ALERT Buh-bye CentOS.

wardmundy said:
Incredible PBX 2020 for Debian 10 will be available soon. :chef:
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That's the way to go! Debian and/or Ubuntu strain of Linux has always been the best of all Linuxes out there.
Neither one has been a walk in a rose garden, but both of them are still the best.
This is not an emotional statement, but a very cold (actually freezing cold) intellectual-investment/return calculation that I've been running and updating on Linux distros for more than a decade.
How many Red Hat derivatives just died and caused astronomical losses to their so called open-source and free OS users? (hint read about Scientific Linux and see where it stands).
Red Hat's purchase by IBM was bound to mess up what was left of their open-source spirit. Soon Fedora will be swept under the rug.
 
Halea said:
Red Hat's purchase by IBM was bound to mess up what was left of their open-source spirit. Soon Fedora will be swept under the rug.
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How times have changed. When I worked at IBM specializing in computer control of PBX's Linux was a dirty word.
IBM have a history of buying products and eventually trashing them.
 
Reading the above made me think about Scientific Linux which, IIRC, was forked from RHEL because of the initial RHEL/CentOS skirmishes. But then:

***

Scientific Linux (SL) is a Linux distribution produced by Fermilab, CERN, DESY and by ETH Zurich. It is a free and open-source operating system based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

This product is derived from the free and open-source software made available by Red Hat, but is not produced, maintained or supported by them.

In April 2019, it was announced that Scientific Linux would be discontinued, but that maintenance will continue to be provided for the 6.x and 7.x releases through the end of their lifecycles. Fermilab will utilize CentOS for its deployment of 8.0 instead.[4]
 
The problem is that all of these derivative aggregations (Scientific Linux and Oracle Linux) are derived from CentOS, not RHEL. What that means is that, with the demise of CentOS 8, new builds would need to be generated from RHEL source code which is a much more labor-intensive exercise according to my sources. So... unless some organization is willing to invest a couple million bucks a year to maintain the new product, it's probably never going to happen.

My bet is that Micro$oft jumps into this space pretty quickly if only to steal more users for Teams and their own Linux solution.
 
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The charter that was defined between CentOS and RedHat/RHEL way back clearly stated that all GPL code will be made available to the CentOS team free and clear of any encumbrances like RH trademarks and non-GPL or RH proprietary material. So basically CentOS was supposed to be a mirror copy of RHEL releases except for never ever showing the wording Red Hat or any of their protected designations, logos, etc., nor the proprietary non-GPL software packages included in RHEL.
And the first few iterations were exactly that.

As time went by RH injected more non-GPL code in their distribution to the point that the basic exercise of replacing the strings "Red Hat" and "RHEL" with Centos" and "Centos Distribution" turned into how to patch non-GPL missing code from the base material. Interestingly most such material still came from the same source(s), people essentially working for RH in an official and paid capacity, and producing alternative compatible code at their free/hobby time. But obviously that wasn't going to be sustainable in the long run. With IBM coming into the picture with its deep pockets, probably imposed upon the employee base NDAs and the like making the GPL and non-GPL concurrent code/snippet development impossible. So, now other people (on the Centos side) would needed to fill the void, a task that would be significantly more difficult and completely at the mercy of what RH would make available in terms of public information.

As for Scientific Linux, it needed a rock solid platform developed by serious people with a serious agenda. They looked into RH and CentOS. They liked the relationship. They decided to take the CentOS base so that they didn't have to do heavy lifting with the trademark cleaning work. They replaced the Centos marks with their own and went on to add their own scientific packages, pretty much all GPL or licensed in GPL compatible variants. Of course there was also a truckload of non-public scientific applications, especially real-time software which were fine-tuned to run on the platform. That also worked well initially, but soon after the OS code base started to show "problems" that Scientific Linux had to fix on its own which threw a monkey wrench into the relationship(s).

And of course none of these was being done under the radar! The CentOS outlet was a requirement so that RH wouldn't appear to turn a GPL code base into a closed/proprietary code otherwise it would be rightfully sued by the Linux community and its defense organizations - remember the bulk of the Red Hat Distribution is based on open source material. They don't "own" it single-handedly. Scientific Linux brought to the table prestige and respectability. For those who do not know, it was supported by the "who's who" of the European Scientific Institutions.

The delicate balancing act between RH and CentOS coming to an end many derivatives will also go under in a cascade reaction.
 
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wardmundy said:
The problem is that all of these derivative aggregations (Scientific Linux and Oracle Linux) are derived from CentOS, not RHEL. What that means is that, with the demise of CentOS 8, new builds would need to be generated from RHEL source code which is a much more labor-intensive exercise according to my sources. So... unless some organization is willing to invest a couple million bucks a year to maintain the new product, it's probably never going to happen.

My bet is that Micro$oft jumps into this space pretty quickly if only to steal more users for Teams and their own Linux solution.
Click to expand...

CloudLinux has mentioned they might pickup and come out with a free version based on RHEL.

We just migrated the servers from CentOS 7 to 8, and now this news today.
And the EOL is before that of CentOS 7.

RedHat looks like they are replacing Fedora with Stream.
We tried Stream 8, and it is not stable.

Go figure this would happen in 2020...
 
Halea said:
That's the way to go! Debian and/or Ubuntu strain of Linux has always been the best of all Linuxes out there.
Neither one has been a walk in a rose garden, but both of them are still the best.
This is not an emotional statement, but a very cold (actually freezing cold) intellectual-investment/return calculation that I've been running and updating on Linux distros for more than a decade.
How many Red Hat derivatives just died and caused astronomical losses to their so called open-source and free OS users? (hint read about Scientific Linux and see where it stands).
Red Hat's purchase by IBM was bound to mess up what was left of their open-source spirit. Soon Fedora will be swept under the rug.
Click to expand...

In the statement https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/
Fedora isn't even mentioned, but how they describe Stream, it will be taking Fedora's place in the development lineup.
 
Centos Stream is like "Debian Sid", a very unstable development sandbox. It's basically used to figure out what ideas, features, coding techniques are viable for future releases. It would be fair to say that its alpha quality software.

Debian has the "testing" distribution which is the next step up in terms of stability. Once the viable bits and pieces are identified in "Sid" they move to "Debian Testing", they get stabilized, optimized and debugged. That's Beta quality software for the rest of us.

Then once all the low hanging bugs are out the software, the platform moves to "Debian Stable" and it gets extensively tested again for overlooked/more-subtle bugs, further optimization of code, etc. and finally gets released as "Debian Stable".

RHEL and CentOS compare to Debian Stable.
Centos Stream compares to Debian Sid.

Good luck to those who will start with alpha quality software developed/written by others and will attempt to turn it into their own "stable" release! Anyone with some serious software development experience would start running away from this picture.

Sure, if you are doing this as a hobby it would be fun. It will certainly give many the right to brag on the forums.

But remember, currently Centos is of the same quality, same stability as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, actually almost identical to it except for the name, trademarks, artworks and proprietary software packages, including the upstream bug fixes that get reflected in it within 24 to 72 hours of their upstream release (by stated policy of Centos).
Shifting its base to Centos Stream is not a cute play on words, it's like a bad joke and sheer madness!
 
I was stunned to read the news yesterday and I was expecting the article here on how it would affect our beloved IPBX. CentOS 8 is obviously a no go as of now. It will become an alpha quality software platform, as stated eloquently by Halea, that I believe will eventually die out as I see no real need for it. Real pity. Not exactly excited for Debian also but I see no other alternative. What I'd love to see is a custom IPBX linux distro but I understand the difficulties involved. Hope some day it can become true!
 
roundaway said:
Ummm, I did love the PC Jr. Two sidecars with "extra" memory, a nice big 5.25" floppy (hole punched to double sided), external modem, and magnetic tape backups. What was not to love?
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and the cartridge to program in basic, the IBM Charlie Chaplin commercials, the chicklet, "Wireless" keyboard w phone connector, Kings quest II, the joystick that came right out of 2001 A Space Odyssey... and finally the greatest football known to man - Touchdown Football
 
Very upsetting. So is everyone going to jump ship to alternative distros? Will you prefer Debian, Ubuntu LTS or any other distro? It just doesn't make any sense. RH (IBM), in the interest of improving their own product, is forcing CentOS die-harders to leave them entirely. Who would actually jump from Debian/Ubuntu back to RH?
 
I'm glad to hear that Incredible PBX is heading in the right (Debian) direction!

I had always used Red Hat for pretty much everything Linux starting in 1997 with Red Hat Linux 4.2. Not long after Red Hat set up the Fedora Project, I went to Fedora Core and stayed there through Fedora Core 5.

Soon afterwards (early 2007), I switched over to Debian/Ubuntu and haven't looked back. I find Debian so much easier to deal with than any of the others.

Keep up the great work, @wardmundy !
 
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bennun said:
... Will you prefer Debian, Ubuntu LTS or any other distro? ...
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Coming from heavy-duty Unix background as a developer (from a bygone era when the computer marketplace for consumer use was still in its infancy with CP/M, Apple II, Commodore PET, Atari and the like) bridging to Linux was a natural progression for me.

Unfortunately the maturation of Linux took too long and both personally and professionally I had to use Windows for a while (up to the version Vista).

During the Linux maturation process one of the very few truly well thought out platforms was the one set forth by Ian Murdock dubbed Debian. It wasn't so much his technical savvy but rather his natural organizational flair which brought together an extraordinary group of people with various backgrounds and built the foundation of the platform that you have today.

Today the platform is still the best, but like with any knowledge base which grows over time and benefits from other people's experiences and savvy, the distro had to slightly narrow its focus. So Debian is a bit more "core system/hardware/networking" level distro. For instance for desktop use the different supersets of X11 like Gnome, Xfce, KDE, etc. are not extensively optimized by the Debian staff/contributors.

This is where the top derivatives kick in; Ubuntu brings two things essentially to Debian.

First, it empowers it with PPAs. PPA or Personal Package Archive creation, management and distribution system is excruciatingly important, especially if one is using a software platform for business. In a nutshell it allows for orderly software addition, updating and removal without needing extensive troubleshooting which would come with great cost (as it would necessitate specialized skills) and damage productivity (because of down time) in a business environment. Debian's own package management system (APT) does a good job in managing dependencies and handles most of the heavy lifting but Ubuntu's PPA scheme is an absolute must for quick, easy and secure software deployment.

Second, Ubuntu brings tremendous desktop optimization to Debian. The different flavors of Ubuntu are all fully optimized and truly set the benchmark for performance and security. For instance, I am an Xfce user and in hundreds of Xfce installation I've done in the past over Debian I rarely ever came close to the level of screen performance or crash protection that I can afford when I use Xubuntu. Even the basic server setup benefits from Ubuntu's server management tools.

So if you are a business, Ubuntu saves you tons of money on your cost of "running technology" in your shop.

As for the secondary Linux Debian derivatives like Linux Mint, they bring to the table usability improvements which again are significant cost savers for businesses and skill enhancers for consumer level users or hobbyists. For instance, Linux Mint builds upon Ubuntu (which itself is layered atop of Debian), this extraordinarily easy "out of the box" computing experience, which today even MS Windows no longer offers.

bennun said:
... Who would actually jump from Debian/Ubuntu back to RH?
Click to expand...
If you're using Linux for business you need to pick a "strain" of Linux and stick to it. Switching from one strain to the other is hugely costly and could wipe all savings that you've accumulated over time by running an open-source platform with free software.

In my case I picked Debian a longtime ago. Depending on the application I use Debian, a flavor of Ubuntu or Linux Mint. My business relies on several hundreds of Linux Mint desktops, mostly used as engineering workstations, for which my annual maintenance cost is a fraction of what it would have been had I continued to use Windows. All our servers are either native Debian or Ubuntu. The products that we build all have Debian at the core.
I cannot even fathom switching to another platform.

Of course like all good hobbyists I still make time to follow what's going on with ClearLinux. ;)
 
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