SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS
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What is going on over at IBM? Traditional CentOS is being discontinued (CentOS Stream will remain, but is a different product that doesn't retain the goals and functionality of CentOS) and we look at what that means for IBM, RHEL, and the market.
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Fedora is controlled by the Fedora Project which, RedHat is liable for, sadly.
There was talk years ago about creating the Fedora Foundation as a fully separate legal entity, but it never happened.
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@JaredBusch said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
Fedora is controlled by the Fedora Project which, RedHat is liable for, sadly.
There was talk years ago about creating the Fedora Foundation as a fully separate legal entity, but it never happened.
Yeah, very sad. Fedora is such a great product, but now I fear it's not something I'm going to feel very confident trusting (until such time that someone splits it off.)
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@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
@JaredBusch said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
Fedora is controlled by the Fedora Project which, RedHat is liable for, sadly.
There was talk years ago about creating the Fedora Foundation as a fully separate legal entity, but it never happened.
Yeah, very sad. Fedora is such a great product, but now I fear it's not something I'm going to feel very confident trusting (until such time that someone splits it off.)
I see no reason to leave Fedora as my primary deployment system. I never use RHEL/CentOS anyway.
IBM has no control over Fedora. That is a 100% open source solution. IBM has ownership of RedHat and Redhat is liable for the actions of the Fedora Project, but RedHat has no way to do anything more than freeze the project as it is.
Should something like that happen, it will simply be forked and a new governing body will be created by whoever comes out with the primary fork.
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@JaredBusch said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
but RedHat has no way to do anything more than freeze the project as it is.
And, I assume, fire most of the key people involved and not allow the name to continue which will sow a lot of confusion in a market looking to recover. They can't exactly make it go away, but something that big depends on so many moving parts that it would be exceptionally disruptive.
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What did you think guys? First back in the day it was just redhat linux, then you get redhat commercial linux, then redhat linux became fedora, and then you got redhat enterprise linux, and then centos and then (I don't know were stream came into the picture)...
Contrast that to something like debian, a true community based distro that has been well...just debian...all this time.
Anyway, my point is that redhat is commercial and since redhat started, they changed everything around multiple times. In all of these projects, including fedora, redhat is the largest contributor bar none. Fedora is not a true community based distro. It's redhat developers with the help of a community. Big difference. I think 35% of all Fedora contributors are redhat employees.
Since redhat is a commercial for profit company they will do whatever their leadership and owners decides and so will their distros. Money talks as they say. To think fedora would be anything near what it is without redhat, is naive. And to think that there wouldn't be any changes long-term, as there has been in the past, and as there will be in the future, is naive as well.
So none of this should have come as a surprise for anyone. If it did, you were not thinking straight.
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@Pete-S said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
and then centos and then (I don't know were stream came into the picture)...
Stream is kinda crazy, IMHO. It's like half of CentOS and half of Fedora. The thing is, I have no idea when you'd want that. It's the worst of both, not the best of both.
It's a pretty recent thing and doesn't seem to have much traction, which makes sense as it is such a goofy product. Why would you want CentOS style problems while giving up the CentOS compatibility requires that so many products have? The idea is CentOS is used when you have to, and Fedora when you have the choice. CentOS Stream isn't as good as Fedora, and doesn't provide the singular use case that made CentOS useful.
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@Pete-S said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
Since redhat is a commercial for profit company they will do whatever their leadership and owners decides and so will their distros. Money talks as they say.
this is where things are surprising. It seems like they've decided to throw all the money away. This has to cripple IBM's Red Hat revenue potential by making RHEL go from second place in the ecosystem to "what was that distro with the goofy name, no not Yellow Dog it was something with an overcoat or.... I can't remember."
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@Pete-S said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
And to think that there wouldn't be any changes long-term, as there has been in the past, and as there will be in the future, is naive as well.
Sure, but we were hoping that IBM would act in their own interest and grow, not shrink, their ecosystem. Don't get me wrong, I was at IBM long ago and shooting themselves in the foot and playing to internal departmental politics always took precedence over any concerns at profits, so that IBM acts irrationally and unpredictably isn't that surprising. But this is so visible, so obvious, it's hard to believe that even IBM would get it wrong to this level.
That said, anyone remember that insane IBM backlash on Spiceworks? They paid to put up some advertising that basically said that IBM had invented the perfect server and that all IT people should be fired and were obsolete. Then they left the community and forbid any of their staff to respond while the community had minute by minute more and more people talking about how IBM was clueless, how they hate IT, how they had no value and no ability to defend their insane claims, that no IT person in their right minds would ever do business with them again. This went on for WEEKS.
I managed to reach an executive with IBM PR who managed to get someone in IBM to escalate it, they flew me out to NY to explain what had gone wrong and talk to the management of the team that had made the post. It was a total disaster and what should have been just an overpriced ad that got little attention turned into a hugely expensive blunder and the product never even materialized, it was such an ill conceived idea with no value (basically claiming that an underpowered AS/400 would replace the IT industry and that no one would ever need modern servers, ever, or human guidance, or maintenance.)
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@Obsolesce that's a great visualization of it!
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@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
@Obsolesce that's a great visualization of it!
Except it could easily be Fedora there also.
And Fedora is not full of idiots thinking that they use Ubuntu because LTS and never upgrade shit.
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@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/almalinux-the-centos-linux-replacement-beta-is-out/
Is it a better option now?
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@openit said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/almalinux-the-centos-linux-replacement-beta-is-out/
Is it a better option now?
Is Alma a better option? It's only beta right now. It'll be a while before we know if Alma, Rocky or some other is better. If I had to deploy today, I'd go with Oracle as it is mature and stable. Down the road, Alma or Rocky might be best. But overall, I'd try to avoid anything in the RHEL sphere of influence going forward. Alma, Rocky, even Oracle are all based on the fundamental desire for RHEL without the problems of RHEL licensing.
So if I have to, I have options. If I don't have to, I'd choose Ubuntu or Suse.
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While I understand something is not okay with CentOS, or can't rely further as free/open source. But really not sure what is this CentOS Stream.
Further, how about every software built on the top of CentOS? for example Security Onion, it's big blow at wide range I feel.
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@openit said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
But really not sure what is this CentOS Stream.
It's a rather different product than CentOS. One that falls between old CentOS and Fedora. Kind of a halfway "worst of both worlds" product.
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@openit said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
Further, how about every software built on the top of CentOS? for example Security Onion, it's big blow at wide range I feel.
Well, they are really all built on RHEL and it highlights how bad these projects are at picking their primary targets. One owned by a big vendor, and one that is an LTS are both big issues. Something meant for security on an LTS release should have been a major red flag all along. LTS and security are enemies.
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In FB, I ran a poll about "to which linux you may switch to, due to CentOS changes" in Linux Fans Group, and top 5 choices are:
- Rocky Linux
- OpenSuse
- Debian
- Oracle Linux
- RHEL Free and Paid
