Future of CentOS???

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Gostrath
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Future of CentOS???

Post by Gostrath » 2022/11/11 02:04:51

I have a business and I had my entire server set in the data center on CentOS when it was shut down by RH/IBM. It cost a ton of money, headaches and man hours getting things working again. We transitioned EVERYTHING over to Ubuntu. I had my own hardware in the data center, so the shut down of CentOS.org, the time servers, etc was my problem Now I see CentOS is back. I am perplexed. What's the future of CentOS?

I figured I would sign up for the forum and discuss this, so I registered and, at the last anti-spam step, I have to put the first letter of each word in from the phrase: "CentOS Linux will end its life in June 2024". Are you kidding?!?!?!?

Is this a joke? Is CentOS really back? Is it shuttering again in 2024? While whoever put that there may think it's funny, it doesn't inspire confidence. Based on the huge personal cost of the CentOS shutdown, I recommended that everyone stay away. Seeing that it was back, I thought I would look again. After encountering your "CentOS Linux will end its life in June 2024" statement; I decided to post this and walk away again. I won't be back. While that may not mean much to you, you should consider what people read into your joke. Personally, I have no idea if you really intend to kill CentOS again in 2024, but I'm not going to risk it or waste my time.

I started Linux with Slack96 and my first RH version was Redhat 4, not RHEL. All my machines: data center, business and personal are Linux. I am not a casual user. I am posting this in the hopes that, if you are serious about continuing CentOS, you will more carefully consider public actions that you take and jokes that you make, if they are jokes.

I will conclude this post with three words...."disappointed and skeptical".

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TrevorH
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Re: Future of CentOS???

Post by TrevorH » 2022/11/11 10:28:55

Please note that all posters on this forum are volunteers who do not work for Red Hat. Many of us are more angry than you are about these actions.

You appear to have misunderstood the original announcement. In Dec 2020 RH announced that they would stop supporting the CentOS Project as it was. They announced that CentOS Linux 8 would prematurely reach EOL at the end of 2021, giving a year to migrate away from it. It would be replaced by CentOS Stream 8 which is not a replacement as it contains things that have not made it into RHEL 8 yet - i.e. you get to beta test things that are not in RHEL yet. All future CentOS versions will be Stream (i.e. beta versions).

CentOS 7 was unaffected and continued as it was until it's expected original EOL date in 2024 - the same date that it was always scheduled to go EOL, 10 years after its original release in 2014. No CentOS services were turned off, the NTP servers are still there and continue to work and were never turned off. No centos.org sites were turned off. I am not sure where you got the idea that they were.

As for the signup announcement, we have a spammer problem and we have to change that Q&A registration question all the time to stop bots from using it and flooding us with SPAM posts. It's not a joke but more likely a reflection of exactly how angry the moderator is that set the current question.

In response to that Red Hat 2020 announcement, at least two separate projects were set up to replace CentOS with the same aims that the CentOS Project used to have: Rocky Linux and Alma Linux. Both are unconnected to Red Hat. Both aim to produce rebuilds of RHEL and match it bug for bug in the same way that CentOS used to do. Both have conversion scripts to go from CentOS Linux 8 and CentOS Stream 8 & 9 to themselves. There is also Oracle's rebuild of RHEL: OEL. If you want a RHEL "Clone" then one of those would be the best choice.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
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jlehtone
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Re: Future of CentOS???

Post by jlehtone » 2022/11/11 12:29:11

One summary of el8 options (and the Stream 8): https://wiki.almalinux.org/Comparison.html

Gostrath
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Re: Future of CentOS???

Post by Gostrath » 2022/11/15 21:10:08

Clearly Rocky Linux and Alma are the way to go over CentOS moving forward then if one is inclined to stick with RHEL OSs. Beta software is, of course, not acceptable for production use. A much better option would be a faithful version of RHEL with disabled repos available with beta software. This would allow the use of RHEL stable versions with beta repos available in our testing labs. This would provide the best of both worlds. As it stands, we are going to stay away from this. Maybe I didn't understand, but I thought Fedora was supposed to be for beta testing and CentOS was supposed to be a stable release.

While I am not thrilled with Ubuntu on some points, it is much more palettable from a stability standpoint. Performance issues caused by snapd can be cured by ripping it out of Ubuntu and introducing non-snap packages to replace snapd versions. Obviously this would require making custom repos for replaced snapd software. We have talked internally about creating a distro based on this design philosophy. This will most likely be the direction we will take. Public release of the distro has not been discussed much, but may be entertained in the future. Obviously this is one of Linux's greatest features.

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jlehtone
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Re: Future of CentOS???

Post by jlehtone » 2022/11/16 08:24:09

There are at least two kinds of "stable".
* Application that does not crash and burn is stable
* Application that is not replaced frequently is stable

RHEL is the latter kind of stable, with a decade with essentially same application.
Fedora is not that kind of stable; applications are replaced within months.

Red Hat cannot simply take Fedora packages, rebuild for RHEL and release;
the RHEL codebase is its own "main branch" in repository. Before, the content
of that branch was revealed to no-one (although RH does release public RHEL beta
shortly before actual RHEL release). Some of the "content in development" is now
visible as CentOS Stream.

Fedora is cutting edge. RHEL is stable. Neither is necessarily "crash and burn" unstable.


All along there have been, and still are distros that are "copy/clone/derived/based on" RHEL.
CentOS Linux was one of them. They are like RHEL in stability.

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TrevorH
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Re: Future of CentOS???

Post by TrevorH » 2022/12/03 14:51:47

Edit: it turns out the person I responded to here was in fact a spammer and that account and all its posts have now been deleted.

CentOS 7 is still alive but goes EOL in about 18 months time, in 2024.

Red Hat "acquired" the CentOS Project back ion 2013/14 and promised that they would not make any changes to the way it was provided. They then announced in late 2020 that they were withdrawing support for CentOS Linux 8 as of the end of 2021, approximately 9 years earlier than they originally said. The have repurposed CentOS so that instead of being a rebuild of the current version of RHEL (stable), it is now a beta test environment for the _next_ point release of RHEL. That makes it less stable, more prone to errors and generally not a good choice. There are both CentOS Stream 8 and 9 versions but both are beta versions of the next version of RHEL of the same version number.

If you want a plain rebuild of RHEL as CentOS used to be then look at using Alma or Rocky Linux or even Oracle.

CentOS as it used to be is dead.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
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toracat
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Re: Future of CentOS???

Post by toracat » 2022/12/03 19:29:57

The statement "CentOS Linux will end its life in June 2024" is correct.

The only "CentOS Linux" still running is CentOS Linux 7 which will end its life in June 2024.

CentOS Stream 8 and CentOS Stream 9 are different beasts and will continue to exist as explained in this thread.
CentOS Forum FAQ

joseborera
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Re: Future of CentOS???

Post by joseborera » 2023/01/31 16:11:40

for now, CentOS is most reliable OS on the "market"
most percentage of the internet hosted on centos+nginx
I think it will evolve as any other usual "stable" distributives like Debian (by stable I mean used at most of people or organizations)

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TrevorH
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Re: Future of CentOS???

Post by TrevorH » 2023/02/01 09:42:48

I think you missed the news. Red Hat killed CentOS about 3 years ago and it is no longer the same thing that it once was. It's now a massive beta test zone for unsuspecting users who think they are getting an enterprise OS clone of RHEL and are not.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

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jlehtone
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Re: Future of CentOS???

Post by jlehtone » 2023/02/01 13:33:26

joseborera wrote:
2023/01/31 16:11:40
most percentage of the internet hosted on centos+nginx
I do hope that your statistics is about CentOS Linux 7 + nginx. That is the only "stable centos" now (and will EOL next year).
joseborera wrote:
2023/01/31 16:11:40
I think it will evolve as any other usual "stable" distributives like Debian
"It" has already done so. "It" is now called with names, like AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux.

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