migrate CentOS end-of-life

[oscaroxy]

Whitch Linux OS will you choose?

[caponate]

Rocky Linux. We migrated our centOS 7 boxes to it and used the conversion script on the few centOS 8 boxes we had. Worked fine.

[oscaroxy]

does it work like Centos?
I did many customs install (php by source, etc...)

[toracat]

Rebuild projects such as Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux should work just like CentOS Linux. They are supposed to be binary compatible with RHEL, feature-for-feature and bug-for-bug.

[jlehtone]

AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux did spawn to do the same thing that CentOS used to do (but better).
There are (and always were) other rebuilds of RHEL, so those two are not the only ones.
Furthermore, RHEL now has free of charge subscription too.

I did many customs install (php by source, etc...)

PHP from source was not necessary with CentOS. If the packaged versions in EL are not suitable, then look at Remi's repos.

Each major version of EL requires a bit different configuration; the components do evolve. The less you have to resort to "sources", the easier.

There are also configuration management systems. The EL includes Ansible and Red Hat has been adding documentation and "system roles" for configuration of EL system with ansible. Very nice.


For the record, I did convert my couple CentOS Linux 8 systems into AlmaLinux 8 in Summer 2021. The choice between Alma and Rocky was almost a toss of coin. I've installed AlmaLinux 9 since last Summer.

[oscaroxy]

i did many customs for php and i update always to last up to date php.
However, ubuntu isn't good alternative?
i know that i would have to start back to begin, but I would have a good OS forever.
it has a good community.

[jlehtone]

The choice of platform does depend on what you do need it for.

I could have installed RHEL 9 (or a rebuild distro), the PHP 8.0 that it has, my PHP application,
and that setup can run to May 2032.
Red Hat will provide security fixes for their version of PHP "8.0" the whole decade.

If you want to develop/port your PHP application, then you can shift to short-lived streams.
RHEL 9 does currently have PHP 8.1-based stream. See https://access.redhat.com/support/polic ... life-cycle
Alternatively, since RHEL 9 is not likely get new features after 2027, you can install PHP from Remi's repos. See https://blog.remirepo.net/

Do you need such "stable" platform? For people, who run services, the "less changes" tends to be valuable.

Does Ubuntu (or other distro) offer something similar? If it does, then the choice is up to you.


We did live in belief that CentOS would continue "forever" like it were -- a rebuild of RHEL. It did not.
Yet, we can still choose a rebuild of RHEL, so we are not at the end yet.

[oscaroxy]

what are Alma and Ubuntu like to versus performance?

[jlehtone]

If you do care about that then you benchmark both with your actual payload.

There are more systems with clearly RHEL-like OS than Ubuntu-like OS in the TOP-500 list (although that does not verify that performance is the determinining metric).

[TrevorH]

Or go read Phoronix.