See:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/01/CentOS-is-gone-but-rhel-is-now-free-for-up-to-16-production-servers/
and https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/new-year-new-red-hat-enterprise-linux-programs-easier-ways-access-rhel
88 thoughts on - RHEL Changes
De Profundis
Il giorno mer 20 gen 2021 alle ore 16:02 J Martin Rushton via CentOS ha scritto:
finalmente!
era ora!
Thanks for the info! I will pass it along!
I see that this is as an impulse for Fedora so that we as users do not leave RedHat after the news … even so I still think how good it is for the linux community this whole situation makes us a good shakeup. Cheers,
From: Victor Pereira Sent: January 21, 2021 07:47
While I while I welcome the Red Hat announcement I really could do without the “shakeup” and all the additional work that it triggers.
Regards, Hugh
Absolutely.
Is this good news for the “CentOS” family?
So this will muddy the waters for the spin-offs like Rocky Linux, or kill them? I’d assume at least it would dilute who’d need an alternate CentOS replacement except those with more than 16 servers. Or did I misunderstand the announcement?
I don’t see how this would create any issues for Rocky Linux and the like. The new RHEL terms still require annual license activations (for every installation I think) and that’s a point of friction that doesn’t exist with Linux installations that are actually free.
With this new offering I’ve got to count my installations, track which ones I’ve torn down, which ones I’ve updated, which ones I’ve scrapped, which ones I’m running in a VM and which ones that I’ve installed on an “appliance” in the dusty corner to running a printing press, and when I get to the sixteenth installation then I need to pay up or start decommissioning stuff….
Or I could use a license-not-required distribution like Rocky or Oracle and avoid all of that.
I’ve got a number of machines with certain clients who bring their machine back to me every year or two (or whenever they figure they can spare it and happen to be heading this way) for updating. I might not see one of those machines for a few years; they may not have any Internet connection in the field so it could be interesting if the machines tell them (or me) to buzz off because the license has expired.
If there were no other options then I guess there would have to be a way figured out to make this work anyway, but there are options and those options are certainly more attractive than dealing with license activations and all of the joy surrounding that sort of thing.
The RHEL announcement is of no use to me or my company. We spin up DigitalOcean droplets for each of our client websites/apps. If we were utilising horizontal scaling we’d have even more droplets per website/app. We’d easily have over 16 installations.
I tried Oracle Linux. After installation it took forever to update yum database, or do you yum search. Also: I didn’t find mirrors… All this sort of ruled it out for me. Mind that I have 1 Gbps network…
So my shop: servers: FreeBSD (for decade or so, since FreeBSD v. 8), number crunchers and workstations: Debian except for those that need NVIDIA binary driver or cuda, these rare ones will be Ubuntu.
In a hope this helps someone,
Valeri
So far I’ve installed Oracle Linux on one laptop. What I got was exactly what I expected to get, and I didn’t have any issues at all. “dnf upgrade” worked exactly as expected and at pretty much exactly the same speed as it does on CentOS, too.
But that’s just one installation. I haven’t done anything else with OL yet at all.
Don’t worry, Rocky Linux is in good track; Latest update:
It will be with us very soon, and the formerly CentOS community is very active on it!
I am very optimistic with it.
RH is trying to catch all those CentOS users/admins who will jump off the train to shift to Rocky Linux (or other), but I think Rocky Linux will become the natural successor.
The future is close, we shall see.
Nick
I don’t think mirrors exist. appears updates comes directly from Oracle this way their users/clients know those servers are always there with the latest software.
Maybe my problem was I used yum, not dnf command. Or maybe my locality of specifically my domain is not favored by oracle. Or maybe other way around, my network admins… But then, mine is just a single installation, exactly as you told about yours ;-)
Valeri
Thanks Nick,
I was just writing a post to solicit opinions on a good goto distro for CentOS replacement. I am somewhat dubious on wanting to move to free-RHEL and based on what you’ve said here, looks like Rocky deserves my attention…
If it does indeed become the successor as you’ve suggested, let’s just hope we can keep it from being acquired by RH or any other party.
Seems to me that once RH decided to help CentOS out and mandated RH
majority on the board, the writing was on the wall for what occurred in Dec…
No, I already streamlined Debian routine installation (workstations and number crunchers), and servers run FreeBSD since loooong ago, so I’m all set, and much better than in the past ;-)
Thanks though.
Valeri
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Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
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I think from years of posting that FreeBSD is how Valeri’s brain works best and that is cool. Some people have certain OS paradigms where they function best and are able to solve problems better than another system. For other people it might be a completely ‘brainjam’ type thing [sort of like when people try using my tools and find many of them are left-handed.. things look the same but they don’t work ‘correctly’ for some reason.] but if you find the tool you work best in for an enterprise and your customers are happy so be it.
—
Stephen J Smoogen.
Like Valeri, I have a fondness for FreeBSD. Regardless, I think Nicolas is correct. I remember reading a post in an old usenet (I think) discussion of mutt vs. pine (before it became alpine) where someone said words to the effect of, People pull up all sorts of technical reasons to justify what is, in the end, an emotional decision.
There is no CentOS “family”. CentOS clone is dead and will be now replaced with no-cost RHEL, so in market share (over time) CentOS will be replaced with RHEL. CentOS Stream will be used solely by developers and and entities like Facebook (as a base for their own in house solution). With 16-system no-cost production license package there might be drop in RHEL clone demand, and some Oracle users might decide to move to RHEL
(but this is total unknown depending on perception of Red Hat and Oracle in peoples minds).
I learned one truth working for many years for scientists: the best thing is what works best for _YOU_, with which YOU are most efficient.
I do keep bringing up FreeBSD, as I conscientiously switched servers to it. And during first maybe year I was catching myself with “Linuxisms”
on FreeBSD. Later I often caught myself with “FreeBSD-isms” on Linux. But if your future road is long, then at the pivoting point it really is good to step up above everything and estimate (with open mind) what might be beneficial in your future. That is why I bring up non-Linux system I know (more or less). Were I knowing others as well (OpenBSD, NetBSD, …) I would be mentioning them too.
And all that in a hope it may help someone (and with understanding it may annoy many).
Valeri
Odd that you say it’s dead when 7 doesn’t sunset until June 30th, 2024.
John
Le 21/01/2021 à 23:18, Valeri Galtsev a écrit :
Debian has an average of two years[*] per support.
Oracle has ten like upstream RHEL.
Choice is pretty clear to me.
[*] one year after subsequent release, so an average of one to three years depending on installation date
There is “stretch”, which is equivalent of more known as LTS of Ubuntu:
5 years. And then, there is easy in place upgrade from regular or
“stretch” to next release.
But no, I will not argue against uniqueness of 10 year life cycle of RedHat. I just said that my life [with Debian] will be no bigger hassle than it was [with CentOS].
The only difference of Debian is: it has vast collection of everything, so you really need to make your own choices. But if it’s done once, you can in one go tell next installation to install all the same software
(packages). Of course, I, being a simple guy, had much simpler life with CentOS, just choose all software groups that sound relevant… (jus grossly exaggerating ;-) But with huge collection like Debian one (or like FreeBSD ports are, or macports for MacOS) once you spent time shaping system to your preference, you are done, and all next systems are rather routine, almost as unattended as RedHat/CentOS kickstart install is.
Valeri
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Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
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Understandable. The big part of Microsoft is selling their operating system, for servers included, and even they were caught running FreeBSD
on some of their servers at some point ;-)
Valeri
Surely anyone requiring less than 16 licences will now ditch CentOS 7 in favour of RHEL7? The rest may stay on CentOS 7 for a year or so until there is a clearer picture around viable alternatives. This may as well become the RHEL users list and CentOS-Devel effectively becomes the CentOS-Stream mailing list?
Drat. I have 25 systems at home running CentOS 7.9, and one system running OEL 7.9.
Steve
I have no plans on moving to RHEL7; it’s work that doesn’t need to be done.
And let’s face it, CentOS-devel@ has been nothing but RH noise since
2014; I’ve suggested renaming it, and #CentOS-devel for what it’s worth, on a couple different occasions.
John
Maybe not best choice of the word, but I meant there will not be further development on that front. CentOS 7 cloning will be just rinse and repeat of established process. If CentOS 8 was not killed almost no one would have installed CentOS 7 on any new server (keeping in mind desire for 10-year til EOL), so I see CentOS 7 as close to EOL and his usefulness for new systems will only decrease.
Hence it is as good as dead in my mind when looking into the future, I
am looking for future distro of choice.
I couldn’t agree more.
A little mentioned choice would be openSUSE, which is direction I am taking.
Like Valeri, I have a fondness for FreeBSD. Regardless, I think Nicolas is
correct. I remember reading a post in an old usenet (I think) discussion of
mutt vs. pine (before it became alpine) where someone said words to the
effect of, People pull up all sorts of technical reasons to justify
what is, in the end, an emotional decision.
Don’t forget “elm” :-) :-)… And to make it even more complex: the outcome of all those half emotional, half technical decisions vary during the time. Projects may (slowly) die or get a huge momentum, licenses change (!), etc.
I do not like system where configuration app can overwrite manualy set config. I started with ClarkConnect in 2005-2006 and to route public subnet into my network I had to delete last iptables command then add my own, but only after config system did it’s own iptables commands. I had to learn iptables before any other Linux commands and although I
mastered it, it is left in unpleasant memory (it took me weeks and help from rare Linux admins to find a solution).
I did try SUSE around 2000 but it was complicated to do manual changes
(if it was not provided in YAST), so after ClarkConnect I had no desire to even experiment with YAST.
I wonder whether RH plan to fight back FUD they’ve brought upon by their December announcement.
Personally, I found this “no-cost” promise lacking substantial details.
If RH doesn’t verify everyone requesting developer subscription (forcing to prove identity), the 16 installations limit is easily circumvented by multiple registrations.
If they *do* request identity verification (i.e. copy of ID, phone, email, physical address… etc etc, up to last will in favor of RH), then I am even more uneasy having voluntarily provided them with personal data which are treasure for any marketing purpose they could imagine.
Also, I can still expect they will again change their mind close to
2021’s end. In short, I have hard time trusting RH in such a situation. JMNSHO.
eh?
That’s exactly how I feel too. I don’t trust them.
I think we can expect Rocky Linux to provide a real solution to CentOS
future. We shall know very soon, so let’s just wait for a short while.
There is such a huge (staggering) number of CentOS installed base, esp. including service providers (hosts etc.), that the market NEEDS a real reliable successor of CentOS. This need cannot be covered by RHEL new licensing. A real open source, community solution will be needed; for the time being, Rocky Linux seems to have the right specs to fill the gap.
The market itself will finance (through donations) its future, because it is a real need. A CentOS successor is a real need.
OL will be last resort, but I believe Rocky Linux will most probably be the way to go. It displays good momentum, steady progress and great manpower.
My 2c.
Nick
Il 2021-01-22 13:43 Nikolaos Milas ha scritto:
Hi, there are any specific reasons to not use Spingdale Linux?
As far I know, it already ships a RHEL 8.3 clone.
Thanks.
Le 21/01/2021 à 23:30, Scott Robbins a écrit :
There is, of course, the possibility to go beyond that. For example, I am not exactly fond of Oracle as a company, for reasons you probably know as good as me. They did some horrible things to Solaris, MySQL and Java, their CEO
supported Trump, etc. But it also happens that they do have one of the better maintained RHEL clones out there, with fast updates and an excellent documentation.
Of course our first response will always be more or less emotional (see Malcolm Gladwell’s fascinating book “Blink” on the subject). But I think it’s part of our work routine to recognize that and go beyond it.
I wonder if it’s just because I’m old, but I do get tired of acronyms, especially when people actually say O M G or L O L.
Then flee from RedHat AND clones. RedHat can do things making life of clones hard, different, constantly needing to invest into change. And they may give up.
But it is your decision about your future, and yours to deal with consequences.
Am I not stating the obvious?
Valeri
My guess is that no one wants to go to a new OS alone. They want to go with all their mailing list buddies but they also want to make a STATEMENT to stick it in the eye of Red Hat for doing this. Going to a staid and quiet existing OS doesn’t make that statement. Going to a competing company like Oracle does have the stick in the eye, but it already has its own community and ways of doing things in an Oracle way. A lot of grumpy old sysadmins are a drop in the bucket. Now Rocky has no history, no existing community and a bunch of old sysadmins could jump in and be just like they were elsewhere. So try and get everyone you know to go there.. [it also doesn’t exist so if it doesn’t work out you won’t have moved your systems to it and then found you had to move it something else.]
Well said.
IMHO they didn’t do anything horrible to us. They just wasted a lot of money buying companies and then didn’t continue the open source developments in a way which worked for the community. However the project are not dead by now, they just run under a different name these days.
IMHO it’s a feature of something called democracy that even CEOs are free to support whoever they want – without asking anyone and like everybody else.
For me OL works very well. I’ve just modified the migration/installation so that it removes all OL specific stuff like UEK and changes things back to upstream EL versions. If I ever regret the move to OL I know know quite well how to migrate to another clone. And I mean a full migration which changes every bit.
Simon
So, I want to address the “ten years of support” albatross.
Well, y’know, right now is sorta like after RH 9, when suddenly there was this RHEL, and IIRC, you could get it for free for home/small use, then suddenly it was “nope, gotta pay”.
Been here before, not happy.
mark
Le 22/01/2021 à 16:16, Lamar Owen a écrit :
Back in 2017, I installed an intranet server for a south french regional administration. Their intranet CMS was a heavily modded SPIP and depended on PHP < 5.6. In-house development in these administrations is slow and takes years. So I simply offered to use CentOS 7 with PHP 5.4 and support until 2024. They're happy because that leaves them plenty of time.
As for desktops and workstations, I'm a big fan of OpenSUSE Leap, a hybrid solution based on a semi-rolling model on top of a rock-solid SUSE Linux Enterprise base system.
On servers, I only run RHEL clones (and sometimes the real thing).
Niki
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Microlinux - Solutions informatiques durables
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Here might be a good place to ask a question that I haven’t really found a definitive answer to.
What, exactly, is the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel?
RHEL/CentOS 8 has kernel version 4.18. The current Fedora kernel is 5.8. The current kernel listed on the main page of kernel.org is 5.10.
Where does UEK 5.14.x fit in here? Is it a fixed/enhanced/customized version of the current kernel on kernel.org, is it something to do with Fedora, or is it something entirely different and unrelated that runs on Oracle’s own versioning scheme?
And on that note, what does UEK do for you that the standard RHEL kernel doesn’t? Would the average schmoe like me actually gain anything by running UEK over the standard Redhat kernel if I’m not running stuff like the Oracle database?
Oracle UEK kernel is newer (based on 5.4.17 I think), probably support more hardware. Also, Oracle UEK kernel supports BTRFS filesystem, that Redhat don’t even allow you to use it. I use UEK because this.
I tried SUSE maybe 2-3 years later than you (around 2003). The first thing I disliked was: they have yast on top of standard configurations. First of all, it is quite unpleasant to deal with: infinitely long single file containing all configs. Next, you change one single thing, and yast to enable your change touches all config files. Some time after you made some change you discover something (unrelated) doesn’t work anymore, and you can not use timestamps to investigate when bad change happened and how. I was joking about SUSE with my German friends: how come German tool is named as abbreviation of English (yet another system tool), not German?
But what really did it for me was: stock installation from SUSE DVD (that specific release) was easily crashed by program with memory leak run by regular user. I replace SUS stock kernel with downloaded and compiled with all default option kernel from kernel.org, and it happily kills memory leaking program (even the one run by root). Not kernel shipped with SUSE. This: memory leak, out of memory condition is one of the tests I usually do when I’m testing [quite] new for me system (and some other stuff).
I turned away from SUSE then, and never looked back.
Just my $0.02
Valeri
Agreeing about freedom of opinion, but can not help to mention: freedom of speech belongs more to liberty, not democracy. Democracy (decision of majority…) is in its essense a tyranny of majority over minority.
My apologies for adding to political discussion on technical list, which better be avoided, so not continuing it and inviting others spare the list of politics, religion, and other non-technical issues.
Valeri
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Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
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Le 22/01/2021 à 18:04, Valeri Galtsev a écrit :
All the hardcore distribution users out there (Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, Crux, FreeBSD) like to make fun of YaST.
Ever tried to connect any Linux or BSD desktop to an LDAPS server running Red Hat Directory Server for authentication?
With YaST it’s done in less than 30 seconds in half a dozen mouse clicks, and it JustWorks(tm).
I know because I’m using it in our local school.
Now try and do the same thing on Debian, FreeBSD, Slackware or one of the
*buntus. You’ll get a vague idea of what hell looks like.
Never heard FreeBSD folks making fun of anybody else, including SUSE. And I’m on their lists for very long time. I would say they are the most generous, considerate, and forgiving folk of all technical lists I have been on.
Valeri
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Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
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I mean…. really the only thing we can do is live up to the given plan with Stream and RHEL options, which as far as I can see is exactly what’s happening.
This is just the announcement of it, of course. The full details will be there when the whole thing is launched, which the announcement says will be very soon.
There are always going to be cheaters. Don’t be one of them.
Can RH put a stop to projects like Rocky Linux?
No.
Good. At least I can consider moving to that without fear of RH pulling the plug!
Theoretically, no. I’m confident solid company will always comply with GNU license.
But in practice one can change the way source rpms are accessible, which will effectively break scripts of downstream vendor, thus making a lot of unnecessary work on downstream side. And other things.
That said, no one probably will intentionally do so. But in the past we observed things change in upstream, causing a lot of work/changes in downstream. Observed externally that is.
Just my $.02.
Valeri
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Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
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So RH could make it difficult for downstream projects such a Rocky Linux.
I don’t imagine Redhat will go out of their way to make it easy for Rocky Linux.
But there’s a point beyond which they can’t go without contravening the GPL (and other licenses) so they couldn’t do that legally, and there’s also a point beyond which they’ll alienate more of their customers.
At the moment, Red Hat currently make the source code of RHEL 8
available as push commits to a git repo (git.CentOS.org) that CentOS
pull and rebuild.
Once CentOS Linux 8 is gone, this git repository will presumably be gone too (or replaced by Stream), so one wonders were the public RHEL sources for other projects to rebuild will be :-/
Yes, in two possible ways.
First, Red Hat could stop making RHEL. The amount of work that goes into this is _quite_ significant, particularly in terms of the long-term stability that everyone is very excited about. Rebuild projects would then have nothing to rebuild.
But, Red Hat isn’t going to do that, because RHEL is important to Red Hat both as a product and as a base for the company’s other projects.
Second, Red Hat goes way beyond the obligations of the licenses of many of the pieces of software that comprise the distribution. Large, vital swaths of RHEL are not under “copyleft” style licenses. Without the full source published in a regular and timely manner, rebuilds couldn’t exist.
But, Red Hat isn’t going to do that, for a number of reasons but mostly because free and open source is essential to what Red Hat *is* as a company. And it’s not just a goodwill thing or whatever: everyone from the front lines up to the highest levels knows that it’s key to our business success.
i think Fedora linux is a great continuation for the defunct product
I am not sure that speaking in absolutes does anyone any good.
John
Will not speak about future, but about the past. As external observer for about a couple decades I would second that. I always praised RedHat for meticulous following GPL. They are required to make available source of their derivative work. They do more, as rpms are more than just source. To my folks I maintain machines for as sysadmin I always mention as example cygwin. After RedHat bought out Cygnus Solutions, they kept cygwin alive, available and active project. BTW, cygwin was the first where guest system calls were on the fly colverted to host system calls. Which makes virtualization really fast. Compared to emulating generic CPU what vmware was doing at that time. No one mentions that, but proprietary parallels desktop is doing the same, having learned it from cygwin, and VMware later followed the same route I bet. Of course, one can only guess about proprietary software.
Not happy about CentOS change, but where credit is due, I can not avoid mentioning it.
Valeri
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Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
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Sure. Anything can happen, but these particular things are highly unlikely, and not just arbitrarily. If either of them were to happen, there would absolutely (sorry, can’t help it) be worse problems than “can rebuilds still be made?”
В 12:12 +0100 на 22.01.2021 (пт), Ljubomir Ljubojevic написа:
That’s why you need to use “.local” for most of the files to preserve your settings. SUSE is not another RH clone and it has it’s one specifics.
Best Regards, Strahil Nikolov
В 18:42 +0100 на 22.01.2021 (пт), Nicolas Kovacs написа:
You need to create extra “.local” files to preserve your customizations. Totally different from RHEL.
I can confirm that YAST is quite powerful and I wish it was like
‘smitty’ (AIX) and allow you to invoke it with command line params.
openSUSE has one big benefit which we do not have with CentOS -> you can upgrade your openSUSE to pure SUSE (if you need subscription) and you will be fully supported. RH refused to do that with CentOS – always reinstall.
Also, openSUSE/SUSE introduced booting and reverting from a snapshot. Now RH is on the same path with the “BOOM Boot Manager”.
Best Regards, Strahil Nikolov
appears redhat recently introduced an article how to convert/upgrade:
clones hard, different, constantly needing to invest into change. And they may give up. consequences.
I appreciate your playing Captain Obvious, as well as your polite style of trying to shut me up.
Let me play Captain Obvious as well.
The December RH announcement came while I was in a middle of upgrading a number of CentOS installations. Switching to different distributions might be both time consuming and tricky, especially in case of big companies. We already switched many servers/VMs to alternate distributions, but there are RHEL-based ones we just can’t leave, and PITA that RH initiated doesn’t help at all.
Actually, I’ll make use of that last RH offer on less-critical servers, which can be, if required, quickly shut down and re-formatted under different distributions.
I assist in maintaining several RHEL installations, and I brought several paying customers to RH during those many years. I assume you understand that I will express my concerns without asking anyone’s permission.
Thanks again.
—
Sincerely,
Konstantin Boyandin system administrator (ProWide Labs Ltd. – IPHost Network Monitor)
with
Well, I did whatever look best to move on, for the assets I am responsible for.
be
I will subscribe to it, to keep being updated. After all, I am curious about the consequences.
Sure thing.
I also do solemnly swear that I will faithfully abide by corresponding licenses, copyright laws and other related legal words of power.
I hear you. It is always sad when something you estimated will last suddenly changes. In that respect I was lucky. Of dozens of things I chose during last couple of decades maybe one or two had suddenly changed. For the rest of my sysadmin’s decisions I pretty much was able to stay with what I have chosen. I can remember decisions I didn’t make which would be devastating in a short future to come. One was open solaris. When it became a challenge to have long uptime of Linux machine, basically, after 2.4 kernel was replaced with 2.6, (then it was 45 days on average, kernel of glibc update == reboot), I stared to look for alternative system for servers. Some of my friends started to use the word Lindoze (referring mostly to these often reboots and analogy when you have to reboot Windows system after update). One of alternatives was open solaris. It was about that time when Oracle bought out Sun Microsystems. Another joke comes to my mind. We then were asking ourselves: how do we call the system then? Just repeat faster and faster “Sun Oracle”, and you will finally get it right: “snorkel”. Anyway, FreeBSD won the choice then for me, and my servers run FreeBSD since then (since FreeBSD version 8), – for about 10 years now I figure. Of course, I run server a bit more sophisticated way: given server may not exist, it runs in 3-4 different FreeBSD jails (a couple of services – which you can not separate – in each of jails). Things get so easy then, any update or upgrade is just a dream…
I tried to remember an example of the choice that didn’t last, apparently there should have been one or two like that, I just can’t remember them. So, I filled the place with the one that would go bad but didn’t make it into the decision, the good one was chosen instead.
I know I am lucky here as far as CentOS change is concerned: mine are merely number crunchers and workstations I had to and did find new route for (Debian for NVIDIA – free machines, and Ubuntu for those needing NVIDIA proprietary stuff).
Good luck, everybody else, to find your future, and best wishes to go the way that will last for you. To make sure the choice will last with every choice of my sysadmin’s career really required a lot of consideration, and some luck (which I guess I had in abundance with my choices).
Valeri
Nice script but wouldn’t it be easier to do such a thing with Ansible/
Puppet/ or the like? You can refer in most cases to the RHEL family what would make it work on all flavours. You only have to adjust the parts with the specific URLs
…
Kind regards Thomas
—
Linux … enjoy the ride!
I have no issues with OpenSUSE .. but how is OpenSUSE any better than CentOS Stream?
It is not like we are rolling rawhide packages into CentOS Stream. They are updating already created Enterprise Packages in current RHEL with Bug Fixes and Security Fixes and a small number of rebases (Enhamcments Fixes). But the enhancements are not from Rawhide, they are rebases very close to the current releases.
Again .. absolutely nothing wrong with using OpenSUSE (or Ubuntu or Debian, etc). I just do not see the advantage.
I mean, I get it, some people are very upset with the new way CentOS is being done. And obviously people get to think what they think. But when this was announced, it was also announced that RHEL was going to be opened up early in Q1 of 2021 (which has happened and is still happening).
Red Hat is working also with Hosting Providers to come up with plans. If I were you, I would talk to the list at CentOS-questiions@redhat.com
I have no idea what the planned options are (I work on CentOS Linux 7
and 8 and CentOS Stream .. so I don’t interact with that group. This initiative is one of their plans.
openSUSE is honest.
The CentOS project, RedHat, you, lied to us when you published CentOS 8
and claiming it would be supported until 2029. We believed you because of the good reputation you had built up with previous CentOS releases.
We suggested CentOS 8 to our customers. And we have been badly f***ed the a**. Sorry for the wording that you may assume, but that is how it is.
I see one big advantage: These are honest projects, while you are liars.
So where is the option to install a RHEL system at a customer site, like I was able with CentOS?
Really, you (as in the CentOS project) totally screwed it.
Could you at least pretend to be professional when posting to our lists?
Really, you, (as in you) totally don’t get it. *CentOS* didn’t do this thing; *Red Hat* did this thing. Go blame them.
John
Unless I’m misunderstanding Red Hat’s offer of 16 free licenses, I’m assuming you can install free RHEL for the customer, and that will form one of their (your customer’s) 16 free entitlements. Unless your customer needs more than 16 free entitlements?
I’m assuming your customer has the relationship with Red Hat and entitlement to 16 free copies, and you are their sub-contracted IT
professional responsible for installation and maintaining / supporting that installation.
Obviously if your customer requires in excess of 16 copies, this offer from Red Hat is not going to work for them, or you.
That’s a big assumption to make.
I set up systems for businesses who want “a computer that does job x”. They don’t know, care, or want to know what it runs on as long as the thing logs the production or makes the press crank on cue. “Here’s your appliance”, and they throw it in a corner and maybe someone blows the dust off of it every couple of years when they’re going by with a vacuum.
They don’t want a relationship with Red Hat”, and probably wouldn’t even know what that is if I told them about it.
“Hey Frank, this thing just quit. Make it work again.” That’s all the involvement they want in the IT end of things.
Let me rephrase then. If you were installing Windows on that machine for your customer, who would ‘own’ the licence – you or your customer?
I’d have the customer buy it, just like I have the customer buy the hardware today.
My usual practice is to give the customer a shopping list. “Here’s what you need. Let me know when you have one.” I don’t do hardware at all. Any parts or repaired units that I pick up from the computer store are billed to the customer, not to me.
I have same business model. In my part of the world anything except Windows is barely understood by general population, and trying t explain overloads their minds and their eyes glaze over. Since I can not provide VAT return/rebate for anything, I prepare the list of hardware or even invoice for what needs to be bought and they pay for it.
But even simple thing like buying space on Google account with debit/credit card is too complicated for some so I ended up paying with my card to get them more “Gmail space”, and was unable to organize that they replace my card with their card for several months, it took me 5
minutes of explaining so they understand why that is important. So idea that customer will manage RHEL licenses is in my case ludicrous.
Since I manage clients PC’s/networks for 20 years and I do not advertise but get new clients via word of mouth, all clients just decide to trust me and give me total control beside paying for what needs to be bought on my recommendation without getting into details.
Only thing I can do to make Dev account theirs is to create separate e-mail on their domain that I will have access to (I am guessing they will forget it even exists in few months) so that Red Hat does not think I own large number of systems. That is for those clients who actually own domain…
Le 26/01/2021 à 08:10, Ljubomir Ljubojevic a écrit :
*cringe*
First thing I do with new clients is replace their Gmail nonsense with a crisp and clean CentOS mail server:
Yeah, but they are using that Gmail account for several years, and it is a real-state seller/developer, and they do not want to switch to anything other because it works.
First I managed to replace their hdd’s to ssd’s around new year, so it As a bonus they got backup storage (from one PC to another).
Then I finally managed (with help of outside accountant that sent me to them) to get them to invest 600 eur for TrueNAS because they did not have any kind of file server, they all store on individual PC’s hdd’s.
Owner, simple man with money to start investments and TOTALLY no understanding of PC’s, smartphones, etc, asked why he has to spend money on something to sit in the corner. So I explained they could loose much electronic documents if hdd/ssd fails, and his response was “but we have everything in/on paper…”.
Then he asked administrative worker what she would do if her hdd failed, and she said “I would kill my self”, and THAT statement made him accept to pay for file server :-)
So it is a definite progress, it will just take time to get there.
I always start with not interrupting clients workflow and adapt to their knowledge, doing as much by my self as possible without involving them, then slowly and incrementally introduce changes that affect them or demand they learn something. 99% of clients use same password for all user accounts, mainly name of the company since they are small and trust their workers.
—
Ljubomir Ljubojevic
(Love is in the Air)
PL Computers Serbia, Europe
StarOS, Mikrotik and CentOS/RHEL/Linux consultant
I am a lot of things (ask my ex-wife), but a liar is not one of them. I
could care less if what you use, but name calling is juvenile. So was the language you used. This is a professional list. If you can’t maintain some semblance of professionalism, please unsubscribe.
88 thoughts on - RHEL Changes
De Profundis
Il giorno mer 20 gen 2021 alle ore 16:02 J Martin Rushton via CentOS
ha scritto:
finalmente!
era ora!
Thanks for the info! I will pass it along!
I see that this is as an impulse for Fedora so that we as users do not leave RedHat after the news … even so I still think how good it is for the linux community this whole situation makes us a good shakeup. Cheers,
From: Victor Pereira Sent: January 21, 2021 07:47
While I while I welcome the Red Hat announcement I really could do without the “shakeup” and all the additional work that it triggers.
Regards, Hugh
Absolutely.
Is this good news for the “CentOS” family?
So this will muddy the waters for the spin-offs like Rocky Linux, or kill them? I’d assume at least it would dilute who’d need an alternate CentOS replacement except those with more than 16 servers. Or did I misunderstand the announcement?
I don’t see how this would create any issues for Rocky Linux and the like. The new RHEL terms still require annual license activations (for every installation I think) and that’s a point of friction that doesn’t exist with Linux installations that are actually free.
With this new offering I’ve got to count my installations, track which ones I’ve torn down, which ones I’ve updated, which ones I’ve scrapped, which ones I’m running in a VM and which ones that I’ve installed on an “appliance” in the dusty corner to running a printing press, and when I get to the sixteenth installation then I need to pay up or start decommissioning stuff….
Or I could use a license-not-required distribution like Rocky or Oracle and avoid all of that.
I’ve got a number of machines with certain clients who bring their machine back to me every year or two (or whenever they figure they can spare it and happen to be heading this way) for updating. I might not see one of those machines for a few years; they may not have any Internet connection in the field so it could be interesting if the machines tell them (or me) to buzz off because the license has expired.
If there were no other options then I guess there would have to be a way figured out to make this work anyway, but there are options and those options are certainly more attractive than dealing with license activations and all of the joy surrounding that sort of thing.
The RHEL announcement is of no use to me or my company. We spin up DigitalOcean droplets for each of our client websites/apps. If we were utilising horizontal scaling we’d have even more droplets per website/app. We’d easily have over 16 installations.
I tried Oracle Linux. After installation it took forever to update yum database, or do you yum search. Also: I didn’t find mirrors… All this sort of ruled it out for me. Mind that I have 1 Gbps network…
So my shop: servers: FreeBSD (for decade or so, since FreeBSD v. 8), number crunchers and workstations: Debian except for those that need NVIDIA binary driver or cuda, these rare ones will be Ubuntu.
In a hope this helps someone,
Valeri
So far I’ve installed Oracle Linux on one laptop. What I got was exactly what I expected to get, and I didn’t have any issues at all. “dnf upgrade” worked exactly as expected and at pretty much exactly the same speed as it does on CentOS, too.
But that’s just one installation. I haven’t done anything else with OL yet at all.
Don’t worry, Rocky Linux is in good track; Latest update:
https://forums.rockylinux.org/t/community-update-january-2021/1667
It will be with us very soon, and the formerly CentOS community is very active on it!
I am very optimistic with it.
RH is trying to catch all those CentOS users/admins who will jump off the train to shift to Rocky Linux (or other), but I think Rocky Linux will become the natural successor.
The future is close, we shall see.
Nick
I don’t think mirrors exist. appears updates comes directly from Oracle this way their users/clients know those servers are always there with the latest software.
Maybe my problem was I used yum, not dnf command. Or maybe my locality of specifically my domain is not favored by oracle. Or maybe other way around, my network admins… But then, mine is just a single installation, exactly as you told about yours ;-)
Valeri
Thanks Nick,
I was just writing a post to solicit opinions on a good goto distro for CentOS replacement. I am somewhat dubious on wanting to move to free-RHEL and based on what you’ve said here, looks like Rocky deserves my attention…
If it does indeed become the successor as you’ve suggested, let’s just hope we can keep it from being acquired by RH or any other party.
Seems to me that once RH decided to help CentOS out and mandated RH
majority on the board, the writing was on the wall for what occurred in Dec…
– – –
Le 21/01/2021 à 22:17, Valeri Galtsev a écrit :
Works perfectly here:
https://gitlab.com/kikinovak/oracle/-/blob/master/linux-setup.sh
You might want to give it another spin.
Cheers,
Niki
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Le 21/01/2021 à 22:39, Valeri Galtsev a écrit :
Oracle’s documentation is at least as well-written as the FreeBSD handbook.
https://www.oracle.com/linux/technologies/
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No, I already streamlined Debian routine installation (workstations and number crunchers), and servers run FreeBSD since loooong ago, so I’m all set, and much better than in the past ;-)
Thanks though.
Valeri
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Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
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I think from years of posting that FreeBSD is how Valeri’s brain works best and that is cool. Some people have certain OS paradigms where they function best and are able to solve problems better than another system. For other people it might be a completely ‘brainjam’ type thing [sort of like when people try using my tools and find many of them are left-handed.. things look the same but they don’t work ‘correctly’ for some reason.] but if you find the tool you work best in for an enterprise and your customers are happy so be it.
—
Stephen J Smoogen.
Like Valeri, I have a fondness for FreeBSD. Regardless, I think Nicolas is correct. I remember reading a post in an old usenet (I think) discussion of mutt vs. pine (before it became alpine) where someone said words to the effect of, People pull up all sorts of technical reasons to justify what is, in the end, an emotional decision.
There is no CentOS “family”. CentOS clone is dead and will be now replaced with no-cost RHEL, so in market share (over time) CentOS will be replaced with RHEL. CentOS Stream will be used solely by developers and and entities like Facebook (as a base for their own in house solution). With 16-system no-cost production license package there might be drop in RHEL clone demand, and some Oracle users might decide to move to RHEL
(but this is total unknown depending on perception of Red Hat and Oracle in peoples minds).
I learned one truth working for many years for scientists: the best thing is what works best for _YOU_, with which YOU are most efficient.
I do keep bringing up FreeBSD, as I conscientiously switched servers to it. And during first maybe year I was catching myself with “Linuxisms”
on FreeBSD. Later I often caught myself with “FreeBSD-isms” on Linux. But if your future road is long, then at the pivoting point it really is good to step up above everything and estimate (with open mind) what might be beneficial in your future. That is why I bring up non-Linux system I know (more or less). Were I knowing others as well (OpenBSD, NetBSD, …) I would be mentioning them too.
And all that in a hope it may help someone (and with understanding it may annoy many).
Valeri
Odd that you say it’s dead when 7 doesn’t sunset until June 30th, 2024.
John
Le 21/01/2021 à 23:18, Valeri Galtsev a écrit :
Debian has an average of two years[*] per support.
Oracle has ten like upstream RHEL.
Choice is pretty clear to me.
[*] one year after subsequent release, so an average of one to three years depending on installation date
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Le 21/01/2021 à 23:23, Stephen John Smoogen a écrit :
Fun fact: if a big part of my job didn’t consist in teaching Linux and writing books about it, I’d probably be running FreeBSD myself.
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There is “stretch”, which is equivalent of more known as LTS of Ubuntu:
5 years. And then, there is easy in place upgrade from regular or
“stretch” to next release.
But no, I will not argue against uniqueness of 10 year life cycle of RedHat. I just said that my life [with Debian] will be no bigger hassle than it was [with CentOS].
The only difference of Debian is: it has vast collection of everything, so you really need to make your own choices. But if it’s done once, you can in one go tell next installation to install all the same software
(packages). Of course, I, being a simple guy, had much simpler life with CentOS, just choose all software groups that sound relevant… (jus grossly exaggerating ;-) But with huge collection like Debian one (or like FreeBSD ports are, or macports for MacOS) once you spent time shaping system to your preference, you are done, and all next systems are rather routine, almost as unattended as RedHat/CentOS kickstart install is.
Valeri
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Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
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Understandable. The big part of Microsoft is selling their operating system, for servers included, and even they were caught running FreeBSD
on some of their servers at some point ;-)
Valeri
Surely anyone requiring less than 16 licences will now ditch CentOS 7 in favour of RHEL7? The rest may stay on CentOS 7 for a year or so until there is a clearer picture around viable alternatives. This may as well become the RHEL users list and CentOS-Devel effectively becomes the CentOS-Stream mailing list?
Hi Nick,
There’s always Springdale: https://puias.math.ias.edu/
—
J Martin Rushton MBCS
Drat. I have 25 systems at home running CentOS 7.9, and one system running OEL 7.9.
Steve
I have no plans on moving to RHEL7; it’s work that doesn’t need to be done.
And let’s face it, CentOS-devel@ has been nothing but RH noise since
2014; I’ve suggested renaming it, and #CentOS-devel for what it’s worth, on a couple different occasions.
John
Maybe not best choice of the word, but I meant there will not be further development on that front. CentOS 7 cloning will be just rinse and repeat of established process. If CentOS 8 was not killed almost no one would have installed CentOS 7 on any new server (keeping in mind desire for 10-year til EOL), so I see CentOS 7 as close to EOL and his usefulness for new systems will only decrease.
Hence it is as good as dead in my mind when looking into the future, I
am looking for future distro of choice.
I couldn’t agree more.
A little mentioned choice would be openSUSE, which is direction I am taking.
Like Valeri, I have a fondness for FreeBSD. Regardless, I think Nicolas is
correct. I remember reading a post in an old usenet (I think) discussion of
mutt vs. pine (before it became alpine) where someone said words to the
effect of, People pull up all sorts of technical reasons to justify
what is, in the end, an emotional decision.
Don’t forget “elm” :-) :-)… And to make it even more complex: the outcome of all those half emotional, half technical decisions vary during the time. Projects may (slowly) die or get a huge momentum, licenses change (!), etc.
I do not like system where configuration app can overwrite manualy set config. I started with ClarkConnect in 2005-2006 and to route public subnet into my network I had to delete last iptables command then add my own, but only after config system did it’s own iptables commands. I had to learn iptables before any other Linux commands and although I
mastered it, it is left in unpleasant memory (it took me weeks and help from rare Linux admins to find a solution).
I did try SUSE around 2000 but it was complicated to do manual changes
(if it was not provided in YAST), so after ClarkConnect I had no desire to even experiment with YAST.
I wonder whether RH plan to fight back FUD they’ve brought upon by their December announcement.
Personally, I found this “no-cost” promise lacking substantial details.
If RH doesn’t verify everyone requesting developer subscription (forcing to prove identity), the 16 installations limit is easily circumvented by multiple registrations.
If they *do* request identity verification (i.e. copy of ID, phone, email, physical address… etc etc, up to last will in favor of RH), then I am even more uneasy having voluntarily provided them with personal data which are treasure for any marketing purpose they could imagine.
Also, I can still expect they will again change their mind close to
2021’s end. In short, I have hard time trusting RH in such a situation. JMNSHO.
eh?
That’s exactly how I feel too. I don’t trust them.
I think we can expect Rocky Linux to provide a real solution to CentOS
future. We shall know very soon, so let’s just wait for a short while.
There is such a huge (staggering) number of CentOS installed base, esp. including service providers (hosts etc.), that the market NEEDS a real reliable successor of CentOS. This need cannot be covered by RHEL new licensing. A real open source, community solution will be needed; for the time being, Rocky Linux seems to have the right specs to fill the gap.
The market itself will finance (through donations) its future, because it is a real need. A CentOS successor is a real need.
OL will be last resort, but I believe Rocky Linux will most probably be the way to go. It displays good momentum, steady progress and great manpower.
My 2c.
Nick
Il 2021-01-22 13:43 Nikolaos Milas ha scritto:
Hi, there are any specific reasons to not use Spingdale Linux?
As far I know, it already ships a RHEL 8.3 clone.
Thanks.
Le 21/01/2021 à 23:30, Scott Robbins a écrit :
There is, of course, the possibility to go beyond that. For example, I am not exactly fond of Oracle as a company, for reasons you probably know as good as me. They did some horrible things to Solaris, MySQL and Java, their CEO
supported Trump, etc. But it also happens that they do have one of the better maintained RHEL clones out there, with fast updates and an excellent documentation.
Of course our first response will always be more or less emotional (see Malcolm Gladwell’s fascinating book “Blink” on the subject). But I think it’s part of our work routine to recognize that and go beyond it.
Cheers,
Niki
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Just My Not So Humble Opinion.
I wonder if it’s just because I’m old, but I do get tired of acronyms, especially when people actually say O M G or L O L.
Then flee from RedHat AND clones. RedHat can do things making life of clones hard, different, constantly needing to invest into change. And they may give up.
But it is your decision about your future, and yours to deal with consequences.
Am I not stating the obvious?
Valeri
My guess is that no one wants to go to a new OS alone. They want to go with all their mailing list buddies but they also want to make a STATEMENT to stick it in the eye of Red Hat for doing this. Going to a staid and quiet existing OS doesn’t make that statement. Going to a competing company like Oracle does have the stick in the eye, but it already has its own community and ways of doing things in an Oracle way. A lot of grumpy old sysadmins are a drop in the bucket. Now Rocky has no history, no existing community and a bunch of old sysadmins could jump in and be just like they were elsewhere. So try and get everyone you know to go there.. [it also doesn’t exist so if it doesn’t work out you won’t have moved your systems to it and then found you had to move it something else.]
Well said.
IMHO they didn’t do anything horrible to us. They just wasted a lot of money buying companies and then didn’t continue the open source developments in a way which worked for the community. However the project are not dead by now, they just run under a different name these days.
IMHO it’s a feature of something called democracy that even CEOs are free to support whoever they want – without asking anyone and like everybody else.
For me OL works very well. I’ve just modified the migration/installation so that it removes all OL specific stuff like UEK and changes things back to upstream EL versions. If I ever regret the move to OL I know know quite well how to migrate to another clone. And I mean a full migration which changes every bit.
Simon
So, I want to address the “ten years of support” albatross.
Well, y’know, right now is sorta like after RH 9, when suddenly there was this RHEL, and IIRC, you could get it for free for home/small use, then suddenly it was “nope, gotta pay”.
Been here before, not happy.
mark
Le 22/01/2021 à 16:16, Lamar Owen a écrit :
Back in 2017, I installed an intranet server for a south french regional administration. Their intranet CMS was a heavily modded SPIP and depended on PHP < 5.6. In-house development in these administrations is slow and takes years. So I simply offered to use CentOS 7 with PHP 5.4 and support until 2024. They're happy because that leaves them plenty of time. As for desktops and workstations, I'm a big fan of OpenSUSE Leap, a hybrid solution based on a semi-rolling model on top of a rock-solid SUSE Linux Enterprise base system. On servers, I only run RHEL clones (and sometimes the real thing). Niki -- Microlinux - Solutions informatiques durables 7, place de l'église - 30730 Montpezat Site : https://www.microlinux.fr Blog : https://blog.microlinux.fr Mail : info@microlinux.fr Tél. : 04 66 63 10 32
Mob. : 06 51 80 12 12
Here might be a good place to ask a question that I haven’t really found a definitive answer to.
What, exactly, is the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel?
RHEL/CentOS 8 has kernel version 4.18. The current Fedora kernel is 5.8. The current kernel listed on the main page of kernel.org is 5.10.
Where does UEK 5.14.x fit in here? Is it a fixed/enhanced/customized version of the current kernel on kernel.org, is it something to do with Fedora, or is it something entirely different and unrelated that runs on Oracle’s own versioning scheme?
And on that note, what does UEK do for you that the standard RHEL kernel doesn’t? Would the average schmoe like me actually gain anything by running UEK over the standard Redhat kernel if I’m not running stuff like the Oracle database?
Oracle UEK kernel is newer (based on 5.4.17 I think), probably support more hardware. Also, Oracle UEK kernel supports BTRFS filesystem, that Redhat don’t even allow you to use it. I use UEK because this.
I tried SUSE maybe 2-3 years later than you (around 2003). The first thing I disliked was: they have yast on top of standard configurations. First of all, it is quite unpleasant to deal with: infinitely long single file containing all configs. Next, you change one single thing, and yast to enable your change touches all config files. Some time after you made some change you discover something (unrelated) doesn’t work anymore, and you can not use timestamps to investigate when bad change happened and how. I was joking about SUSE with my German friends: how come German tool is named as abbreviation of English (yet another system tool), not German?
But what really did it for me was: stock installation from SUSE DVD (that specific release) was easily crashed by program with memory leak run by regular user. I replace SUS stock kernel with downloaded and compiled with all default option kernel from kernel.org, and it happily kills memory leaking program (even the one run by root). Not kernel shipped with SUSE. This: memory leak, out of memory condition is one of the tests I usually do when I’m testing [quite] new for me system (and some other stuff).
I turned away from SUSE then, and never looked back.
Just my $0.02
Valeri
Agreeing about freedom of opinion, but can not help to mention: freedom of speech belongs more to liberty, not democracy. Democracy (decision of majority…) is in its essense a tyranny of majority over minority.
My apologies for adding to political discussion on technical list, which better be avoided, so not continuing it and inviting others spare the list of politics, religion, and other non-technical issues.
Valeri
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Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
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Le 22/01/2021 à 18:04, Valeri Galtsev a écrit :
All the hardcore distribution users out there (Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, Crux, FreeBSD) like to make fun of YaST.
Ever tried to connect any Linux or BSD desktop to an LDAPS server running Red Hat Directory Server for authentication?
With YaST it’s done in less than 30 seconds in half a dozen mouse clicks, and it JustWorks(tm).
I know because I’m using it in our local school.
Now try and do the same thing on Debian, FreeBSD, Slackware or one of the
*buntus. You’ll get a vague idea of what hell looks like.
:o)
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Never heard FreeBSD folks making fun of anybody else, including SUSE. And I’m on their lists for very long time. I would say they are the most generous, considerate, and forgiving folk of all technical lists I have been on.
Valeri
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Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
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I mean…. really the only thing we can do is live up to the given plan with Stream and RHEL options, which as far as I can see is exactly what’s happening.
This is just the announcement of it, of course. The full details will be there when the whole thing is launched, which the announcement says will be very soon.
There are always going to be cheaters. Don’t be one of them.
Can RH put a stop to projects like Rocky Linux?
No.
Good. At least I can consider moving to that without fear of RH pulling the plug!
Theoretically, no. I’m confident solid company will always comply with GNU license.
But in practice one can change the way source rpms are accessible, which will effectively break scripts of downstream vendor, thus making a lot of unnecessary work on downstream side. And other things.
That said, no one probably will intentionally do so. But in the past we observed things change in upstream, causing a lot of work/changes in downstream. Observed externally that is.
Just my $.02.
Valeri
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Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
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So RH could make it difficult for downstream projects such a Rocky Linux.
I don’t imagine Redhat will go out of their way to make it easy for Rocky Linux.
But there’s a point beyond which they can’t go without contravening the GPL (and other licenses) so they couldn’t do that legally, and there’s also a point beyond which they’ll alienate more of their customers.
At the moment, Red Hat currently make the source code of RHEL 8
available as push commits to a git repo (git.CentOS.org) that CentOS
pull and rebuild.
Once CentOS Linux 8 is gone, this git repository will presumably be gone too (or replaced by Stream), so one wonders were the public RHEL sources for other projects to rebuild will be :-/
Yes, in two possible ways.
First, Red Hat could stop making RHEL. The amount of work that goes into this is _quite_ significant, particularly in terms of the long-term stability that everyone is very excited about. Rebuild projects would then have nothing to rebuild.
But, Red Hat isn’t going to do that, because RHEL is important to Red Hat both as a product and as a base for the company’s other projects.
Second, Red Hat goes way beyond the obligations of the licenses of many of the pieces of software that comprise the distribution. Large, vital swaths of RHEL are not under “copyleft” style licenses. Without the full source published in a regular and timely manner, rebuilds couldn’t exist.
But, Red Hat isn’t going to do that, for a number of reasons but mostly because free and open source is essential to what Red Hat *is* as a company. And it’s not just a goodwill thing or whatever: everyone from the front lines up to the highest levels knows that it’s key to our business success.
i think Fedora linux is a great continuation for the defunct product
I am not sure that speaking in absolutes does anyone any good.
John
Will not speak about future, but about the past. As external observer for about a couple decades I would second that. I always praised RedHat for meticulous following GPL. They are required to make available source of their derivative work. They do more, as rpms are more than just source. To my folks I maintain machines for as sysadmin I always mention as example cygwin. After RedHat bought out Cygnus Solutions, they kept cygwin alive, available and active project. BTW, cygwin was the first where guest system calls were on the fly colverted to host system calls. Which makes virtualization really fast. Compared to emulating generic CPU what vmware was doing at that time. No one mentions that, but proprietary parallels desktop is doing the same, having learned it from cygwin, and VMware later followed the same route I bet. Of course, one can only guess about proprietary software.
Not happy about CentOS change, but where credit is due, I can not avoid mentioning it.
Valeri
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Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
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Sure. Anything can happen, but these particular things are highly unlikely, and not just arbitrarily. If either of them were to happen, there would absolutely (sorry, can’t help it) be worse problems than “can rebuilds still be made?”
В 12:12 +0100 на 22.01.2021 (пт), Ljubomir Ljubojevic написа:
That’s why you need to use “.local” for most of the files to preserve your settings. SUSE is not another RH clone and it has it’s one specifics.
Best Regards, Strahil Nikolov
В 18:42 +0100 на 22.01.2021 (пт), Nicolas Kovacs написа:
You need to create extra “.local” files to preserve your customizations. Totally different from RHEL.
I can confirm that YAST is quite powerful and I wish it was like
‘smitty’ (AIX) and allow you to invoke it with command line params.
openSUSE has one big benefit which we do not have with CentOS -> you can upgrade your openSUSE to pure SUSE (if you need subscription) and you will be fully supported. RH refused to do that with CentOS – always reinstall.
Also, openSUSE/SUSE introduced booting and reverting from a snapshot. Now RH is on the same path with the “BOOM Boot Manager”.
Best Regards, Strahil Nikolov
appears redhat recently introduced an article how to convert/upgrade:
https://access.redhat.com/articles/2360841
Just My Not So Humble Opinion.
clones hard, different, constantly needing to invest into change. And they may give up. consequences.
I appreciate your playing Captain Obvious, as well as your polite style of trying to shut me up.
Let me play Captain Obvious as well.
The December RH announcement came while I was in a middle of upgrading a number of CentOS installations. Switching to different distributions might be both time consuming and tricky, especially in case of big companies. We already switched many servers/VMs to alternate distributions, but there are RHEL-based ones we just can’t leave, and PITA that RH initiated doesn’t help at all.
Actually, I’ll make use of that last RH offer on less-critical servers, which can be, if required, quickly shut down and re-formatted under different distributions.
I assist in maintaining several RHEL installations, and I brought several paying customers to RH during those many years. I assume you understand that I will express my concerns without asking anyone’s permission.
Thanks again.
—
Sincerely,
Konstantin Boyandin system administrator (ProWide Labs Ltd. – IPHost Network Monitor)
with
Well, I did whatever look best to move on, for the assets I am responsible for.
be
I will subscribe to it, to keep being updated. After all, I am curious about the consequences.
Sure thing.
I also do solemnly swear that I will faithfully abide by corresponding licenses, copyright laws and other related legal words of power.
I hear you. It is always sad when something you estimated will last suddenly changes. In that respect I was lucky. Of dozens of things I chose during last couple of decades maybe one or two had suddenly changed. For the rest of my sysadmin’s decisions I pretty much was able to stay with what I have chosen. I can remember decisions I didn’t make which would be devastating in a short future to come. One was open solaris. When it became a challenge to have long uptime of Linux machine, basically, after 2.4 kernel was replaced with 2.6, (then it was 45 days on average, kernel of glibc update == reboot), I stared to look for alternative system for servers. Some of my friends started to use the word Lindoze (referring mostly to these often reboots and analogy when you have to reboot Windows system after update). One of alternatives was open solaris. It was about that time when Oracle bought out Sun Microsystems. Another joke comes to my mind. We then were asking ourselves: how do we call the system then? Just repeat faster and faster “Sun Oracle”, and you will finally get it right: “snorkel”. Anyway, FreeBSD won the choice then for me, and my servers run FreeBSD since then (since FreeBSD version 8), – for about 10 years now I figure. Of course, I run server a bit more sophisticated way: given server may not exist, it runs in 3-4 different FreeBSD jails (a couple of services – which you can not separate – in each of jails). Things get so easy then, any update or upgrade is just a dream…
I tried to remember an example of the choice that didn’t last, apparently there should have been one or two like that, I just can’t remember them. So, I filled the place with the one that would go bad but didn’t make it into the decision, the good one was chosen instead.
I know I am lucky here as far as CentOS change is concerned: mine are merely number crunchers and workstations I had to and did find new route for (Debian for NVIDIA – free machines, and Ubuntu for those needing NVIDIA proprietary stuff).
Good luck, everybody else, to find your future, and best wishes to go the way that will last for you. To make sure the choice will last with every choice of my sysadmin’s career really required a lot of consideration, and some luck (which I guess I had in abundance with my choices).
Valeri
Nice script but wouldn’t it be easier to do such a thing with Ansible/
Puppet/ or the like? You can refer in most cases to the RHEL family what would make it work on all flavours. You only have to adjust the parts with the specific URLs
…
Kind regards Thomas
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Linux … enjoy the ride!
I have no issues with OpenSUSE .. but how is OpenSUSE any better than CentOS Stream?
It is not like we are rolling rawhide packages into CentOS Stream. They are updating already created Enterprise Packages in current RHEL with Bug Fixes and Security Fixes and a small number of rebases (Enhamcments Fixes). But the enhancements are not from Rawhide, they are rebases very close to the current releases.
Again .. absolutely nothing wrong with using OpenSUSE (or Ubuntu or Debian, etc). I just do not see the advantage.
I mean, I get it, some people are very upset with the new way CentOS is being done. And obviously people get to think what they think. But when this was announced, it was also announced that RHEL was going to be opened up early in Q1 of 2021 (which has happened and is still happening).
Red Hat is working also with Hosting Providers to come up with plans. If I were you, I would talk to the list at CentOS-questiions@redhat.com
I have no idea what the planned options are (I work on CentOS Linux 7
and 8 and CentOS Stream .. so I don’t interact with that group. This initiative is one of their plans.
openSUSE is honest.
The CentOS project, RedHat, you, lied to us when you published CentOS 8
and claiming it would be supported until 2029. We believed you because of the good reputation you had built up with previous CentOS releases.
We suggested CentOS 8 to our customers. And we have been badly f***ed the a**. Sorry for the wording that you may assume, but that is how it is.
I see one big advantage: These are honest projects, while you are liars.
So where is the option to install a RHEL system at a customer site, like I was able with CentOS?
Really, you (as in the CentOS project) totally screwed it.
Could you at least pretend to be professional when posting to our lists?
Really, you, (as in you) totally don’t get it. *CentOS* didn’t do this thing; *Red Hat* did this thing. Go blame them.
John
Unless I’m misunderstanding Red Hat’s offer of 16 free licenses, I’m assuming you can install free RHEL for the customer, and that will form one of their (your customer’s) 16 free entitlements. Unless your customer needs more than 16 free entitlements?
I’m assuming your customer has the relationship with Red Hat and entitlement to 16 free copies, and you are their sub-contracted IT
professional responsible for installation and maintaining / supporting that installation.
Obviously if your customer requires in excess of 16 copies, this offer from Red Hat is not going to work for them, or you.
That’s a big assumption to make.
I set up systems for businesses who want “a computer that does job x”. They don’t know, care, or want to know what it runs on as long as the thing logs the production or makes the press crank on cue. “Here’s your appliance”, and they throw it in a corner and maybe someone blows the dust off of it every couple of years when they’re going by with a vacuum.
They don’t want a relationship with Red Hat”, and probably wouldn’t even know what that is if I told them about it.
“Hey Frank, this thing just quit. Make it work again.” That’s all the involvement they want in the IT end of things.
Let me rephrase then. If you were installing Windows on that machine for your customer, who would ‘own’ the licence – you or your customer?
I’d have the customer buy it, just like I have the customer buy the hardware today.
My usual practice is to give the customer a shopping list. “Here’s what you need. Let me know when you have one.” I don’t do hardware at all. Any parts or repaired units that I pick up from the computer store are billed to the customer, not to me.
I have same business model. In my part of the world anything except Windows is barely understood by general population, and trying t explain overloads their minds and their eyes glaze over. Since I can not provide VAT return/rebate for anything, I prepare the list of hardware or even invoice for what needs to be bought and they pay for it.
But even simple thing like buying space on Google account with debit/credit card is too complicated for some so I ended up paying with my card to get them more “Gmail space”, and was unable to organize that they replace my card with their card for several months, it took me 5
minutes of explaining so they understand why that is important. So idea that customer will manage RHEL licenses is in my case ludicrous.
Since I manage clients PC’s/networks for 20 years and I do not advertise but get new clients via word of mouth, all clients just decide to trust me and give me total control beside paying for what needs to be bought on my recommendation without getting into details.
Only thing I can do to make Dev account theirs is to create separate e-mail on their domain that I will have access to (I am guessing they will forget it even exists in few months) so that Red Hat does not think I own large number of systems. That is for those clients who actually own domain…
Le 26/01/2021 à 08:10, Ljubomir Ljubojevic a écrit :
*cringe*
First thing I do with new clients is replace their Gmail nonsense with a crisp and clean CentOS mail server:
https://blog.microlinux.fr/serveur-mail-CentOS-7/
:o)
—
Microlinux – Solutions informatiques durables
7, place de l’église – 30730 Montpezat Site : https://www.microlinux.fr Blog : https://blog.microlinux.fr Mail : info@microlinux.fr Tél. : 04 66 63 10 32
Mob. : 06 51 80 12 12
Yeah, but they are using that Gmail account for several years, and it is a real-state seller/developer, and they do not want to switch to anything other because it works.
First I managed to replace their hdd’s to ssd’s around new year, so it As a bonus they got backup storage (from one PC to another).
Then I finally managed (with help of outside accountant that sent me to them) to get them to invest 600 eur for TrueNAS because they did not have any kind of file server, they all store on individual PC’s hdd’s.
Owner, simple man with money to start investments and TOTALLY no understanding of PC’s, smartphones, etc, asked why he has to spend money on something to sit in the corner. So I explained they could loose much electronic documents if hdd/ssd fails, and his response was “but we have everything in/on paper…”.
Then he asked administrative worker what she would do if her hdd failed, and she said “I would kill my self”, and THAT statement made him accept to pay for file server :-)
So it is a definite progress, it will just take time to get there.
I always start with not interrupting clients workflow and adapt to their knowledge, doing as much by my self as possible without involving them, then slowly and incrementally introduce changes that affect them or demand they learn something. 99% of clients use same password for all user accounts, mainly name of the company since they are small and trust their workers.
—
Ljubomir Ljubojevic
(Love is in the Air)
PL Computers Serbia, Europe
StarOS, Mikrotik and CentOS/RHEL/Linux consultant
I am a lot of things (ask my ex-wife), but a liar is not one of them. I
could care less if what you use, but name calling is juvenile. So was the language you used. This is a professional list. If you can’t maintain some semblance of professionalism, please unsubscribe.