CentOS 8 to be discontinued at end of 2021

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EffrafaxOfWug

Radioactive Member
Feb 12, 2015
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Our firm's been very much a linux shop for some time, using the "RHEL for prod, CentOS for nonprod" model (which I suspect a lot of companies do), so this whole announcement has thrown a complete spanner in the works and it's already looking very likely that RHEL will be dropped. We've got little use for certified stuff for most of our workload so support was typically a "nice to have" rather than a necessity but I don't think we could remotely justify the expense of running everything on RHEL.

There's lots of nerds and geeks and coders at my company, so very good in-house support for issues, plus lots of mistrust of behemoths like IBM and oracle. Debian's already in use here in some capacity (as is gentoo as mentioned above for some performance-critical stuff) so it's likely we'll end up adopting those wholesale for almost all internal systems.
 

gb00s

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Jul 25, 2018
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Community ENTERPRISE operating system
It's not always about fun ._.

Some software requires a "certified" or "verified" operating system like RHEL or Centos, for example the Autodesk tools:
View attachment 16659
I was talking about 'server environment'. Of course, we can start to count on several 'special software' requirements to make a point and stop any discussion. The majority of special desktop software is to find in Win/MacOS environment. No doubt about that.

Add: Enterprise OS .... Everything that works is fun.
 
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WANg

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Jun 10, 2018
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Years ago I was told that I made a poor choice for using the "niche" Ubuntu Linux as our standard. I am feeling a bit better about that.

I think we are going to do a bit on this over the weekend. I am doing a lot to see how far I can push the video process to see if I can get more than 8 videos up this month which is sucking a lot of time.

I do appreciate hearing the thoughts on this. It is good to know I am not the only one who did not see this as a benefit to the community.

Yeah, but running RHEL/CentOS enterprise is kinda niche as well - at least in the shop I run.

I have meetings next week regarding this IBM "dick move"s, but let me give you an example of why having CentOS die might end up costing RHEL much more business than IBM thought....

a) With CentOS, you can't do release uplift the same way you can with Ubuntu (or Debian). So if CentOS 8 is only getting a 1 year lifespan that's pretty much a death sentence here. But then, should we even be running it?

At work, I try to steer the demo/professional services guys from asking for CentOS/RHEL VMs, unless whatever it needs to run is only supported/tested for a specific Linux distribution (a good example is Blackboard LMS or Oracle RDBMS (*ugh* the app that I really hate to support)).

Why? Lifecycle issues. Once you have a CentOS 5, machine, it stays a 5 machine for the entire lifecycle of the VM. It might get patches, it might get package updates, but if someone asks for, say, a newer version of httpd, or a specific PHP package with a feature add, well, you check the EPEL repo. If EPEL has it, good. If not, it's either a custom source build using rpmbuild, signed with my keys, or I tell them to go away. You can't change a repo and expect a CentOS 5 machine to be upgraded to CentOS 6 as easily as, say, do-release-update on Ubuntu Server OR switch repos to Debian, and apt-get dist-upgrade (as long as you pay attention to major release changes during the uplift process and plan for contingencies, you should be okay). To me, CentOS is a bit rigid. You stick with the same kernel/user-land family for the next 5 years, and you hope that the backports work and are stable.


b) With Debian delta repos and package holds, it's not that hard to get the same results as CentOS/RHEL and have a stable machine

The way I set up Debian/Ubuntu machines is that I run an apt-proxy and then setup delta repos to lock at a specific date, do package holds/pins, test specific machines up 3 months from the rest, if the repo changes doesn't do that much to break the machine functionality, I rsync the new repo files out, run a dist-upgrade and then bounce the VMs on a Friday afternoon. For my use case, incremental changes to a system applied steadily over time is better than constantly depending on an upstream vendor constantly hacking a 2-3 year old distro to stay somewhat relevant. Plus chances are, if the applications above the OS needs to be updated, then it will demand updates to its OS dependencies. This used to be not-a-thing when it came to installing Enterprise Java apps on JBoss or Websphere (where things don't really change that often)....but then, JVMs do change significantly nowadays, and patches happen.

c) Avoiding change management is a bit unrealistic sometimes.

Believe it or not, there are organizations who still have Windows Server 2003/2008 machines in production, and RHEL4/5/6 machines sitting in the backwaters somewhere performing one or 2 tasks. The issue is that the developers (and their managers) hate change (especially if it is drastic changes that forces machines down, and machines viewed as unimportant (like demo/repo/QA machines) are suddenly critical (oh no, I cannot do customer facing demos on this machine you built for us 4 years ago and left in a vacuum? I am taking this to your boss and demand that you don't touch it). My philosophy has always been to snapshot the filesystem, do the changes incrementally, reboot, ensure things come back to life, and rollback if I have to. All of a sudden a fleet of neglected Ubuntu 10/Debian 6 machines got tossed up to Ubuntu 16/Debian 9 and my life suddenly becomes easier. If I have CentOS machines that's a re-roll right off the bat, and there are hidden technical debts to pay off (why the hell did this piece of code use PHP5 AND x86 instead of PHP7 and x86_64? Oh, because this idiot dev chose the wrong docker container to write the code against...and etc). Sometimes thats doable, but often than not, I am already up to my eyeballs with powershell - Linux nonsense is the worst nonsense since it's usually easy nonsense to fix..provided that you have bandwidth to deal with it.

d) Paid support is often a nice-to-have, not essential, and if you "get" open source you can probably google your way around issues faster.
(Sometimes having friends that you can throw beer money at within vendors also help)

Okay, so I might have to call Oracle or Red Hat for issues regarding certain things, but sometimes those "things" might be self-perpetuating.

"Oh, some developer in your CentOS 7 environment needs Khmer support on PHP7 and we don't have a suitable package in your repo? Hold on, lemme assign you an engineer who can go to our repo environment and build you one.."

versus

"oh wait, there's a package on epel that fixes it? wget, rpm -i, bounce the app and fixed..."

or

"oh, I can just pull a slightly later version with easy dependency graphs via git, rpmbuild a custom, push it out of the company repo and push a yum update on the dev machines that needs it..."

or even better:

"Ha, we run Debian here - freaking thing can already do Khmer. Tell the dev to spin up a buster container, repull from git and repo against it instead"

I don't really have an absolute need or RHEL - CentOS was more like an easy gateway drug to get into the RHEL ecosystem, and if I need paid support for legal reasons (the repo machine that was built will now be used for customer facing purposes, we'll need to buy an RHEL license, change the repo to RHEL, do an in-place distro swap and then tighten things up as a production machine), I need it. I don't love or prefer it, but CentOS is the distro I go with if whatever I run on top is only supported in RHEL, and the installer scripts/packages assumes an RPM based environment with specific RHEL/CentOS underpinnings. Otherwise if it's something generic like PHP, I quietly put them on delta repo/pinned Debian (or Ubuntu, but I seriously prefer Debian) setup. If the argument is that IBM will simply force people to go to RHEL (so they can cash in), then I have less even less desire to use it. It's not even that hard to make RHEL oriented aps run on Debian based machines.
 
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Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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RHEL is $350 a year for software updates... starts to make Microsoft really not look bad.
(big business gets much better deals but the smaller guys the RHEL subscriptions look kind of expensive for an OS)

Pure software updates should be available for more like $50 a year or less is just my feeling.
Was a big user of CentOS outside of main job but now really need to think how best to go on with another distro
 

Speeddymon

New Member
Dec 13, 2020
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First off, wow IBM. Second, something in the article got me thinking.

If the migration path was from CentOS 8 to a carefully crafted “RHEL-freemium” distribution, which is how many viewed CentOS at a high-level anyway, then it has the ability to greatly increase Red Hat’s installed base in its main RHEL distribution. There are huge ramifications for this from an IP, licensing, and even just a business perspective, but it would be an amazing move.
I can see this becoming a situation where RH provides a competitor to Windows in the desktop space. They'll rope users in with the free OS and charge for support much the same way Microsoft does.

Seriously wow IBM.
 
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RTM

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Jan 26, 2014
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I have been thinking about what other projects might be effected by this change, here are the few that I can think of (all of which uses centos 7 as a base as far as I can tell):
  • Netgate TNSR
  • ClearOS
  • Security Onion (also supports install on Ubuntu 18.04)
Any others I am missing?
 

gb00s

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Jul 25, 2018
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Pure software updates should be available for more like $50 a year or less is just my feeling.
I expect this to happen in the near future. People/businesses will pay it (50USD) and from a business standpoind it makes sense. No doubt about that. You get quantity and can lower fees, but get customers tight up with your business. That's the trend in the open source area. Software for free and updates or support for a fee.

What I don't understand is the surprise and whining of people now using an OS where development is/was let by an enterprise. This current development was foreseeable. Your risk management sucks. Almost all enterprises 'sponsoring' the open-source community are/were going this way and just want their 'investment' back. I just don't know if I want to be pushed into Systemd by Pottering (RHL) and then paying for it. Same with $MS relationship with Linux, Amazon and Linux, Intel and Linux, Oracle and Linux.

If you want something free choose a community only led & driven ship.

Go Debian or Gentoo. The majority of servers is running at avg load of 14%. Enough resources to compile.

One thing will change. The more paid support is available only, the less knowledge is available for free and as we know it now. The knowledge provided from support will be considered intellectual property at some point in the future and all free forums wont be allowed to discuss issues, bugs etc for free. This leads to my point above. For how long can you avoid paid support, maintain your systems by yourself when you already pay for updates?

I also consider these moves as the death toll of the open-source. Businesses are already leading the open-source environment. Linux, cryptos w/blockchain etc.. Development will be too expansive for the community and standards are already changing to make it very difficult to get into the circle.

The cage is becoming smaller and smaller.
 
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Stephan

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Apr 21, 2017
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Count me in among the sceptics with regard to IBM's involvement in the Linux eco-system. Too many cutting-edge technologies and/or maintenance of them are coming out of Red Hat, or are paid for by them: Systemd, GNOME, Linux kernel contributions, LibreOffice, Ceph, radeon/nouveau, GCC GDB Binutils, KVM/SPICE... the list goes on and on.

And now some of those packages might see funny policy decisions that will get harder and harder to ignore. Maybe the 2020s will become the decade of forks. Chromium has already got a nice one, after Google turned it into spyware: ungoogled-chromium.
 

Vesalius

Active Member
Nov 25, 2019
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I have been thinking about what other projects might be effected by this change, here are the few that I can think of (all of which uses centos 7 as a base as far as I can tell):
  • Netgate TNSR
  • ClearOS
  • Security Onion (also supports install on Ubuntu 18.04)
Any others I am missing?
Nethserver
 

Vesalius

Active Member
Nov 25, 2019
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Redhat regrouped after the backlash and came up with a plan to pacify individuals, but that would still force companies like Netgate and others to pay up for using RHEL/CentOS. Should have started there.
 

lihp

Active Member
Jan 2, 2021
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I am quite sure IBM pays for that in the long run. Apart from that:
  1. Alma Linux updates (former Lenix): AlmaLinux - Forever-Free Enterprise-Grade Operating System and AlmaLinux is born!!
  2. Rocky Linux update yesterday: Community Update - January 2021
So it looks like two viable RHEL clones and one will merge with the other sometimes in the future...
 

lihp

Active Member
Jan 2, 2021
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More information ...

LOL @exelbierd - what a ...

"RHEL is production and CentOS for developers"? And he wants to make this clear? He wants to get the unknown users and "hobbyists" to know? Then they start specific programs for small business, science,...? Similar to what @fatherlinux said: "Imho using CentOS for production is crazy." Same level of ignorance and arrogance.

Just to get this straight, the "new customers" they claim they are "not primarily" looking for, who are "hobbyists" and who are crazy to use CentOS in production:
  • the largest physics experiment in the world, the LHC, with total costs of about 4-5 billion EURO runs on CentOS.
  • Disney (entertainment) (also) relies on CentOS.
  • Harris Corporation (aviation and defense) (also) relies on CentOS.
  • SalesForce (software manufacturer) (also) relies on CentOS.
  • Nvidia (world's largest chip maker) (also) relies on CentOS.
  • Toyota (automotive) (also) relies on CentOS.
  • at least 251,061 companies are publicly known to be running CentOS.
  • at least 219,333 web sites currently run their web servers on CentOS. That is approximately 10 times more than RHEL.
  • some of the 100 largest WebSites world-wide run under CentOS. Significantly more than RHEL.
  • if you get right down to it, CentOS (along with RHEL and Debian) is also in use on the ISS.

Those are the customers @exelbierd is "not" looking for and who he wants to get to know. And of course it is not about subscriptions or business :eek:. It's about undermining open source by 100% :confused:.

Anyways, I am sure that move will hurt RedHat more than they anticipated. Still it feels weird that a company is so obviously not telling the truth. Mark me, business is business and I don't expect companies being truthful when it comes to revenue. Still this level of alternate news is already at Trump-level.
 
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lpallard

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Aug 17, 2013
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Been reading a bit about Rocky Linux, and this is something that looks promising for us folks who got screwed by Redhat/IBM....

I will try it for sure, provided the project remains Centos-like (serious use, stability > bleeding edge gadgets) and doesnt slowly become just "another linux distro" thats gonna disappear in a few years...
 

gb00s

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Jul 25, 2018
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Been reading a bit about Rocky Linux, and this is something that looks promising for us folks who got screwed by Redhat/IBM....

I will try it for sure, provided the project remains Centos-like (serious use, stability > bleeding edge gadgets) and doesnt slowly become just "another linux distro" thats gonna disappear in a few years...
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.
 

gea

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Dec 31, 2010
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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