CentOS 8 Ending Next Year To Focus Shift On CentOS Stream

[timrichardson]

What? Rhel 8 is still available and you can still use it free of charge... -ALL- versions of Rhel have always been available for free of charge...

this is a misleading statement. This is the licence condition of RHEL for free:

"Finally, the biggest difference is that the no-cost Red Hat Developer Subscription is only for development purposes and may not be used in production."

It's called a "Developer Subscription" because you have to sign up to get the free version, but since it not licenced for production, it is very different to Ubuntu LTS. Right now, I am very happy I made the decision to use Ubuntu for my server deployments. Although I subscribe to Landscape because IMO Canonical needs some compensation (it helps me earn a living) and I am ok with Canonical's broader support of Linux. It may not be perfect, but it is good enough for me to feel it's far from free-riding.

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

As is often the case, the worst part about this fiasco involves managing expectations. They can change the direction of CentOS all they want. But releasing CentOS 8 a year ago and setting the expectation that it would be supported for 10 years until a 2029 EOL is a colossal screw up. Many organizations have recently, are in the middle of, or were about to do migrations to CentOS 8. There are going to be a lot of pissed off people today. And Oracle is probably laughing themselves silly.

[zxy_thf]

Oh wow like if anyone actually wanted a rolling CentOS. Luckily I'm on the Debian side of the distros, don't mind more people coming to the bright side

On the bright side: this is the dawn of Linux unification wars.

[andyprough]

I'm shocked. Shocked that it took IBM more than an entire year to start to kill off CentOS.

[9Strike]

Oh wow like if anyone actually wanted a rolling CentOS. Luckily I'm on the Debian side of the distros, don't mind more people coming to the bright side

[terrywang]

Definitely a good opportunity for Oracle Linux to take the lost grounds... :facepam ...

[anarki2]

What? Rhel 8 is still available and you can still use it free of charge... -ALL- versions of Rhel have always been available for free of charge...

Yeah. Except in production. And no. they weren't "always" available, only since 2016, with the developer subscription being introduced.

https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2016/03/31/no-cost-rhel-developer-subscription-now-available/

Offered as a self-supported, development-only subscription

So saying that RHEL is free is like saying Windows 10 is "free" because you can download the ISO from microsoft.com. People need to understand the difference between downloadable and licensed.

[You-]

Well, you're not unpaid. You're paying for the software by being a beta tester.

I think beta tester is being thrown around lightly.

being a "beta tester" for the next Fedora or ubuntu is different from being a "beta tester" for updates to their stable releases, which is different from being a "beta tester" for updates being released for a stable Debian release.

As a primarily Windows user, I would expect the Centos Stream to be more stable than Windows. If done right. Those 3 words are the most important as it all depends on how well they implement it.

[You-]

I wouldnt be surprised if this decision gets undone before the end of next year.

However I do think that if it is done properly, this is the right move.

You have to remember that RHEL Betas are more stable than most other distros out there.

What seems to be the aim is to get to the following development model:

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Fedora - rapid release. Fast, stable, modern, but has high churn.

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Centos Stream - the RHEL baking ground. Before this would be the RHEL Beta that would be released before any final release. But with more transparency. For major Releases, this would be breaking new ground, but for minor releases, it seems very stable and without many changes. by addin community input, it could lead to greater stability and more transparency.

Red Hat / IBM want the ISV's to become involved in this space so that their products are targetting to eb ready for future releases of RHEL, whether they are major or minor.

I expect this to start slow and build up ... steam. most changes will be minor and never expected to break things. Good enough for most webservers and even major platforms other than mission critical financial/security products.

I do not expect to see much visible benefit of Centos Stream prior to the release of Centos Stream 9. If done right, Centos Stream will be cut from the planned fedora version like they usually do and then the baking process will be more public. There will be less of a blind spot before the RHEL Beta and between the Beta and GA. The changes will be able to be followed. This will cause the issue that Red hat wont be able to be as secretive over when the next release is due, but from what I read they want to make that regular and less of a trade secret anyway.

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RHEL. The minor releases would now become a periodic cut from the stream. The Centos Stream from November 2021 could be RHEL 8.5. I would prefer it if real classic Centos releases also continued

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Old/Classic Centos - This used to be the location of current centos. The problem for Red hat/ IBM is that it was below RHEL. This was the target for ISV's and would always be behind the RHEL release cycle. it had the benefit of making alternative EL distros unattractive, but on the development side it was a dead end

[maveric7911]

It will take a long time before another distro is trusted for enterprise. RHEL is also being offered for free or at a significant discount.