CentOS

There will soon be two clones, Rocky and Alma, for those who want a traditional downstream RHEL copy.

I've been back and forth on Red Hat's decision to end CentOS 8 support early. At this point I'm looking at Stream as a way to run a way more stable Fedora-style desktop/workstation with much less churn.

Even on the server, the things I do can probably withstand whatever updates are pushed through Stream, and I think that most of the time getting patches earlier — if that actually happens — will help me.

I'm taking a wait-and-see approach and running Stream on my desktop right now.

passthejoe wrote: ↑

2021/04/04 21:40:47

There will soon be two clones, Rocky and Alma, for those who want a traditional downstream RHEL copy.

Alma has already released a stable version.
Rocky did postpone. Current RC perhaps at end of this month.

Two clones pose a problem. Which to choose? Which will endure?

I am just in the process of moving from selection to implementation on my home system. I support four "bare metal" Linux boxes, three Windows based laptops and between 6 and 12 VMs, depending upon what I'm investigating. The core server provides a local cloud service, wiki, backups and the usual print/scan. I've just written the following up on the wiki, it may be of interest to some readers (and probably not to others!).

Why change operating system?

Operating systems are continually updated, but every so often a major change is needed. In the Windows world this has lead to Windows-95, Windows-7, Windows-10 etc. CentOS is no different, it has slowly been updated from CentOS 5, CentOS 6 (original system on Tamar and Zodiac), CentOS 7 (current implementation) and shortly CentOS 8. CentOS 7 is due for retirement in 2024 and originally CentOS 8 was due for retirement in 2029. However, RedHat (who own CentOS, and are themselves owned by IBM) have changed policy and will not be supporting CentOS 8 after the end of 2021.

I have been researching alternatives. The aim has been to select:

• An OS that is reliable and not subject to rapid changes.
• An OS that is familiar to the family.
• An OS that will be familiar to assistance sought after I'm unavailable.

The following have been considered:

• Alma Linux
• Fedora
• Mint
• Open SuSE
• Oracle Linux
• Rocky Linux
• Springdale Linux

Of these Alma was chosen.

Why Alma?

Alma has been chosen as the replacement OS. It fits into the niche left by the demise of CentOS 8 exactly. The system is built from the same sources and should have the same look and feel as CentOS, other than the branding and the colourful background! Two other candidates were in close contention: Rocky Linux and Springdale. Rocky is community led and has a lot of enthusiasm from devotees, but is so far vapourware. There is not yet a beta release out,1) a version may come out possibly next month, but it has already been delayed. Alma released a beta back in March and is now supplying a stable, full featured version. Springdale was another close contender, but is very much a small scale outfit with limited resources.

Given the timelines and the requirement for widespread support, Alma was chosen.

1) As of 16 April 2021

Looks like Alma is going to be better than CentOS.

1) repository security metadata;

2) more timely updates;

3) *-devel and other packages that were built from source in Koji, but dropped by RHEL and CentOS (e.g. utf8proc-devel, libselinux-static). Yes, that means Alma is not an exact clone of RHEL.

Rocky is community led and has a lot of enthusiasm from devotees, but is so far vapourware.

Looks like despite recent noises about building ISOs, they will miss the release target date again.

It's no good because many peoples use centos to training red rat enveroment and packs. I keep all my laboratory in the Centos.

Rocky linux RC1 available : https://rockylinux.org/news/rocky-linux ... 1-release/

Red Hat Talks CentOS Past, Present, and Future :
https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/ope ... and-future

You know, we've had CentOS Stream internally since probably RHEL 2, it's just that we would call it a 'nightly build.

-- Mike McGrath, Red Hat's VP of Linux engineering

Alright, fairly honest statement then

Can you possibly explain what happened to a person not deeply involved into the CentOS community? In the FAQ I see:

Q5: Does this mean that CentOS Stream is the RHEL BETA test platform now?

A: No. CentOS Stream will be getting fixes and features ahead of RHEL. Generally speaking we expect CentOS Stream to have fewer bugs and more runtime features as it moves forward in time but always giving direct indication of what is going into a RHEL release

The Wikipedia says:

CentOS Stream is a midstream Linux distribution situated between the upstream development in Fedora and the downstream development for RHEL.

To be honest I don't really understand what CentOS was and what it'll become. I knew that CentOS was based on RHEL. But what exactly does it mean? I guess CentOS had its own repositories. Other than that... Different build files (whatever that means) and some extra patches?

So, CentOS sort of switches from RHEL to Fedora as its upstream and becomes a development distribution? Also, how could RHEL "unilaterally terminate" CentOS development?

CentOS was a rebuild of the current production ready version of RHEL and rebuilt all public fixes made by RH for RHEL as they came out. The goal was to make CentOS identical to RHEL minus the logos and branding. It was as stable as RHEL was since it tried to be as identical as possible.

Now CentOS gets the updates before RHEL does and in many cases it can be up to 6 months ahead of the current RHEL. CentOS is now the proving ground for RHEL updates as they are coded and it may be running code that is weeks or months ahead of the code that RHEL users run.

how could RHEL "unilaterally terminate" CentOS development?

Because they did a deal with the CentOS developers who all went to work for Red Hat having been told that CentOS would continue. Red Hat also acquired all the CentOS trademarks so the name belongs to RH and they can do what they like with it. And did.

x-yuri wrote: ↑

2022/01/04 17:25:55

To be honest I don't really understand what CentOS was and what it'll become.

Here is one view: https://crunchtools.com/the-state-of-en ... x-in-2022/

Note though that CentOS Linux 7 continues to be "downstream of RHEL 7" as before.

CentOS Stream 8 is something for RHEL 8 and CentOS Stream 9 is currently a peek into what RHEL 9 might be in future.