Oracle Linux Looking To Attract CentOS Users Looking For Alternatives

[You-]

Just an addition to the above - I am looking forward to seeing Centos Stream 9.

From what I have been able to fathom and with a healthy dose of assumptions, it will be based on Fedora 34. With additional baking before it becomes Centos Stream 9, and a bit more baking until it becomes RHEL 9.

It is almost like Fedora LTS, but without using the S word, which Red Hat will only use for paid products because it carries meaning in the EL space.

[Duve]

People are reading too much into the word rolling. It is never intended to become the next Arch or even Fedora.

You know, as someone who is just observing what's going on. I feel like I misunderstood something, because last that I checked CentOS Stream did not move as fast as Fedora... And was never designed too. So all these calls about the loss of stability, seem odd because I don't think people will be losing much if anything at all.


We'll see how the community efforts pan out, but if I'm guessing right I don't think they will have a long shelf life. It is a matter of resources. Something that CentOS has always had something of an issue with is that demarking RHEL managed to take additional time and it's only gotten worse over the years at the distribution kept growing. I'll be honest I think that's what motivated them to change focus on CentOS, they were always behind RHEL.... and the delta between the two distributions with every release and update was only getting bigger.
Since Stream is developed ahead of RHEL, I don't see what a community distribution would get rebasing themselves off of RHEL since they would be at the whims of Red Hat & incur the same issue CentOS was facing. It would basically be a duplication of Stream as it stood with the disadvantage of being developed behind RHEL, while putting in the work to remove te trademarks for the entire distribution.
That will come to a head at some point, which given that Stream would basically have the same shelf life as RHEL anyway.... Maybe it's me but it seems kind of pointless.

[reba]

How I'm a noob when it comes to server / enterprise environments but why not simply use a Debian (maybe stable) instead of downstream Ubuntu or RedHab / Oracle? What do these provide that Debian could not? AFAIK Debian has an adamant reputation, especially when it comes to servers. It also has the most packages, a widespread package systems and fast security backports. So why?

[ayumu]

Except nobody is dumb enough to go Oracle.

[cynic]

We'll see how the community efforts pan out, but if I'm guessing right I don't think they will have a long shelf life. It is a matter of resources.

I was concerned about resources as well, but, judging by the interest Rocky has got in just a few days I guess they'll have enough resources to succeed.

At this point I'm more concerned by the next RH/IBM moves to make their work harder. CentOS has always been "easy" (I know it was not) thanks to the openness of RH but they can make RockyLinux life much much harder, if not, impossibile.

[rene]

Broken CSS on mobile gives it that unprofessional vibe.

what is broken, as as it is open source you could attach a patch to fix it ;-)

[zxy_thf]

How I'm a noob when it comes to server / enterprise environments but why not simply use a Debian (maybe stable) instead of downstream Ubuntu or RedHab / Oracle? What do these provide that Debian could not? AFAIK Debian has an adamant reputation, especially when it comes to servers. It also has the most packages, a widespread package systems and fast security backports. So why?

(Disclaimer: I don't manage any production environment for any enterprise, but I've learned these through various posts after SHTF. Correct me if I'm wrong.)

For IT companies Debian is good enough for production because they can support themselves (Facebook is already on CentOS Stream for production).

But for other companies, say, fiance services or manufacturing industry, they usually don't have enough people for the job.
So they would end up buying some licenses either for the tech support, or as an insurance.
Debian, as a community-driven distribution, does not have an "official“ institution to sign a support contract with, and thus YMMV.

In addition, some infrastructure also requires an RHEL license to get supported, even CentOS is not Okay.

Another case I heard of is ERP systems. It seems they were developed exclusively on RHEL (maybe adding SUSE?).

[chithanh]

The only different between it and normal Centos should be that updates are released when ready instead of being artificially limited to the next November/May release. They are not expecting those updates to be any lower in quality.

People are reading too much into the word rolling. It is never intended to become the next Arch or even Fedora.

The only risk is ISV's but if their software doesnt work on it, it is due to break within 6 months anyway.

I think this is a very naïve position to take.

Red Hat is doing the same to their users with CentOS Stream as Microsoft has been doing with Windows 10 Home. Turning its users into beta testers for the enterprise version of the product.
It now is clear what were Red Hat's intentions when acquiring CentOS. Discontinuing CentOS to convert its users either into paying customers or at least into beta testers.

I would suggest Rocky Linux and CloudLinux as the better alternatives as opposed to Oracle.

Given the history of both companies, a former CentOS user switching to OEL would be giving the ultimate middle finger to Red Hat for this. Though as others pointed out, this is not a million miles away from cutting off the nose to spite the face.

My expectation on this that the users who are only into long-term support and are not interested in binary compatibility with RHEL will migrate to Ubuntu Server, Debian, or similar. If on the other hand RHEL compatibility is critically important, you don't take the risks of CentOS Stream but go for whatever Rocky, Cloud, or Oracle offer.

[mike456]

Oracle is moving headquarter to Texas! Oh well that's where the patent trolls are. Probably for the ongoing battle vs Google.
Why not Fedora? I thought this to be the closest to Red Hat?

[birdie]

The greatest thing about RHEL/CentOS and its proper derivatives is that you can switch between its builds seamlessly just by adjusting DNF repos and running dnf dystrosync. It would be great if Linux were standardized around RHEL, so that all other distros were binary compatible with it, which means ISVs could target just one distro instead of dozens of hundreds.

Speaking of OL: even if Oracle suddenly decides to fuck with its users, you can always switch to another RHEL derivative so it doesn't matter whether they are "evil" or not. Most corporations are: they are in only for maximum profits and nothing else.