EPEL Statistics Show Recent Surge In Rocky Linux Usage Past AlmaLinux, CentOS Stream

[mroche]

I recommend to run their code provided in the screenshots and include "& (epel['sys_age'] > 1)" which is commonly done by the EPEL folks to rule out potential ephemeral/short lived systems that generate a lot of noise. They do come out ahead of AlmaLinux in terms of total system hits, but are behind both RHEL and CentOS Stream to-date. I also removed epel-9 as it's pointless to add in for comparison when Rocky 9.0 isn't available yet.

Carl and Troy gave a presentation on Friday discussing the state of EPEL back on Friday at the CentOS Dojo. I'm just waiting for the recordings to be posted to the CentOS YouTube channel.

Cheers,
Mike

[Shred00]

AlmaLinux really are doing a better job IMO. They have beaten Rocky to GA with every release so far IIRC but most importantly they support major version upgrades with Elevate rather than the shitty Rocky/CentOS attitude that you rebuild all of your machines from scratch when a new major release comes out -- because of course everyone keeps all of their machines fully under configuration management (i.e. Ansible, Chef, etc.) so that they are easy to rebuild from scratch every couple of years right?

[You-]

Strange that Rocky is ahead of Alma, especially as Alma is actually involved in the community and doing good work that benefits everyone.

I would guess it is because of "better" marketing by Rocky (though they were called out for it because people did not appreciate them slinging mud at eg Alma).

I would guess those following things less closely could choose Rocky "We're Great Everyone Else is Shit" Linux over Alma "Lets build this and work as a community" Linux

[edwaleni]

What happened at the end of November and again in April to cause so many RHEL users to leave?

What happened in February to cause so many users to try and, for the most part, stay on RHEL alternates? Even Oracle Linux got a nice influx of new users fleeing from Red Hat, though it looks like at the end of April or start of May some of them went back to Red Hat.

Notice of renewal for annual maintenance agreement starts it in November, businesses start to look at alternatives.

[slalomsk8er]

It doesn't matter if one dies tbh because it's very easy to switch with any RHEL rebuild as apart from metadata and branding, they should be 100% identical.

Well in theory yes, but in practice it's still unproductive maintenance work, if you bet on the wrong horse and your security fixes could be delayed...

[Britoid]

Imho if you were to ask someone who didn't know the details if they would either trust Rocky Linux or Alma Linux, they'd probably say Rocky based on the name alone.

[Britoid]

I remember one AlmaLinux vs Rocky Linux comparison thread where CloudLinux support was cited as disadvantage for AlmaLinux. Because you know, CentOS had Red Hat support and Red Hat "killed it" so there is risk that CloudLinux will do the same for AlmaLinux in future. I guess fear for AlmaLinux ending like CentOS has some influence on choose between AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux.

I don't really think that there is risk of killing AlmaLinux for profit in near future. Mostly because AlmaLinux was created to be free distribution compatible with RHEL. If it won't be free then it doesn't really make any sense - why pay for RHEL compatible distro when you can pay for RHEL? Also fun fact is that AlmaLinux is owned by non profit organization compared to Rocky Linux

If I had to choose I would go with AlmaLinux but strategically I went back to Debian.
The switch from Debian to CentOS was because that is what my external developers are most comfortable with but after what happened with CentOS 8, they understood my reasoning for Debian

It doesn't matter if one dies tbh because it's very easy to switch with any RHEL rebuild as apart from metadata and branding, they should be 100% identical.

[slalomsk8er]

If I had to choose I would go with AlmaLinux but strategically I went back to Debian.
The switch from Debian to CentOS was because that is what my external developers are most comfortable with but after what happened with CentOS 8, they understood my reasoning for Debian

[dragon321]

That really surprices me since as far as I have seen AlmaLinux is doing a better job. They had secureboot working during the launch by borrowing it from CloudLinux, they made ELevate, and they had version 9 out very quickly while rockylinux seems to be on 8.6 still.

So I do not know how these are counted, is there a machine ID, IP, both? Because its entirely possible some of these are generated by the same user and it would be interesting to know how reliable the data is or if it could be a case of misconfiguration by a user for example.

I remember one AlmaLinux vs Rocky Linux comparison thread where CloudLinux support was cited as disadvantage for AlmaLinux. Because you know, CentOS had Red Hat support and Red Hat "killed it" so there is risk that CloudLinux will do the same for AlmaLinux in future. I guess fear for AlmaLinux ending like CentOS has some influence on choose between AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux.

I don't really think that there is risk of killing AlmaLinux for profit in near future. Mostly because AlmaLinux was created to be free distribution compatible with RHEL. If it won't be free then it doesn't really make any sense - why pay for RHEL compatible distro when you can pay for RHEL? Also fun fact is that AlmaLinux is owned by non profit organization compared to Rocky Linux

[STiAT]

I went with Rocky for now too, I do not like distros relying fully on one company as Alma more or less does. Though, they do a better / faster job at the moment than Rocky.

I will look what the future brings.