SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS
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@pattonb said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
@scottalanmiller Does Red Hat's announcement of Feb. 1/2021 change anybodies opinion ?
Why would it? That they were going to be forced to make some pointless concession to keep from losing absolutely every SMB was assumed from the beginning. It was an announcement, but nothing we didn't already expect.
It remains that the CentOS gap and lack of investment, interest and faith in their own products should make any customer wary of using an IBM Linux product.
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Remember, in the past IBM has dropped their entire desktop, laptop, and Intel/AMD product lines practically overnight. RHEL fits into a similar category and we have to worry that IBM could shed the entire product family, overnight, without any notice or customer concern, and do so completely based on internal politics without ever considering the financial futures of the company.
IBMers commented on my video about this, how the CentOS decision was all internal politics and with IBM as large as it is, has essentially no oversight and random middle managers will just blow away whole divisions without researching anything because they think it'll get them a promotion or bonus in the short term.
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@scottalanmiller so basically, it has turned into a trust issue, based upon their previous behaviour. I am trying to
decide which distribution to use, as I need to build a new zimbra server( yes, I am aware of Zimbra's announcement going forward), I have almost 2 years to come up with a solution, but in the meantime..... I have an aversion to Ubuntu, but that is
based upon an experience I had a few years ago. I do like Debian, as for most of my deployments, I don't need 'bleeding edge". Any Suggestions ? -
@pattonb said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
so basically, it has turned into a trust issue, based upon their previous behaviour.
Trust is a major component. Trust, market, flexibility... it adds up.
Trust comes in many forms. Will RHEL remain free, will it remain at all, will it remain relevant, will it remain a key app target platform?
How will IBM track the number of "free" deployments that you have? Windows, even if free, would be a huge licensing hassle to track and monitor licenses. Free here is nothing like free in the sense of Ubuntu or Debian where you are free (gratis) and FREE (libre.) You have to track your deployments, you have to make sure you don't use too many. With CentOS you can deploy dozes of VMs without thinking. Every workload gets its own VM. But with RHEL, even the tiniest companies will need to rethink how they deploy. It's not like the free limit is in the thousands, its in the tens. It's so few that nearly any company where it makes sense to deploy your own workloads or to buy your own server, will want to go over (or get close to) the VM limit - especially if you start having staging, test, dev and other non-prod systems.
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@pattonb said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
I have an aversion to Ubuntu, but that is
based upon an experience I had a few years ago.I was very averse to Ubuntu for a long time, but they've changed a lot.
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@pattonb said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
I don't need 'bleeding edge"
You really should. The idea of sticking to "older" less updated systems really only hurts you. No Linux OS you've heard of provides anything bleeding edge, that's a derogatory term used to invoke an emotional reaction.
Release schedules are unrelated to being on the edge. A rolling release can still be very out of date releases and an LTS release like RHEL or Ubuntu LTS can have bleeding edge components. They don't, but they could.
You want OSes that release frequently, every half year or more. Don't equate that to being reckless, it's exactly the opposite. Slow release platforms like RHEL have proven to be the most reckless over time as they get outdated and have the hardest time keeping stable.
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@pattonb said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
I do like Debian, as for most of my deployments
Debian leans more towards bleeding edge than any Linux OS that I know. That's why it is used as the base for other, more conservative releases, like Ubuntu. Debian isn't bleeding edge, in any way, but it is moreso than Ubuntu for sure as Ubuntu waits for things to stabilize on Debian before integrating into Ubuntu.
Debian is a great choice, though, but would satisfy nothing you would have been needing CentOS for in the past.
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If you want something akin to CentOS (free, LTS, vendor backed) then you have two choices: Ubuntu LTS and OpenSuse Leaf. That's it, the only two options that roughly align with CentOS.
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@pattonb said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
yes, I am aware of Zimbra's announcement going forward
I assume that you mean this one: "Zimbra will continue to evaluate other Linux distributions that are binary compatible with RHEL, and we will validate one to take the place of CentOS in 2H 2021. We also commit to support Ubuntu 20 in 1H 2021 (adding to our support of Ubuntu 16 and 18)."
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@scottalanmiller no, the end of the open source, specifically the GUI (web mail) for users.
thanks for your comments, now I have to go and re-arrange my prejudices
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@pattonb said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
no, the end of the open source, specifically the GUI (web mail) for users.
Oh, that's a big deal. The GUI is really all that it is.
I'd look at MailCow!
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@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
@pattonb said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
I do like Debian, as for most of my deployments
Debian leans more towards bleeding edge than any Linux OS that I know. That's why it is used as the base for other, more conservative releases, like Ubuntu. Debian isn't bleeding edge, in any way, but it is moreso than Ubuntu for sure as Ubuntu waits for things to stabilize on Debian before integrating into Ubuntu.
Debian is a great choice, though, but would satisfy nothing you would have been needing CentOS for in the past.
That's a bit of an odd statement Scott.
Debian has a three releases in the works at all times.
From upstream to downstream it's:
Unstable -> Testing -> Stable- Unstable is where all new development happens and all new packages are.
- Testing is a rolling release and what Ubuntu uses as their primary upstream.
- Stable is the production release.
So Debian is always bleeding edge, very stable and in between at all times - depending on what release you use.
Debian stable undergoes a longer phase of testing and debugging before being released - compared to Ubuntu. So Debian stable certainly is the most conservative of the two and arguably the more stable one.
Debian stable don't have fixed release cycle but it's usually somewhere between two to three years for each major release. Right now it's Debian 10 and the Debian project has been going for 27 years.
Debian and Ubuntu has a symbiotic relationship. Debian has a larger scope and offers things that Ubuntu does not but Ubuntu is more specialized and as such offers things that Debian does not.
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@Pete-S said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
That's a bit of an odd statement Scott.
Debian has a three releases in the works at all times.
From upstream to downstream it's:
Unstable -> Testing -> StableUnstable is where all new development happens and all new packages are.
Testing is a rolling release and what Ubuntu uses as their primary upstream.
Stable is the production release.So Debian is always bleeding edge, very stable and in between at all times - depending on what release you use.
Not odd whatsoever. I said that Debian leans more towards bleeding edge than Ubuntu, not that it was bleeding edge. And what I said is completely true. Ubuntu starts from Debian stable (the least bleeding edge edition of Debian) and adds additional testing and support - making it even farther from the bleeding edge that the least bleeding edge edition of Debian.
None of that is bad for Debian. Remember I also said that bleeding edge isn't the bad thing that people assume. That Ubuntu is so conservative is really a negative. Not a big negative, but a negative.
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@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
Ubuntu starts from Debian stable
No, that's not true. Ubuntu start from Debian testing (and unstable to some degree).
You can clearly see it in the kernel version. Debian 10 (stable) is on 4.19 branch and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is on 5.4 and Ubuntu 20.10 is on 5.8 I believe.
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@Pete-S said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
Ubuntu starts from Debian stable
No, that's not true. Ubuntu start from Debian testing (and unstable to some degree).
You can clearly see it in the kernel version. Debian 10 (stable) is on 4.19 branch and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is on 5.4 and Ubuntu 20.10 is on 5.8 I believe.
I only researched so much, but what I found was that releases were based on stable. I thought kernels on Ubuntu were like CentOS to Oracle where Oracle locks to the RHEL/CentOS release, but then offers a massively more current kernel for performance and stability reasons.
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@Pete-S said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
Ubuntu starts from Debian stable
No, that's not true. Ubuntu start from Debian testing (and unstable to some degree).
You can clearly see it in the kernel version. Debian 10 (stable) is on 4.19 branch and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is on 5.4 and Ubuntu 20.10 is on 5.8 I believe.
Newly installed Debian 10.8 system I setup on Friday.
jbusch@dt-jared ~]$ ssh daerma-eq Linux eq 4.19.0-14-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.171-2 (2021-01-30) x86_64 -
@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
@Pete-S said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
Ubuntu starts from Debian stable
No, that's not true. Ubuntu start from Debian testing (and unstable to some degree).
You can clearly see it in the kernel version. Debian 10 (stable) is on 4.19 branch and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is on 5.4 and Ubuntu 20.10 is on 5.8 I believe.
I only researched so much, but what I found was that releases were based on stable. I thought kernels on Ubuntu were like CentOS to Oracle where Oracle locks to the RHEL/CentOS release, but then offers a massively more current kernel for performance and stability reasons.
I understand. No Ubuntu has newer packages all over and is not based on Debian stable.
It's based on unstable and testing. I don't know enough about Ubuntu so I can't say how much from each or what process they use.What you normally do on Debian if you need a newer kernel is to just run stable and install a newer kernel from the Debian Backports repository. There you have a selection of newer packages that has been backported to stable.
But Debian stable never becomes as old as RHEL/CentOS so the need for newer kernels on servers is not prevalent.
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@Pete-S said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
What you normally do on Debian if you need a newer kernel is to just run stable and install a newer kernel from the Debian Backports repository. There you have a selection of newer packages that has been backported to stable.
Yeah, I had to do that just last week
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@Pete-S said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
But Debian stable never becomes as old as RHEL/CentOS so the need for newer kernels on servers is not prevalent.
Yeah, RHEL gets so ridiculously out of date.
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@JaredBusch said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
@Pete-S said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: IBM Is Killing Off CentOS:
Ubuntu starts from Debian stable
No, that's not true. Ubuntu start from Debian testing (and unstable to some degree).
You can clearly see it in the kernel version. Debian 10 (stable) is on 4.19 branch and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is on 5.4 and Ubuntu 20.10 is on 5.8 I believe.
Newly installed Debian 10.8 system I setup on Friday.
jbusch@dt-jared ~]$ ssh daerma-eq Linux eq 4.19.0-14-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.171-2 (2021-01-30) x86_64Yes, Debian stable normally uses the LTS release of the linux kernel.
So 4.19 was the last LTS release of 4.x
Then you had 5.4 and 5.10 is now the latest LTS release.So Debian 11 will almost certainly use the 5.10 kernel. Debian 11 has no official release date but it expected to be somewhere around summer time this year.
