CentOS 8 to be discontinued at end of 2021

[lihp]

I have seen some new users on OmniOS (OpenSource Solar is fork) coming from Centos as this is a ultra minimalistic, easy to maintain and very stable base for a server especially when services like ZFS, iSCSI, NFS and SMB/AD is the main use case. There is a stable, a long term stable and a commercial support option, OmniOS Community Edition

The power of CentOS was long term support of 10 years and that it is completely Open Source. That's what afaik no other free Distro delivers and thats why RedHat upset so many people. With virtualization and containers it doesn't even matter that CentOS is behind, when it comes to new versions or even bleeding edge software. So Centos is just about a stable platform with long term support.

Only AlmaLinux as of now brings exactly this to the table.

 

[lpallard]

May I wake you up and remind you of something. In the future, it won't matter which distro you use. Who runs it or not. Just the way enterprise adapts, forks, takes over and includes Open Source and pushes everyone into specific frameworks tells me, you will be framed by enterprise and be vendor locked-in at some point.

If the community doesn't rally and push for opensource projects like Rocky Linux, what you said will happen for sure. After all, wasn't CentOS created to offer an opensource alternative to the big $$$ solutions? The big mistake was for the Centos folks to sell out to Redhat. That was the beginning of the end for Centos and this was many years ago. We should have known better. The path towards extinction was clear but I didn't see it. Few seems to have seen it.

Like some said on this thread, Centos was the only stable Linux based OS that provided long term maintenance and updates and was tailored towards servers and workstations use. That's why I have some hopes in Rocky Linux as a decent replacement to Centos.

I may add this, which may be controversial, but is my personal opinion: the opensource landscape is too fragmented. The user bases are divided, the efforts are duplicated and the development is fragmented. Why so many distros? Why so many slightly different but competing philosophies? If some of these projects would be merged together perhaps we would be stronger, more lasting?

 

[lihp]

After all, wasn't CentOS created to offer an opensource alternative to the big $$$ solutions? The big mistake was for the Centos folks to sell out to Redhat. That was the beginning of the end for Centos and this was many years ago. We should have known better. The path towards extinction was clear but I didn't see it. Few seems to have seen it.

Not really. What RedHat did was a longterm erosion of the people in CentOS council. They just employed them and any other competent developer they could get hold of. It's legit, but it was planned and tbh well done.

Like some said on this thread, Centos was the only stable Linux based OS that provided long term maintenance and updates and was tailored towards servers and workstations use. That's why I have some hopes in Rocky Linux as a decent replacement to Centos.

Well it is also about business interests. If it is irrelevant to business, then it will die on the long run.

That's why I consider it cool there will be AlmaLinux and RockyLinux, yet it seems the AlmaLinux guys are more professional...

 

[i386]

After all, wasn't CentOS created to offer an opensource

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is open source

 

[lpallard]

There's definitely some legal stuff I'm not aware of and may help understand how buying one guy after the other would allow them to destroy the project completely, unless everyone at Centos sold out to RH. Then it would make sense, Centos becomes a RH product from a practical POV...

You think this d*** move will hurt RH in some ways?

@i386 I should have said "free" from monetary sense...

 

[lihp]

You think this d*** move will hurt RH in some ways?

Better call it IBM.

On the short term it helps them. Alot of companies and institutions, especially large ones who depend on CentOS now have an intention to talk with RedHat. Those will strike a deal, which both parties enjoy. Mid-sized, some small companies and startups will most likely suffer. Some move to other platforms, a few will sign with RedHat. So in the short term RedHat will gain subscriptions and IBM/Redhat will have alot of additional projects. Even if only (and thats not alot) 1% signs with RedHat, by then we talk about 50.000 - 100.000 newly subscribed servers to RedHat. So in the short term they cannibalize CentOS for revenue.

In the mid run alot of administrators, DevOPs, architects, who pledged for RedHat based solutions are lost to the RedHAt ecosystem. For those a lack of trust is reason enough to look elsewhere. Clones like AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux will be considered their own ecosystem and alternative. CloudLinux and some companies behind them (including the whole hosting business) will root for AlmaLinux. Some others will root for Rocky Linux, who are for example also sponsored by AWS. Maybe those distributions will even merge.

In the long run RedHat enforced the birth of (an) alternative(s) to RHEL, while loosing market momentum. They will hurt in this regard. RedHat will overall win nonetheless since they are then part of the IBM ecosystem.

Bottom line: RedHat repositioned and free software won nonetheless.

 

[i386]

@i386 I should have said "free" from monetary sense...

The source code is also free like free beer

There's definitely some legal stuff I'm not aware of and may help understand how buying one guy after the other would allow them to destroy the project completely, unless everyone at Centos sold out to RH

Before Red Hat got involved with the centos project the centos project was run by a community and relied on donations for the infrastructure and people working on removing trademarked ressources from the rhel code base and doing other centos related stuff.
This led to different problems, like the massive delays between rhel and centos releases (I think centos 6 came out almost a year after rhel 6) or security fixes ._.
Now Red Hat runs the infrasturcture and pays the people working on centos.

 

[lihp]

" We are going to announce the Beta release in a few days. You can sign up for (almost) instant email notification on almalinux.org. We will also publish the announcement on this channel so you will have an opportunity to test it very soon. "

Like a few minutes ago...