOS is designed for people who need an enterprise class OS without the cost or support of the prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. Neither the CentOS Project (we who build CentOS) nor any version of CentOS is affiliated with, produced by, or supported by the prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor."

Once CentOS and Red Hat "joined forces", CentOS meant, "...a community-supported distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by Red Hat for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). As such, CentOS Linux aims to be functionally compatible with RHEL. The CentOS Project mainly change packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork. CentOS Linux is no-cost and free to redistribute. Each CentOS version is maintained for up to 10 years (by means of security updates -- the duration of the support interval by Red Hat has varied over time with respect to sources released). A new CentOS version is released approximately every 2 years and each CentOS version is periodically updated (roughly every 6 months) to support newer hardware. This results in a secure, low-maintenance, reliable, predictable and reproducible Linux environment."

CentOS Stream didn't really introduce any confusion. "The CentOS Stream project sits between the Fedora Project and RHEL in the RHEL Development process, providing a 'rolling preview' of future RHEL kernels and features." "CentOS Stream now sits between the Fedora Project's operating system innovation and RHEL's production stability."

If anything, the recent announcement potentially introduced cross-purposed messaging as much as it relieved any, i.e. the CentOS blog states, "When CentOS Linux 8 (the rebuild of RHEL8) ends, your best option will be to migrate to CentOS Stream 8..." while the Red Hat blog piece regarding this change states, "CentOS Stream isn't a replacement for CentOS Linux". I think a lot of people's (perhaps the majority's) best option would be to migrate to a replacement for CentOS Linux (if they remain in the RHEL ecosystem).

I wish this had been handled in a more straightforward and thoughtful fashion, but it is what it is. The world isn't burning, just CentOS Linux.

Q14: Can the CentOS community continue to develop/rebuild CentOS Linux?
A: We will not be putting hardware, resources, or asking for volunteers to work towards that effort, nor will we allow the CentOS brand to be used for such a project, as we feel that it dilutes what we are trying to do with the refocus on CentOS Stream.

That pretty much sums it up.

[maveric7911]

"Most companies who use RHEL I know off, chose RHEL because of the rich community ecosystem that was build around it thanks to having free binary compatible CentOS that could be used to test and build against by open source projects."

With over 20 years in IT I've never heard of such nonsense. The rest of that statement is certainly true, just the bold not so much.

[lsatenstein]

I literally migrated yesterday from centos 8 to oracle linux 8 luckily all my configs work, who could have thought that i would ever use an oracle product again!? But truth to be told i cannot find another stable distro with 10 years support.

Don't hold your breath for long. Monkey See, Monkey do. Oracle will seize the opportunity to ding you a small annual amount (small in Oracle's terms) for their cost of providing their "Free from License" Oracle version.