I would like to echo the thanks in this post, and to add a bit of
information that I have learned doing some quick research on where to
go. Scientific Linux is basically no more, they deferred to Centos and
pretty much ended their distribution.
Oracle seems to be the easiest and quickest migration, they have a
script which will make all of the changes to your server, switching you
over to the Oracle flavor of Linux. On the horizon is Rocky Linux, a
start up from the people who brought you Centos. As well as Cloud OS who
says they are going to pick up where Centos left off, and continue a
down stream version of the product. Worst case, we / you will have
Oracle to fall back on if Rocky Linux or Cloud OS doesn't come through..
But once again, a BIG THANK YOU to Centos for all the years of work.
John Plemons
On 12/16/2020 11:45 AM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
My apologies about top posting.
I join Matthew on all counts.
The following might sound as a rant, but it is not, given the
circumstances we have been put into.
First, and most important: thank you CentOS team for all great work
youhave done during all these years. As user who used results of your
work without giving much back (not counting maintaining public mirror,
or helping others on the list whenever I felt my expertise adequate),
I can not express how high I value what you gave to all of us.
Now, that CentOS as we knew it (as a “binary replica” of RedHat
Enterprise) ceases to exist many of us are trying to figure out new
long term solution for their “enterprise” sort of systems. Luckily I
only partly have to do that, as for servers I already didmigration
quite long ago. My mentioning it on this list was causing
moreannoyance than I would like to, so I stopped mentioning it. But
now it is time to mention it again, just to help everyone arrive at
best decision. But first some thoughts on migration to different Linux
Distro:
One of obvious possibilities is to migrate to some other “binary
clone” of RHEL. One can find several, Oracle Linux (even thoughmany
are cautious of Oracle, they - Oracle - didn’t drown out ofexistence
mysql so far, maybe thanks to mariadb fork existence, …), Scientific
Linux (which is effort of really small team, and I evaluated it well
below CentOS when I had to make decision, and it confirmed trueover
time), and others... However, once RedHat (or rather its owner
IBM)made fundamental decision, it is not as much about the one who
clones (binary rebuilds) of RHEL, as it is about RHEL itself. At least
fo me it is. As, by undermining trust, even if they roll everything
back to what it was, the trust is already lost by the knowledge of
everyone that any moment they can do that in a future. This
alternative is just out of question for me. Will I maintain RHEL for
my current or potential future employer? Yes, definitely. Will I
recommend fair (and way cheaper, better, longer lasting) alternative?
By all means, yes, and with my experience of migration, and documented
migration steps, etc...
Another possibility for pure Linux folks is switch to different
distro.Not with 10 years life cycle (here RedHat was unique), but
shorter one, yet with much easier upgrade from one release to another.
[Even knowing about Ubuntu LTS] Debian would be my choice, which I am
going to pursue for CentOS number crunchers and workstations I
maintain. Laptops are Debianclone Ubuntu since long ago. This will be
“rolling release", i.e. mostly you will have to upgrade packages to
latest release, and constantly will take chance something will break
with change of internals of given software from one release to
another. It will be more work (for 24/7/365 servers most gravely
notable). But it may outweigh the single event when your “enterprise”
life is cancelled one day, and youhave to redo the whole
infrastructure all at once. Think about it and about peace of mind
avoiding that eventuality.
This leads me at last to telling that my sever infrastructure was
migrated long ago to FreeBSD. One can chose different BSD successor
based on one’s own assessment of suitability. First of all, pure Linux
folk, it is not that challenging as one may think. I would say here
the same thing I was telling to my users who we just starting to use
UNIX (or Linux). How many command do you need to know to start using
UNIX? Just 5-6 isenough. Start doing things, and in a couple of Months
you will feel you know everything. In 6 Months you will be top expert:
the one who knows what he knows and knows what he doesn’t know. My
choice was based on the following facts: FreeBSD is most widely used
(even Microsoft was once noticed to run some of their servers on
FreeBSD). FreeBSD has excellent documentation. FreeBSD community is as
eager to help the one who got stuck with something as our CentOS
community is. They have as excellent experts as Johnny, Matthew, ...
sorry I can not mention everyone, that will take separate huge post...
And now, with my servers gone to FreeBSD long ago, I can share this
nice experience. On FreeBSD (base system is separate, and Linux, BTW,
decided to go same excellent way), and extra stuff can be added from
huge port collection, most part of which is available as binary
packages. Ports/packages are up to their maintainers, and pretty much
all of the ones I use are available as different versions, still
maintained and patched, so younot necessarily have to upgrade to
latest version when it is released. In this respect, individual ports
or packages can live as “enterprise” portions of your ecosystem
themselves (each with its own life cycle, still…) This actually is not
as challenging as it may sound, as long before end of life of some
package version (like PHP-5), at every update you will get warning
that it will be end of life soon (starts multiple Months before the
day it is going to happen…).
Anyway, what I am leading to is: life with FreeBSD is not as
challenging as it may seem before you try. Just try it. And it is more
“enterprisish” than with Linux “rolling release” in my opinion. Though
I must confess, I have much less “rolling” Linux release server
experience, than I have FreeBSD experience.
I did not even mention FreeBSD jails which essentially are containers
with the same base system mounted read-only (or you can several base
system versions, e.g. 12.x and 11.x for some or another jails).
Anyway, jails can be long separate post…
The length of my post suggests that it is a “log goodbye”which it
probably will be.
Thanks again to CentOS, the hard working excellent team. Whatever
fallson you from us has nothing to do with you, but rather with
RHEL/IBM, andthe trust they decided to throw out of window.
Valeri
On Dec 15, 2020, at 7:04 PM, Phelps, Matthew
<mphe...@cfa.harvard.edu>wrote:
On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 7:41 PM Johnny Hughes <joh...@centos.org> wrote:
On 12/15/20 6:12 PM, Joshua Kramer wrote:
I don't think there will be a course change either, but for different
reasons. The motivation isn't "cashing/selling out". It's... actually
the
stated motivation
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q2
First, I will note that I think the idea of creating *a version of*
CentOS that is called "Stream", with the intent that it leads RHEL by
a bit, is a GREAT idea, for exactly the stated reasons!
There's one problem I have with this asserted motivation. Stream is
not being done as *a version of* CentOS. It is being done as *THE*
CentOS, which means you're discontinuing point releases. As far as
"maintaining CentOS point releases to follow RHEL"- this is what is
being discontinued. How much money, in developer time and other
incidentals, does this cost RedHat per year? Of course this is a
proprietary number. But let's imagine that this number is $250k per
year. Out of what was it, about $433M of profit (2019)? So it would
cost RedHat 0.06% of profit to hire more developers to keep issuing
CentOS point releases.
What does RedHat "buy" in return for spending 0.06% of its profit on
maintaining point releases?
-Community trust and goodwill. Those members of the community that
cannot afford RedHat licenses for whatever reason still know that the
#1 player in the Linux marketplace still has their back. Then when
those folks move on to enterprises that can afford RH licensing (and
in some cases demand it), will select RedHat because of this trust and
goodwill. They will be highly likely to recommend other RedHat
products- since it all "works together" and they'll know RHEL (i.e.
CentOS) well. Also note that this trust and goodwill means
"convenience", even within enterprises that have a large budget with
RedHat. If I have a project and I want to spin up 100 OS instances
just for the heck of it, I can. I don't need to ask anyone, I don't
need to reserve or download any entitlement key files. I don't need
to debug weird problems when entitlement key files don't work.
-Control of part of the ecosystem. Those companies that build their
products to run on RHEL (or in RHEL containers) are able to (and
encouraged to) certify those products on RHEL because they are able to
use CentOS.
But more to the point, what does RedHat LOSE by saving 0.06% of its
profit? The damage to community trust and goodwill far exceeds the
gains that would be realized if the status quo were kept in place.
Yes, it's true that many of the folks who used CentOS would never turn
into paying customers. But due to this situation, you have thousands
of system administrators who are actively looking to completely
abandon the RedHat ecosystem altogether. When it comes time to
recommend products... they aren't going to recommend RHEL. They
aren't going to recommend JBoss, or Fuse, or 3Scale API management.
It's clear that RedHat can't be trusted with some parts of its
portfolio, so why should we trust ANY of its products?
So don't trust them. Move to something else if you think something is
better.
If it is 100% factually correct that the ONLY motivation for killing
point releases is the stated motivation, then it's just a simple
matter of finding a spare $250k (or whatever that cost is) from the
almost-half-a-billion dollar corporate coin purse. The return on
investment has been, and will continue to be, immeasurable...
$250K is not even close. That is one employee, when you also take into
account unemployment insurance, HR, medical insurance etc. now multiply
that by 8. Now, outfit those 8 employees to work from home .. all over
the world, different countries, different laws.
.. THEN buy 30 machines minimum (servers, not workstations) for
building and testing, buy a service contract for those 30 machines, host
the bandwidth required to sync out to 600 worldwide servers.
We need all the CI machines .. that is a bunch of blade servers for
that. They need service contacts too.
In any event it doesn't matter. The decision is made. If people don't
want to use CentOS Stream, then don't. The decision is not changing.
_______________________________________________
We won't.
Thanks for all your work in the past. Good luck to you.
And to Red Hat I have one more thing to say:
Buh bye!
###
--
*Matt Phelps*
*Information Technology Specialist, Systems Administrator*
(Computation Facility, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory)
Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
60 Garden Street | MS 39 | Cambridge, MA 02138
email: mphe...@cfa.harvard.edu
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