The centos problem

shruggy · 01-20-2021, 09:08 AM

Ars Technica: CentOS is gone—but RHEL is now free for up to 16 production servers

Announcement by Red Hat

boughtonp · 01-20-2021, 10:36 AM

So Red Hat realized how badly they screwed up, and are now trying to regain the trust and goodwill they lost.

wpeckham · 01-20-2021, 03:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boughtonp

So Red Hat realized how badly they screwed up, and are now trying to regain the trust and goodwill they lost.

That is possible. Or, this may have been the grand plan all along. I am not sure how we would tell for sure, or if it matters. It makes several decisions easier for many small business and not-for-profit offices.

boughtonp · 01-20-2021, 04:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wpeckham

Or, this may have been the grand plan all along.

Nah, this is definitely a reaction.

The Stream announcement clearly describes the Developer program as a single-instance test machine:

Quote:

Originally Posted by https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/centos-stream-building-innovative-future-enterprise-linux

The RHEL Developer subscription, a free, self-supported subscription for developers, provides a dev/test environment for applications that are meant to be deployed into production on the stable, more secure and high-performance foundation of RHEL.

If they were planning this all along they would have combined the two announcements together - or, at the very least, used language more like they did in their latest announcement:

Quote:

Originally Posted by https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/new-year-new-red-hat-enterprise-linux-programs-easier-ways-access-rhel

We know that these programs don’t address every CentOS Linux use case, so we aren’t done delivering more ways to get RHEL easily. We’re working on a variety of additional programs for other use cases, and plan to provide another update in mid-February.

(Which is basically code for "if people still hate us, we'll try something else".)

If it had been their plan all along, that would reflect worse on Red Hat - for many it was a difficult enough time already, without the unnecessary stress caused by six weeks of worrying about what to do, before CentOS 8 users discover they can relax a bit.

Personally I don't want to depend on a company that pisses people around like that, so I'll still be looking towards the alternatives.

shruggy · 01-21-2021, 04:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boughtonp

Nah, this is definitely a reaction.

Nope. From the blog post by Chris Wright that started it all (check the date):

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Wright

In the first half of 2021, we plan to introduce low- or no-cost programs for a variety of use cases, including options for open source projects and communities and expansion of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer subscription use cases to better serve the needs of systems administrators. We’ll share more details as these initiatives coalesce.

Edit. You even quoted that same post above.

boughtonp · 01-21-2021, 08:11 AM

Not sure how I missed that despite multiple read-throughs.

It's still a vague enough paragraph to allow them to react to the fallout in any number of ways.

If it was properly planned, why rush the death announcement and delay the new options announcement? Why not be more explicit that those who have just upgraded to CentOS 8 don't need to worry? Why not match the CentOS 8 EOL date to CentOS 7's date instead of bringing it forward so much?

As I noted, this demonstrates a greater lack of caring about people than if they'd made a mistake and were trying to rectify it.

wpeckham · 01-21-2021, 08:48 AM

I dislike the RH decision on CentOS, but I cannot fault them greatly. While I would have preferred they support CentOS as the community support RHEL binay compatible projct that it was born to be and that it was when they adopted it FROM the community, I know of nothing that REQUIRED them to do so. (And nothing binding IBM to continue that project,) It kinda sucks, but with luck it will give us Rocky Linux to fill that void.

Dropping it seemed short-sighted to me since the CentOS community directly fed business into the RHEL client base. The new developer licensing policy provides much the same purpose, and does not require a migration from CentOS to RHEL to move the license on a server from development into production. (And for small shops, they can continue under the same license if they are self supporting! Converting licenses only when on servers where they want or need RHEL full support. )

For those who remember when there was ONLY ONE Red Hat Linux but you could buy support or run unlicensed, this (for small shops only) returns to much that kind of community. That community generated a LOT of progress and was a huge success for the industry AND the company. I can see how returning to that kind of scenario in support of the small developer might just fit RH to a tee!

Still gonna miss CentOS and watch for Rocky Linux, but I feel better about almost every angle of this change now.

ceantuco · 01-25-2021, 05:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boughtonp

So Red Hat realized how badly they screwed up, and are now trying to regain the trust and goodwill they lost.

I am not sure if I should trust them again....

shruggy · 01-26-2021, 04:00 PM

DataCenter Knowledge: CloudLinux Hopes to Release AlmaLinux, Its CentOS Replacement, This Week

jefro · 01-27-2021, 02:54 PM

Red Hat has always reserved some of their software and innovations that never did get into Centos. If one wanted to continue with Centos line then RH would be a step up. I'd say it's a large jump if you really do get RHEL.

shruggy · 01-28-2021, 07:25 AM

I posted the centos2ol script in #18 so here is convert2rhel for completeness sake. It's also available from EPEL as an installable package.

Springdale doesn't provide a handy script, so here are instructions taken from Rocky forums (which itself is still vaporware):

Code:

dnf update -y
rpm -e --nodeps centos-backgrounds centos-indexhtml centos-gpg-keys centos-linux-release centos-linux-repos centos-logos
rpm -ivh \
    http://springdale.princeton.edu/data/springdale/8/x86_64/os/BaseOS/Packages/springdale-appstream-8-0.sdl8.2.noarch.rpm \
    http://springdale.princeton.edu/data/springdale/8/x86_64/os/BaseOS/Packages/springdale-core-8-0.sdl8.2.noarch.rpm \
    http://springdale.princeton.edu/data/springdale/8/x86_64/os/BaseOS/Packages/springdale-release-8.3-0.42.el8.x86_64.rpm
dnf distro-sync -y

ceantuco · 01-28-2021, 12:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefro

Red Hat has always reserved some of their software and innovations that never did get into Centos. If one wanted to continue with Centos line then RH would be a step up. I'd say it's a large jump if you really do get RHEL.

yes, it would be a large step up but what would happen if RHEL decides to decrease the number of servers allowed with a free license? of even worse, remove the free license option?

I am honestly debating between Debian and RHEL free edition... well I think I still have a few months to make a decision.

wpeckham · 01-29-2021, 08:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ceantuco

yes, it would be a large step up but what would happen if RHEL decides to decrease the number of servers allowed with a free license? of even worse, remove the free license option?

I am honestly debating between Debian and RHEL free edition... well I think I still have a few months to make a decision.

Since Red Hat is now owned by IBM, I would certainly consider the offerings from Oracle, Cloud, and Rockey for the long run. The developer license is an excellent option for migrations that must start early, as it is available NOW. (Well, okay, last Monday. But the point is that you need not wait if there is reason to rush.)

shruggy · 02-01-2021, 11:40 AM

AlmaLinux Beta version released.

Update 1. AlmaLinux 8.3 Beta images are now available in Azure and AWS.

Update 2. There are already some mirrors in place: https://mirrors.almalinux.org.

shruggy · 02-16-2021, 08:53 AM

almalinux-deploy: conversion script for AlmaLinux.

Update. AlmaLinux 8.3 RC released. The official Vagrant+VirtualBox box is updated to 8.3 RC as well: https://app.vagrantup.com/almalinux/boxes/8