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Home | Switchboard | Unix Administration | Red Hat | TCP/IP Networks | Neoliberalism | Toxic Managers |
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If you now can't stand what Red Hat's done with CentOS, there are other Linux alternatives. Writing was on the wall in any case. Debian and, what is more important, Devuan are still alive and well. And there are at least three viable CentOS clones
The exact role IBM brass played in this fateful decision is an open question, but I think that IBM served as a catalyst to long standing resentment of Red Hat brass about the role CentOS played in their licensing scheme and its effect on executive bonuses and profitability of the company, GPL by damned (zdnet.com )
...former Red Hat executive confided, "CentOS was gutting sales. The customer perception was 'it's from Red Hat and it's a clone of RHEL, so it's good to go!' It's not. It's a second-rate copy." From where, this person sits, "This is 100% defensive to stave off more losses to CentOS."
Still another ex-Red Hat official said. If it wasn't for CentOS, Red Hat would have been a 10-billion dollar company before Red Hat became a billion-dollar business.
Yet another Red Hat staffer snapped,
"Look at the CentOS FAQ. It says right there:
CentOS Linux is NOT Red Hat Linux, it is NOT Fedora Linux. It is NOT Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is NOT RHEL. CentOS Linux does NOT contain Red Hat® Linux, Fedora, or Red Hat® Enterprise Linux.
CentOS Linux is NOT a clone of Red Hat® Enterprise Linux.
CentOS Linux is built from publicly available source code provided by Red Hat, Inc for Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a completely different (CentOS Project maintained) build system.
We don't owe you anything."
Meanwhile Red Hat suffered some temporary damage to its brands name and standing. But as systemd fiasco prove they have power to push anything they want on the community and actually destroy Unix as we know it by making it more close to "Microsoft windows" with all those databases instead of text files.
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Jan 02, 2021 | access.redhat.com
Ensure that you have an access to RHEL packages through custom repositories configured in the
/etc/yum.repos.d/directory and pointing, for example, to RHEL ISO , FTP, or HTTP. Note that the OS will be converted to the version of RHEL provided by these repositories. Make sure that the RHEL minor version is the same or later than the original OS minor version to prevent downgrading and potential conversion failures. See instructions on how to configure a repository .Recommended: Update packages from the original OS to the latest version that is available in the repositories accessible from the system, and restart the system:
Raw# yum update -y # restartWithout performing this step, the rollback feature will not work correctly, and exiting the conversion in any phase may result in a dysfunctional system.
IMPORTANT:
Converting the system
Before starting the conversion process, back up your system.Troubleshooting Logs
Start
RawConvert2RHELusing custom repositories:# convert2rhel --disable-submgr --enablerepo <RHEL_RepoID> --debugReplace RHEL_RepoID with your custom repository configured in the
/etc/yum.repos.d/directory, for example,rhel-7-server-rpms.To display all available options, use the
Raw-h,--helpoption:# convert2rhel -hNOTE: Packages that are available only in the original distribution and do not have corresponding counterparts in RHEL repositories, or third-party packages, which originate neither from the original Linux distribution nor from RHEL, are left unchanged.
Before
RawConvert2RHELstarts replacing packages from the original distribution with RHEL packages, the following warning message is displayed:The tool allows rollback of any action until this point. By continuing all further changes on the system will need to be reverted manually by the user, if necessary.Changes made by
Convert2RHELup to this point can be automatically reverted. Confirm that you wish to proceed with the conversion process.Wait until
Convert2RHELinstalls the RHEL packages.NOTE: After a successful conversion, the utility prints out the
convert2rhelcommand with all arguments necessary for running non-interactively. You can copy the command and use it on systems with a similar setup.At this point, the system still runs with the original distribution kernel loaded in RAM. Reboot the system to boot into the newly installed RHEL kernel.
Raw# rebootRemove third-party packages from the original OS that remained unchanged (typically packages that do not have a RHEL counterpart). To get a list of such packages, use:
Raw# yum list extras --disablerepo="*" --enablerepo=<RHEL_RepoID>If necessary, reconfigure system services after the conversion.
The
Convert2RHELutility stores theconvert2rhel.logfile in the/var/log/convert2rhel/directory. Its content is identical to what is printed to the standard output.The output of the
rpm -Vacommand, which is run automatically unless the--no-rpm-vaoption is used, is stored in the/var/log/convert2rhel/rpm_va.logfile for debugging purposes.Stefan Vtr 1 July 2020 6:24 AM
Michal Bocek 1 July 2020 8:30 AMThe Link to "instructions on how to configure a repository." is not working (404). Also it would be great if the tool installs the repos that are needed for the conversion itself.
Thanks, Stefan, for pointing that out. Before we fix that, you can use this link: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/system_administrators_guide/ch-yum#sec-Setting_repository_Options
Regarding the second point of yours - this article explains how to use convert2rhel with custom repositories. Since Red Hat does not have the RHEL repositories public, we leave it up to the user where they obtain the RHEL repositories. For example, when they have a subscribed RHEL system in their company, they can create a mirror of the RHEL repositories available on that system by following this guide: https://access.redhat.com/solutions/23016.
However, convert2rhel is also able to connect to Red Hat Subscription Management (RHSM), and for that you need to provide the subscription-manager package and pass the subscription credentials to convert2rhel. Then the convert2rhel chooses the right repository to use for the conversion. You can find the step by step guide for that in https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/converting-centos-rhel-convert2rhel-and-satellite.
We are working on improving the user experience related to the use of RHSM.
Ari Lemmke 10 September 2020 12:31 AM
- This system could have been done much much much much better.
- I do not see any point for this utility if it does not work .. i.e. is "working" like this.
- Nice that it rollbacks everything. For rollbacking feature it gets 1 out of 10 points.
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Jan 01, 2021 | www.reddit.com
If you are on CentOS-7 then you will probably be okay until RedHat pulls the plug on 2024-06-30 so do don't do anything rash. If you are on CentOS-8 then your days are numbered (to ~ 365) because this OS will shift from major-minor point updates to a streaming model at the end of 2021. Let's look at two early founders: SUSE started in Germany in 1991 whilst RedHat started in America a year later. SUSE sells support for SLE (Suse Linux Enterprise) which means you need a license to install-run-update-upgrade it. Likewise RedHat sells support for RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux). SUSE also offers "openSUSE Leap" (released once a year as a major-minor point release of SLE) and "openSUSE Tumbleweed" (which is a streaming thingy). A couple of days ago I installed "OpenSUSE Leap" onto an old HP-Compaq 6000 desktop just to try it out (the installer actually had a few features I liked better than the CentOS-7 installer). When I get back to the office in two weeks, I'm going to try installing "OpenSUSE Leap" onto an HP-DL385p_gen8. I'll work with this for a few months and I am comfortable, I will migrate my employer's solution over to "OpenSUSE Leap".
Parting thoughts:
7 comments 47% Upvoted Log in or sign up to leave a comment Log In Sign Up Sort by
openSUSE is run out of Germany. IMHO switching over to a European distro is similar to those database people who preferred MariaDB to MySQL when Oracle was still hoping that MySQL would die from neglect.
Someone cracked off to me the other day that now that IBM is pulling strings at "Red Hat", that the company should be renamed "Blue Hat"
level 1
general-noob 4 points · 3 days ago
servingwater 2 points · 3 days agoI downloaded and tried it last week and was actually pretty impressed. I have only ever tested SUSE in the past. Honestly, I'll stick with Red Hat/CentOS whatever, but I was still impressed. I'd recommend people take a look.
neilrieck 2 points · 2 days agoI have been playing with OpenSUSE a bit, too. Very solid this time around. In the past I never had any luck with it. But Leap 15.2 is doing fine for me. Just testing it virtually. TW also is pretty sweet and if I were to use a rolling release, it would be among the top contenders.
One thing I don't like with OpenSUSE is that you can't really, or are not supposed to I guess, disable the root account. You can't do it at install, if you leave the root account blank suse, will just assign the password for the user you created to it.
Of course afterwards you can disable it with the proper commands but it becomes a pain with YAST, as it seems YAST insists on being opened by root.gdhhorn 1 point · 2 days agoThanks for that "heads about" about root
servingwater 1 point · 2 days agoOne thing I don't like with OpenSUSE is that you can't really, or are not supposed to I guess, disable the root account. You can't do it at install, if you leave the root account blank suse, will just assign the password for the user you created to it.
I'm running Leap 15.2 on the laptops my kids run for school. During installation, I simply deselected the option for the account used to be an administrator; this required me to set a different password for administrative purposes.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your comment.
gdhhorn 2 points · 2 days agoI think you might.
My point is/was that if I select to choose my regular user to be admin, I don't expect for the system to create and activate a root account anyways and then just assign it my password.
I expect the root account to be disabled.servingwater 1 point · 2 days agoI didn't realize it made a user, 'root,' and auto generated a password. I'd always assumed if I said to make the user account admin, that was it.
TIL, thanks.
I was surprised, too. I was bit "shocked" when I realized, after the install, that I could login as root with my user password.
At the very least, IMHO, it should then still have you set the root password, even if you choose to make your user admin.
It for one lets you know that OpenSUSE is not disabling root and two gives you a chance to give it a different password.
But other than that subjective issue I found OpenSUSE Leap a very solid distro.
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Jan 01, 2021 | www.reddit.com
The big academic labs (Fermilab, CERN and DESY to only name three of many used to run something called Scientific Linux which was also maintained by Red Hat.see: https://scientificlinux.org/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Linux Shortly after Red Hat acquired CentOS in 2014, Red Hat convinced the big academic labs to begin migrating over to CentOS (no one at that time thought that Red Hat would become Blue Hat) 11 comments 67% Upvoted Log in or sign up to leave a comment Log In Sign Up Sort by
phil_g 14 points · 2 days ago
To clarify, as a user of Scientific Linux:
Scientific Linux is not and was not maintained by Red Hat. Like CentOS, when it was truly a community distribution, Scientific Linux was an independent rebuild of the RHEL source code published by Red Hat. It is maintained primarily by people at Fermilab. (It's slightly different from CentOS in that CentOS aimed for binary compatibility with RHEL, while that is not a goal of Scientific Linux. In practice, SL often achieves binary compatibility, but if you have issues with that, it's more up to you to fix them than the SL maintainers.)
I don't know anything about Red Hat convincing institutions to stop using Scientific Linux; the first I heard about the topic was in April 2019 when Fermilab announced there would be no Scientific Linux 8 . (They may reverse that decision. At the moment, they're " investigating the best path forward ", with a decision to be announced in the first few months of 2021.) level 2 neilrieck 4 points · 2 days ago
Niarbeht 16 points · 2 days agoI fear you are correct. I just stumbled onto this article: https://www.linux.com/training-tutorials/scientific-linux-great-distro-wrong-name/ Even the wikipedia article states "This product is derived from the free and open-source software made available by Red Hat, but is not produced, maintained or supported by them." But it does seem that Scientific Linux was created as a replacement for Fermilab Linux. I've also seen references to CC7 to mean "Cern Centos 7". CERN is keeping their Linux page up to date because what I am seeing here ( https://linux.web.cern.ch/ ) today is not what I saw 2-weeks ago.
There are
deja_geek 9 points · 2 days agoThere are
Uh oh, guys, they got him!
meat_bunny 10 points · 2 days agoRedHat didn't convince them to stop using Scientific Linux, Fermilab no longer needed to have their own rebuild of RHEL sources. They switched to CentOS and modified CentOS if they needed to (though I don't really think they needed to)
carlwgeorge 2 points · 2 days agoMaintaining your own distro is a pain in the ass.
My crystal ball says they'll just use whatever RHEL rebuild floats to the top in a few months like the rest of us.
VestoMSlipher 1 point · 11 hours agoSL has always been an independent rebuild. It has never been maintained, sponsored, or owned by Red Hat. They decided on their own to not build 8 and instead collaborate on CentOS. They even gained representation on the CentOS board (one from Fermi, one from CERN).
I'm not affiliated with any of those organizations, but my guess is they will switch to some combination of CentOS Stream and RHEL (under the upcoming no/low cost program).
https://linux.web.cern.ch/#information-on-change-of-end-of-life-for-centos-8
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Jan 01, 2021 | forums.centos.org
Re: CentOS HAS BEEN CANCELLED !!!
Post by whoop " 2020/12/08 20:00:36
Is anybody considering switching to RHEL's free non-production developer subscription? As I understand it, it is free and receives updates.
The only downside as I understand it is that you have to renew your license every year (and that you can't use it in commercial production).
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Dec 15, 2020 Simon Coter Blog
... ... ...
We published a blog post earlier this week that explains why , but here is the TL;DR version:
- Oracle Linux is free to download, distribute and use (even in production) and has been since its release over 14 years ago
- Installation media, updates and source code are all publicly available on the Oracle Linux yum server with no login or authentication requirements
- Since its first release in 2006, Oracle Linux has been 100% application binary compatible with the equivalent RHEL version. In that time, we have never had a compatibility bug logged.
For these reasons, we created a simple script to allow users to switch from CentOS to Oracle Linux about five years ago. This week, we moved the script to GitHub to allow members of the CentOS community to help us improve and extend the script to cover more CentOS respins and use cases.
The script can switch CentOS Linux 6, 7 or 8 to the equivalent version of Oracle Linux. Let's take a look at just how simple the process is.
Download the centos2ol.sh script from GitHubRun the centos2ol.sh script to switch to Oracle LinuxThe simplest way to get the script is to use curl :
$ curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/oracle/centos2ol/main/centos2ol.sh % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 10747 100 10747 0 0 31241 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 31241If you have git installed, you could clone the git repository from GitHub instead.
Switching the default kernel (optional)To switch to Oracle Linux, just run the script as root using sudo :
$ sudo bash centos2ol.shAs part of the process, the default kernel is switched to the latest release of Oracle's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) to enable extensive performance and scalability improvements to the process scheduler, memory management, file systems, and the networking stack. We also replace the existing CentOS kernel with the equivalent Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK) which may be required by any specific hardware or application that has imposed strict kernel version restrictions.
Once the switch is complete, but before rebooting, the default kernel can be changed back to the RHCK. First, use grubby to list all installed kernels:
[demo@c8switch ~]$ sudo grubby --info=ALL | grep ^kernel [sudo] password for demo: kernel="/boot/vmlinuz-5.4.17-2036.101.2.el8uek.x86_64" kernel="/boot/vmlinuz-4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64" kernel="/boot/vmlinuz-4.18.0-193.el8.x86_64" kernel="/boot/vmlinuz-0-rescue-0dbb9b2f3c2744779c72a28071755366"In the output above, the first entry (index 0) is UEK R6, based on the mainline kernel version 5.4. The second kernel is the updated RHCK (Red Hat Compatible Kernel) installed by the switch process while the third one is the kernel that were installed by CentOS and the final entry is the rescue kernel.
Next, use grubby to verify that UEK is currently the default boot option:
[demo@c8switch ~]$ sudo grubby --default-kernel /boot/vmlinuz-5.4.17-2036.101.2.el8uek.x86_64To replace the default kernel, you need to specify either the path to its vmlinuz file or its index. Use grubby to get that information for the replacement:
[demo@c8switch ~]$ sudo grubby --info /boot/vmlinuz-4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64 index=1 kernel="/boot/vmlinuz-4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64" args="ro crashkernel=auto resume=/dev/mapper/cl-swap rd.lvm.lv=cl/root rd.lvm.lv=cl/swap rhgb quiet $tuned_params" root="/dev/mapper/cl-root" initrd="/boot/initramfs-4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64.img $tuned_initrd" title="Oracle Linux Server (4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64) 8.3" id="0dbb9b2f3c2744779c72a28071755366-4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64"Finally, use grubby to change the default kernel, either by providing the vmlinuz path:
[demo@c8switch ~]$ sudo grubby --set-default /boot/vmlinuz-4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64 The default is /boot/loader/entries/0dbb9b2f3c2744779c72a28071755366-4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64.conf with index 1 and kernel /boot/vmlinuz-4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64Or its index:
[demo@c8switch ~]$ sudo grubby --set-default-index 1 The default is /boot/loader/entries/0dbb9b2f3c2744779c72a28071755366-4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64.conf with index 1 and kernel /boot/vmlinuz-4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64Changing the default kernel can be done at any time, so we encourage you to take UEK for a spin before switching back.
It's easy to access, try it out.
- Switch from CentOS to Oracle Linux
- Installation media and updates freely available from the Oracle Linux yum server .
- UEK source code on GitHub
For more information visit oracle.com/linux .
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Dec 30, 2020 | arstechnica.com
The last of the RHEL downstreams up for discussion today is Hewlett-Packard Enterprise's in-house distro, ClearOS . Hewlett-Packard makes ClearOS available as a pre-installed option on its ProLiant server line, and the company offers a free Community version to all comers.
ClearOS is an open source software platform that leverages the open source model to deliver a simplified, low cost hybrid IT experience for SMBs. The value of ClearOS is the integration of free open source technologies making it easier to use. By not charging for open source, ClearOS focuses on the value SMBs gain from the integration so SMBs only pay for the products and services they need and value.
ClearOS is mostly notable here for its association with industry giant HPE and its availability as an OEM distro on ProLiant servers. It seems to be a bit behind the times -- the most recent version is ClearOS 7.x, which is in turn based on RHEL 7. In addition to being a bit outdated compared with other options, it also appears to be a rolling release itself -- more comparable to CentOS Stream itself, than to the CentOS Linux that came before it.
ClearOS is probably most interesting to small business types who might consider buying ProLiant servers with RHEL-compatible OEM Linux pre-installed later.
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Dec 30, 2020 | arstechnica.com
Springdale Linux
I've seen a lot of folks mistakenly recommending the deceased Scientific Linux distro as a CentOS replacement -- that won't work, because Scientific Linux itself was deprecated in favor of CentOS. However, Springdale Linux is very similar -- like Scientific Linux, it's a RHEL rebuild distro made by and for the academic scientific community. Unlike Scientific Linux, it's still actively maintained!
Springdale Linux is maintained and made available by Princeton and Rutgers universities, who use it for their HPC projects. It has been around for quite a long time. One Springdale Linux user from Carnegie Mellon describes their own experience with Springdale (formerly PUIAS -- Princeton University Institute for Advanced Study) as a 10-year ride.
Theresa Arzadon-Labajo, one of Springdale Linux's maintainers, gave a pretty good seat-of-the-pants overview in a recent mailing list discussion :
The School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study has been using Springdale (formerly PUIAS, then PU_IAS) since its inception. All of our *nix servers and workstations (yes, workstations) are running Springdale. On the server side, everything "just works", as is expected from a RHEL clone. On the workstation side, most of the issues we run into have to do with NVIDIA drivers, and glibc compatibility issues (e.g Chrome, Dropbox, Skype, etc), but most issues have been resolved or have a workaround in place.
... Springdale is a community project, and [it] mostly comes down to the hours (mostly Josko) that we can volunteer to the project. The way people utilize Springdale varies. Some are like us and use the whole thing. Others use a different OS and use Springdale just for its computational repositories.
Springdale Linux should be a natural fit for universities and scientists looking for a CentOS replacement. It will likely work for most anyone who needs it -- but its relatively small community and firm roots in academia will probably make it the most comfortable for those with similar needs and environments.
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Dec 30, 2020 | distrowatch.com
64 • "best idea" ... (by Otis on 2020-12-25 19:38:01 GMT from United States)
@62 dang it BSD takes care of all that anxiety about systemd and the other bloaty-with-time worries as far as I can tell. GhostBSD and a few others are spearheading a charge into the face of The Enemy, making BSD palatable for those of us steeped in Linux as the only alternative to we know who.
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Dec 30, 2020 | distrowatch.com
• Centos (by David on 2020-12-22 04:29:46 GMT from United States)
I was using Centos 8.2 on an older, desktop home computer. When Centos dropped long term support on version 8, I was a little peeved, but not a whole lot, since it is free, anyway. Out of curiosity I installed Scientific Linux 7.9 on the same computer, and it works better that Centos 8. Then I tried installing SL 7.9 on my old laptop -- it even worked on that!Previously, when I had tried to install Centos 8 on the laptop, an old Dell inspiron 1501, the graphics were garbage --the screen displayed kind of a color mosaic --and the keyboard/everthing else was locked up. I also tried Centos 7.9 on it and installation from minimal dvd produced a bunch of errors and then froze part way through.
I will stick with Scientific Linux 7 for now. In 2024 I will worry about which distro to migrate to. Note: Scientific Linux websites states that they are going to reconsider (in 1st quarter of 2021) whether they will produce a clone of rhel version 8. Previously, they stated that they would not.
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Dec 30, 2020 | distrowatch.com
52 • Springdale vs. CentOS (by whoKnows on 2020-12-23 05:39:01 GMT from Switzerland)
@51 • Personal opinion only. (by R. Cain)
"Personal opinion only. [...] After all the years of using Linux, and experiencing first-hand the hobby mentality that has taken over [...], I prefer to use a distribution which has all the earmarks of [...] being developed AND MAINTAINED by a professional organization."
Yeah, your answer is exactly what I expected it to be.
The thing with Springdale is as following: it's maintained by the very professional team of IT specialists at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton University) for the own needs. That's why there's no fancy website, RHEL Wiki, live ISOs and such.
They also maintain several other repositories for add-on packages (computing, unsupported [with audio/video codecs] ...).
With other words, if you're a professional who needs an RHEL clone, you'll be fine with it; if you're a hobbyist who needs a how-to on everything and anything, you can still use the knowledge base of RHEL/CentOS/Oracle ...
If you're 'small business' who needs a professional support, you'd get RHEL - unlike CentOS, Springdale is not a commercial distribution selling you support and schooling. Springdale is made by professional and for the professionals.
https://www.ias.edu/math/computing/Springdale-Linux
https://researchcomputing.princeton.edu/faq/what-is-a-cluster
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Dec 30, 2020 | blog.microlinux.fr
In 2010 I had the opportunity to put my hands in the shambles of Oracle Linux during an installation and training mission carried out on behalf of ASF (Highways of the South of France) which is now called Vinci Autoroutes. I had just published Linux on the onions at Eyrolles, and since the CentOS 5.3 distribution on which it was based looked 99% like Oracle Linux 5.3 under the hood, I had been chosen by the company ASF to train their future Linux administrators.
All these years, I knew that Oracle Linux existed, as did another series of Red Hat clones like CentOS, Scientific Linux, White Box Enterprise Linux, Princeton University's PUIAS project, etc. I didn't care any more, since CentOS perfectly met all my server needs.
Following the disastrous announcement of the CentOS project, I had a discussion with my compatriot Michael Kofler, a Linux guru who has published a series of excellent books on our favorite operating system, and who has migrated from CentOS to Oracle Linux for the Linux ad administration courses he teaches at the University of Graz. We were not in our first discussion on this subject, as the CentOS project was already accumulating a series of rather worrying delays for version 8 updates. In comparison, Oracle Linux does not suffer from these structural problems, so I kept this option in a corner of my head.
A problematic reputationOracle suffers from a problematic reputation within the free software community, for a variety of reasons. It was the company that ruined OpenOffice and Java, put the hook on MySQL and let Solaris sink. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has been the center of his name because of his unhinged support for Donald Trump. As for the company's commercial policy, it has been marked by a notorious aggressiveness in the hunt for patents.
On the other hand, we have free and free apps like VirtualBox, which run perfectly on millions of developer workstations all over the world. And then the very discreet Oracle Linux , which works perfectly and without making any noise since 2006, and which is also a free and free operating system.
Install Oracle LinuxFor a first test, I installed Oracle Linux 7.9 and 8.3 in two virtual machines on my workstation. Since it is a Red Hat Enterprise Linux-compliant clone, the installation procedure is identical to that of RHEL and CentOS, with a few small details.
An indestructible kernel?
Normally, I never care about banner ads that scroll through graphic installers. This time, the slogan Free to use, free to download, free to update. Always still caught my attention.
Oracle Linux provides its own Linux kernel newer than the one provided by Red Hat, and named Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK). This kernel is installed by default and replaces older kernels provided upstream for versions 7 and 8. Here's what it looks like oracle Linux 7.9.
$ uname -a Linux oracle-el7 5.4.17-2036.100.6.1.el7uek.x86_64 #2 SMP Thu Oct 29 17:04:48 PDT 2020 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/LinuxWell-crafted packet depositsAt first glance, the organization of official and semi-official package filings seems much clearer and better organized than under CentOS. For details, I refer you to the respective explanatory pages for the 7.x and 8.x versions.
Well-structured documentationLike the organization of deposits, Oracle Linux's documentation is worth mentioning here, because it is simply exemplary. The main index refers to the different versions of Oracle Linux, and from there, you can access a whole series of documents in HTML and PDF formats that explain in detail the peculiarities of the system and its day-to-day management. As I go along with this documentation, I discover a multitude of pleasant little details, such as the fact that Oracle packages display metadata for security updates, which is not the case for CentOS packages.
Migrating from CentOS to Oracle LinuxThe Switch your CentOS systems to Oracle Linux web page identifies a number of reasons why Oracle Linux is a better choice than CentOS when you want to have a company-grade free as in free beer operating system, which provides low-risk updates for each version over a decade. This page also features a script that transforms an existing CentOS system into a two-command Oracle Linux system on the fly.
centos2ol.shSo I tested this script on a CentOS 7 server from Online/Scaleway.
# curl -O https://linux.oracle.com/switch/centos2ol.sh # chmod +x centos2ol.sh # ./centos2ol.shThe script grinds about twenty minutes, we restart the machine and we end up with a clean Oracle Linux system. To do some cleaning, just remove the deposits of saved packages.
# rm -f /etc/yum.repos.d/*.repo.deactivatedMigrating a CentOS 8.x server?At first glance, the script only predicted the migration of CentOS 7.9 to Oracle Linux 7.9. On a whim, I sent an email to the address at the bottom of the page, asking if support for CentOS 8.x was expected in the near future.
centos2ol.shA very nice exchange of emails ensued with a guy from Oracle, who patiently answered all the questions I asked him. And just twenty-four hours later, he sent me a link to an Oracle Github repository with an updated version of the script that supports the on-the-fly migration of CentOS 8.x to Oracle Linux 8.x.
So I tested it with a cool installation of a CentOS 8 server at Online/Scaleway.
# yum install git # git clone https://github.com/oracle/centos2ol.git # cd centos2ol/ # chmod +x centos2ol.sh # ./centos2ol.shAgain, it grinds a good twenty minutes, and at the end of the restart, we end up with a public machine running oracle Linux 8.
ConclusionI will probably have a lot more to say about that. For my part, I find this first experience with Oracle Linux rather conclusive, and if I decided to share it here, it is that it will probably solve a common problem to a lot of admins of production servers who do not support their system becoming a moving target overnight.
Post Scriptum for the chilly puristsFinally, for all of you who want to use a free and free clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux without selling their soul to the devil, know that Springdale Linux is a solid alternative. It is maintained by Princeton University in the United States according to the principle WYGIWYG (What You Get Is What You Get ), it is provided raw de-cluttering and without any documentation, but it works just as well.
Writing this documentation takes time and significant amounts of espresso coffee. Do you like this blog? Give the editor a coffee by clicking on the cup.
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Dec 21, 2020 | distrowatch.com
• And what about Oracle Linux? (by Microlinux on 2020-12-21 08:11:33 GMT from France)
If you want a free-as-in-beer RHEL clone, you have two options: Oracle Linux or Springdale/PUIAS. My company's currently moving its servers to OL, which is "CentOS done right". Here's a blog article about the subject:
Currently Rocky Linux is not much more than a README file on Github and a handful of Slack (ew!) discussion channels.
Each version of OL is supported for a 10-year cycle. Ubuntu has five years of support. And Debian's support cycle (one year after subsequent release) is unusable for production servers.
9 • @Jesse on CentOS: (by dragonmouth on 2020-12-21 13:11:04 GMT from United States)
"There is no rush and I recommend waiting a bit for the dust to settle on the situation before leaping to an alternative. "
For private users there may be plenty of time to find an alternative. However, corporate IT departments are not like jet skis able to turn on a dime. They are more like supertankers or aircraft carriers that take miles to make a turn. By the time all the committees meet and come to some decision, by the time all the upper managers who don't know what the heck they are talking about expound their opinions and by the time the CentOS replacement is deployed, a year will be gone. For corporations, maybe it is not a time to PANIC, yet, but it is high time to start looking for the O/S that will replace CentOS.
"This looks like the vendor equivalent..." (by Ricardo on 2020-12-21 18:06:49 GMT from Argentina)
[Red Hat looks like ]... of a cartoon character sawing off the tree branch they are sitting on."
Jesse, I couldn't have articulated it better. I'm stealing that phrase :)
Cheers and happy holidays to everyone!
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Dec 28, 2020 | www.cyberciti.biz
Kyle Dec 9, 2020 @ 2:13
- TuxRuffian Dec 8, 2020 @ 23:43
Does this mean no more SIGs too? OEL 8 is about to see a giant surge in utilization! reply link
- Just a geek Dec 8, 2020 @ 23:45
Time to move to Oracle Linux. One of their partners is always talking about it, and being it is free, and tracks RHEL with 100% binary compatibly it's a good fit for use. Also looked at their support costs, and it's a fraction of RHEL pricing!
It's an ibm money grab. It's a shame, I use centos to develop and host web applications om my linode. Obviously a small time like that I can't afford red hat, but use it at work. Centos allowed me to come home and take skills and dev on my free time and apply it to work.
I also use Ubuntu, but it looks like the shift will be greater to Ubuntu. Noname Dec 9, 2020 @ 4:20
As others said here, this is money grab. Me thinks IBM was the worst thing that happened to Linux since systemd... Yui Dec 9, 2020 @ 4:49
Hello CentOS users,
I also work for a non-profit (Cancer and other research) and use CentOS for HPC. We choose CentOS over Debian due to the 10-year support cycle and CentOS goes well with HPC cluster. We also wanted every single penny to go to research purposes and not waste our donations and grants on software costs. What are my CentOS alternatives for HPC? Thanks in advance for any help you are able to provide. Holmes Dec 9, 2020 @ 5:06
Folks who rely on CentOS saw this coming when Red Hat brought them 6 years ago. Last year IBM brought Red Hat. Now, IBM+Red Hat found a way to kill the stable releases in order to get people signing up for RHEL subscriptions. Doesn't that sound exactly like "EEE" (embrace, extend, and exterminate) model? Petr Dec 9, 2020 @ 5:08
For me it's simple.
I will keep my openSUSE Leap and expand it's footprint.
Until another RHEL compatible distro is out. If I need a RHEL compatible distro for testing, until then, I will use Oracle with the RHEL kernel.
OpenSUSE is the closest to RHEL in terms of stability (if not better) and I am very used to it. Time to get some SLES certifications as well. Someone Dec 9, 2020 @ 5:23While I like Debian, and better still Devuan (systemd ), some RHEL/CentOS features like kickstart and delta RPMs don't seem to be there (or as good). Debian preseeding is much more convoluted than kickstart for example. Vonskippy Dec 10, 2020 @ 1:24
That's ok. For us, we left RHEL (and the CentOS testing cluster) when the satan spawn known as SystemD became the standard. We're now a happy and successful FreeBSD shop.
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Dec 28, 2020 | blog.centos.org
Phil says: December 9, 2020 at 2:10 pm
this quick n'dirty hack worked fine to convert centos 8 to oracle linux 8, ymmv:
repobase=http://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL8/baseos/latest/x86_64/getPackage wget \ ${repobase}/redhat-release-8.3-1.0.0.1.el8.x86_64.rpm \ ${repobase}/oracle-release-el8-1.0-1.el8.x86_64.rpm \ ${repobase}/oraclelinux-release-8.3-1.0.4.el8.x86_64.rpm \ ${repobase}/oraclelinux-release-el8-1.0-9.el8.x86_64.rpmrpm -e centos-linux-release --nodeps dnf --disablerepo='*' localinstall ./*rpm :> /etc/dnf/vars/ociregion dnf remove centos-linux-repos dnf --refresh distro-sync # since I wanted to try out the unbreakable enterprise kernel: dnf install kernel-uek reboot dnf remove kernel
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Dec 28, 2020 | blog.centos.org
Let's go back to 2003 where Red Hat saw the opportunity to make a fundamental change to become an enterprise software company with an open source development methodology.
To do so Red Hat made a hard decision and in 2003 split Red Hat Linux into Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Fedora Linux. RHEL was the occasional snapshot of Fedora Linux that was a product -- slowed, stabilized, and paced for production. Fedora Linux and the Project around it were the open source community for innovating -- speedier, prone to change, and paced for exploration. This solved the problem of trying to hold to two, incompatible core values (fast/slow) in a single project. After that, each distribution flourished within its intended audiences.
But that split left two important gaps. On the project/community side, people still wanted an OS that strived to be slower-moving, stable-enough, and free of cost -- an availability gap . On the product/customer side, there was an openness gap -- RHEL users (and consequently all rebuild users) couldn't contribute easily to RHEL. The rebuilds arose and addressed the availability gap, but they were closed to contributions to the core Linux distro itself.
In 2012, Red Hat's move toward offering products beyond the operating system resulted in a need for an easy-to-access platform for open source development of the upstream projects -- such as Gluster, oVirt, and RDO -- that these products are derived from. At that time, the pace of innovation in Fedora made it not an easy platform to work with; for example, the pace of kernel updates in Fedora led to breakage in these layered projects.
We formed a team I led at Red Hat to go about solving this problem, and, after approaching and discussing it with the CentOS Project core team, Red Hat and the CentOS Project agreed to " join forces ." We said joining forces because there was no company to acquire, so we hired members of the core team and began expanding CentOS beyond being just a rebuild project. That included investing in the infrastructure and protecting the brand. The goal was to evolve into a project that also enabled things to be built on top of it, and a project that would be exponentially more open to contribution than ever before -- a partial solution to the openness gap.
Bringing home the CentOS Linux users, folks who were stuck in that availability gap, closer into the Red Hat family was a wonderful side effect of this plan. My experience going from participant to active open source contributor began in 2003, after the birth of the Fedora Project. At that time, as a highly empathetic person I found it challenging to handle the ongoing emotional waves from the Red Hat Linux split. Many of my long time community friends themselves were affected. As a company, we didn't know if RHEL or Fedora Linux were going to work out. We had made a hard decision and were navigating the waters from the aftershock. Since then we've all learned a lot, including the more difficult dynamics of an open source development methodology. So to me, bringing the CentOS and other rebuild communities into an actual relationship with Red Hat again was wonderful to see, experience, and help bring about.
Over the past six years since finally joining forces, we made good progress on those goals. We started Special Interest Groups (SIGs) to manage the layered project experience, such as the Storage SIG, Virt Sig, and Cloud SIG. We created a governance structure where there hadn't been one before. We brought RHEL source code to be housed at git.centos.org . We designed and built out a significant public build infrastructure and CI/CD system in a project that had previously been sealed-boxes all the way down.
cmdrlinux says: December 19, 2020 at 2:36 pm
Mark Danon says: December 19, 2020 at 4:14 pm"This brings us to today and the current chapter we are living in right now. The move to shift focus of the project to CentOS Stream is about filling that openness gap in some key ways. Essentially, Red Hat is filling the development and contribution gap that exists between Fedora and RHEL by shifting the place of CentOS from just downstream of RHEL to just upstream of RHEL."
Another long-winded post that doesn't address the single, core issue that no one will speak to directly: why can't CentOS Stream and CentOS _both_ exist? Because in absence of any official response from Red Hat, the assumption is obvious: to drive RHEL sales. If that's the reason, then say it. Stop being cowards about it.
Dave says: December 20, 2020 at 7:16 amRedhat has no obligation to maintain both CentOS 8 and CentOS stream. Heck, they have no obligation to maintain CentOS either. Maintaining both will only increase the workload of CentOS maintainers. I don't suppose you are volunteering to help them do the work? Be thankful for a distribution that you have been using so far, and move on.
Konstantin says: December 21, 2020 at 12:24 amWe might be better off if Red Hat hadn't gotten involved in CentOS in the first place and left it an independent project. THEY choose to pursue this path and THEY chose to renege on assurances made around the non-stream distro. Now they're going to choose to deal with whatever consequences come from the loss of goodwill in the community.
If they were going to pull this stunt they shouldn't have gone ahead with CentOS 8 at all and fulfilled any lifecycle expectations for CentOS 7.
Chris Mair says: December 20, 2020 at 3:21 pmSorry, but that's a BS. CentOS Stream and CentOS Linux are not mutually replaceable. You cannot sell that BS to any people actually knowing the intrinsics of how CentOS Linux was being developed.
If the problem was in money, all RH needed to do was to ask the community. You would have been amazed at the output.
No, it is just a primitive, direct and lame way to either force "free users" to either pay, or become your free-to-use beta testers (CentOS Stream *is* beta, whatever you say).
I predict you will be somewhat amazed at the actual results.
Not talking about the breach of trust. Now how much would cost all your (RH's) further promises and assurances?
Chip says: December 20, 2020 at 6:16 pmTo: [email protected]
To: [email protected]Hi,
Re: https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/balancing-the-needs-around-the-centos-platform/
you can spin this to the moon and back. The fact remains you just killed CentOS Linux and your users' trust by moving the EOL of CentOS Linux 8 from 2029 to 2021.
You've alienated a few hunderd thousand sysadmins that started upgrading to 8 this year and you've thrown the scientific Linux community under a bus. You do realize Scientific Linux was discontinued because CERN and FermiLab decided to standardize on CentOS 8? This trickled down to a load of labs and research institutions.
Nobody forced you to buy out CentOS or offer a gratis distribution. But everybody expected you to stick to the EOL dates you committed to. You boast about being the "Enterprise" Linux distributor. Then, don't act like a freaking start-up that announces stuff today and vanishes a year later.
The correct way to handle this would have been to kill the future CentOS 9, giving everybody the time to cope with the changes.
I've earned my RHCE in 2003 (yes that's seventeen years ago). Since then, many times, I've recommended RHEL or CentOS to the clients I do free lance work for. Just a few weeks ago I was asked to give an opinion on six CentOS 7 boxes about to be deployed into a research system to be upgraded to 8. I gave my go. Well, that didn't last long.
What do you expect me to recommend now? Buying RHEL licenses? That may or may be not have a certain cost per year and may or may be not supported until a given date? Once you grant yourself the freedom to retract whatever published information, how can I trust you? What added values do I get over any of the community supported distributions (given I can support myself)?
And no, CentOS Stream cannot "cover 95% (or so) of current user workloads". Stream was introduces as "a rolling preview of what's next in RHEL".
I'm not interested at all in a "a rolling preview of what's next in RHEL". I'm interested in a stable distribution I can trust to get updates until the given EOL date.
You've made me look elsewhere for that.
-- Chris
Alex says: December 21, 2020 at 12:51 amI guess my biggest issue is They should have announced this at the START of CentOS 8.0. Instead they started CentOS 8 with the belief it was going to be like CentOS7 have a long supported life cycle. What they did was basically bait and switch. Not cool. Especially not cool for those running multiple nodes on high performance computing clusters.
Nika jous says: December 21, 2020 at 1:43 pmI have over 300,000 Centos nodes that require Long term support as it's impossible to turn them over rapidly. I also have 154,000 RHEL nodes. I now have to migrate 454,000 nodes over to Ubuntu because Redhat just made the dumbest decision short of letting IBM acquire them I've seen. Whitehurst how could you let this happen? Nothing like millions in lost revenue from a single customer.
Ang says: December 22, 2020 at 2:36 amJust migrated to OpenSUSE. Rather than crying for dead os it's better to act yourself. Redhat is a sinking ship it probably want last next decade.Legendary failure like ibm never have upper hand in Linux world. It's too competitive now. Customers have more options to choose. I think person who have take this decision probably ignorant about the current market or a top grade fool.
Ang says: December 22, 2020 at 2:36 amIBM/RH/CentOS keeps replaying the same talking points over and over and ignoring the actual issues people have. You say you are reading them, but choose to ignore it and that is even worse!
People still don't understand why CentOS stream and CentOS can't co-exist. If your goal was not to support CentOS 8, why did you put 2029 date or why did you even release CentOS 8 in the first place?
Hell, you could have at least had the goodwill with the community to make CentOS 8 last until end of CentOS 7! But no, you discontinued CentOS 8 giving people only 1 year to respond, and timed it right after EOL of CentOS6.
Why didn't you even bother asking the community first and come to a compromise or something?
Again, not a single person had a problem with CentOS stream, the problem was having the rug pulled under their feet! So stop pretending and address it properly!
Even worse, you knew this was an issue, it's like literally #1 on your issue list "Shift Board to be more transparent in support of becoming a contributor-focused open source project"
And you FAILED! Where was the transparency?!
AP says: December 22, 2020 at 6:55 amA link to the issue: https://git.centos.org/centos/board/issue/1
Len Inkster says: December 22, 2020 at 4:13 pmWhat a piece of stinking BS. What is this "gap" you're talking about? Nobody in the CentOS community cares about this pre-RHEL gap. You're trying to fix something that isn't broken. And doing that the most horrible and bizzarre way imaginable.
Peter says: December 22, 2020 at 5:36 pmAs I understand it, Fedora - RHEL - CENTOS just becomes Fedora - Centos Stream - RHEL. Why just call them RH-Alpha, RH-Beta, RH?
Anyone who wants to continue with CENTOS? Fork the project and maintain it yourselves. That how we got to CENTOS from Linus Torvalds original Linux.
Ken Sanderson says: December 23, 2020 at 1:57 pmI can only comment this as disappointment, if not betrayal, to whole CentOS user base. This decision was clearly done, without considering impact to majority of CentOS community use cases.
If you need upstream contributions channel for RHEL, create it, do not destroy the stable downstream. Clear and simple. All other 'explanations' are cover ups for real purpose of this action.
This stinks of politics within IBM/RH meddling with CentOS. I hope, Rocky will bring the desired stability, that community was relying on with CentOS.
Goodbye CentOS, it was nice 15 years.
We've just agreed to cancel out RHEL subscriptions and will be moving them and our Centos boxes away as well. It was a nice run but while it will be painful, it is a chance to move far far away from the terrible decisions made here.
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Dec 28, 2020 | www.servethehome.com
The intellectually easy answer to what is happening is that IBM is putting pressure on Red Hat to hit bigger numbers in the future. Red Hat sees a captive audience in its CentOS userbase and is looking to covert a percentage to paying customers. Everyone else can go to Ubuntu or elsewhere if they do not want to pay...
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Dec 28, 2020 | freedomben.medium.com
It seemed obvious (via Occam's Razor) that CentOS had cannibalized RHEL sales for the last time and was being put out to die. Statements like:
If you are using CentOS Linux 8 in a production environment, and are
concerned that CentOS Stream will not meet your needs, we encourage you
to contact Red Hat about options.That line sure seemed like horrific marketing speak for "call our sales people and open your wallet if you use CentOS in prod." ( cue evil mustache-stroking capitalist villain ).
... CentOS will no longer be downstream of RHEL as it was previously. CentOS will now be upstream of the next RHEL minor release .
... ... ...
I'm watching Rocky Linux closely myself. While I plan to use CentOS for the vast majority of my needs, Rocky Linux may have a place in my life as well, as an example powering my home router. Generally speaking, I want my router to be as boring as absolute possible. That said even that may not stay true forever, if for example CentOS gets good WireGuard support.
Lastly, but certainly not least, Red Hat has talked about upcoming low/no-cost RHEL options. Keep an eye out for those! I have no idea the details, but if you currently use CentOS for personal use, I am optimistic that there may be a way to get RHEL for free coming soon. Again, this is just my speculation (I have zero knowledge of this beyond what has been shared publicly), but I'm personally excited.
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Dec 27, 2020 | freedomben.medium.com
It seemed obvious (via Occam's Razor) that CentOS had cannibalized RHEL sales for the last time and was being put out to die. Statements like:
If you are using CentOS Linux 8 in a production environment, and are
concerned that CentOS Stream will not meet your needs, we encourage you
to contact Red Hat about options.That line sure seemed like horrific marketing speak for "call our sales people and open your wallet if you use CentOS in prod." ( cue evil mustache-stroking capitalist villain ).
... CentOS will no longer be downstream of RHEL as it was previously. CentOS will now be upstream of the next RHEL minor release .
... ... ...
I'm watching Rocky Linux closely myself. While I plan to use CentOS for the vast majority of my needs, Rocky Linux may have a place in my life as well, as an example powering my home router. Generally speaking, I want my router to be as boring as absolute possible. That said even that may not stay true forever, if for example CentOS gets good WireGuard support.
Lastly, but certainly not least, Red Hat has talked about upcoming low/no-cost RHEL options. Keep an eye out for those! I have no idea the details, but if you currently use CentOS for personal use, I am optimistic that there may be a way to get RHEL for free coming soon. Again, this is just my speculation (I have zero knowledge of this beyond what has been shared publicly), but I'm personally excited.
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Dec 21, 2020 | www.zdnet.com
On Hacker News , the leading comment was: "Imagine if you were running a business, and deployed CentOS 8 based on the 10-year lifespan promise . You're totally screwed now, and Red Hat knows it. Why on earth didn't they make this switch starting with CentOS 9???? Let's not sugar coat this. They've betrayed us."
Over at Reddit/Linux , another person snarled, "We based our Open Source project on the latest CentOS releases since CentOS 4. Our flagship product is running on CentOS 8 and we *sure* did bet the farm on the promised EOL of 31st May 2029."
A popular tweet from The Best Linux Blog In the Unixverse, nixcraft , an account with over 200-thousand subscribers, went: Oracle buys Sun: Solaris Unix, Sun servers/workstation, and MySQL went to /dev/null. IBM buys Red Hat: CentOS is going to >/dev/null . Note to self: If a big vendor such as Oracle, IBM, MS, and others buys your fav software, start the migration procedure ASAP."
Many others joined in this choir of annoyed CentOS users that it was IBM's fault that their favorite Linux was being taken away from them. Still, others screamed Red Hat was betraying open-source itself.
... ... ...
Still another ex-Red Hat official said. If it wasn't for CentOS, Red Hat would have been a 10-billion dollar company before Red Hat became a billion-dollar business .
... ... ...
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Dec 27, 2020 | freedomben.medium.com
There are companies that sell appliances based on CentOS. Websense/Forcepoint is one of them. The Websense appliance runs the base OS of CentOS, on top of which runs their Web-filtering application. Same with RSA. Their NetWitness SIEM runs on top of CentOS.
Likewise, there are now countless Internet servers out there that run CentOS. There's now a huge user base of CentOS out there.
This is why the Debian project is so important. I will be converting everything that is currently CentOS to Debian. Those who want to use the Ubuntu fork of Debian, that is also probably a good idea.
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Dec 23, 2020 | www.zdnet.com
former Red Hat executive confided, "CentOS was gutting sales. The customer perception was 'it's from Red Hat and it's a clone of RHEL, so it's good to go!' It's not. It's a second-rate copy." From where, this person sits, "This is 100% defensive to stave off more losses to CentOS."
Still another ex-Red Hat official said. If it wasn't for CentOS, Red Hat would have been a 10-billion dollar company before Red Hat became a billion-dollar business .
Yet another Red Hat staffer snapped, "Look at the CentOS FAQ . It says right there:
CentOS Linux is NOT Red Hat Linux, it is NOT Fedora Linux. It is NOT Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is NOT RHEL. CentOS Linux does NOT contain Red Hat® Linux, Fedora, or Red Hat® Enterprise Linux.
CentOS Linux is NOT a clone of Red Hat® Enterprise Linux.
CentOS Linux is built from publicly available source code provided by Red Hat, Inc for Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a completely different (CentOS Project maintained) build system.
We don't owe you anything."
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Dec 10, 2020 | blog.centos.org
Ward Mundy says: December 9, 2020 at 3:12 am
Happy to report that we've invested exactly one day in CentOS 7 to CentOS 8 migration. Thanks, IBM. Now we can turn our full attention to Debian and never look back.
Here's a hot tip for the IBM geniuses that came up with this. Rebrand CentOS as New Coke, and you've got yourself a real winner.
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Dec 10, 2020 | blog.centos.org
Matthew Stier says: December 8, 2020 at 8:11 pm
art_ok 1 point· 5 minutes agoMy office switched the bulk of our RHEL to OL years ago, and find it a great product, and great support, and only needing to get support for systems we actually want support on.
Oracle provided scripts to convert EL5, EL6, and EL7 systems, and was able to convert some EL4 systems I still have running. (Its a matter of going through the list of installed packages, use 'rpm -e --justdb' to remove the package from the rpmdb, and re-installing the package (without dependencies) from the OL ISO.)
art_ok 1 point· just nowWe have been using Oracle Linux exclusively last 5-6 years for everything - thousands of servers both for internal use and hundred or so customers.
Not a single time regretted, had any issues or were tempted to move to RedHat let alone CentOS.
I found Oracle Linux has several advantages over RedHat/CentOS:
If you need official support, Oracle support is generally cheaper than RedHat. You can legally run OL free and have access to patches/repositories. Full binary compatibility with RedHat so if anything is certified to run on RedHat, it automatically certified for Oracle Linux as well. It is very easy to switch between supported and free setup (say, you have proof-of-concept setup running free OL, but then it is being promoted to production status - just matter of registering box with Oracle, no need to reinstall/reconfigure anything). You can easily move licensed/support from one box to another so you always run the same OS and do not have to think and decide (RedHat for production / CentOS for Dec/test). You have a choice to run good old RedHat kernel or use newer Oracle kernel (which is pretty much vanilla kernel with minimal modification - just newer). We generally run Oracle kernels on all boxes unless we have to support particularly pedantic customer who insist on using old RedHat kernel. Premium OL subscription includes a few nice bonuses like DTrace and Ksplice.Overall, it is pleasure to work and support OL.
Negatives:
I found RedHat knowledge base / documentation is much better than Oracle's Oracle does not offer extensive support for "advanced" products like JBoss, Directory Server, etc. Obviously Oracle has its own equivalent commercial offerings (Weblogic, etc) and prefers customers to use them. Some complain about quality of Oracle's support. Can't really comment on that. Had no much exposure to RedHat support, maybe used it couple of times and it was good. Oracle support can be slower, but in most cases it is good/sufficient. Actually over the last few years support quality for Linux has improved noticeably - guess Oracle pushes their cloud very aggressively and as a result invests in Linux support (as Oracle cloud aka OCI runs on Oracle Linux).Forgot to mention that converting RedHat Linux to Oracle is very straightforward - just matter of updating yum/dnf config to point it to Oracle repositories. Not sure if you can do it with CentOS (maybe possible, just never needed to convert CentOS to Oracle).
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Dec 10, 2020 | blog.centos.org
Internet User says: December 8, 2020 at 5:13 pm
Joel B. D. says: December 8, 2020 at 5:17 pmThis is a pretty clear indication that you people are completely out of touch with your users.
Michael says: December 8, 2020 at 8:31 pmBad idea. The whole point of using CentOS is it's an exact binary-compatible rebuild of RHEL. With this decision RH is killing CentOS and inviting to create a new *fork* or use another distribution. Do you realize how much market share you will be losing and how much chaos you will be creating with this?
"If you are using CentOS Linux 8 in a production environment, and are concerned that CentOS Stream will not meet your needs, we encourage you to contact Red Hat about options". So this is the way RH is telling us they don't want anyone to use CentOS anymore and switch to RHEL?
OS says: December 8, 2020 at 6:20 pmThat's exactly what they're saying. We all knew from the moment IBM bought Redhat that we were on borrowed time. IBM will do everything they can to push people to RHEL even if that includes destroying a great community project like CentOS.
JD says: December 8, 2020 at 6:35 pmFirst CoreOS, now CentOS. It's about time to switch to one of the *BSDs.
ShameOnIBM says: December 8, 2020 at 7:07 pmWow. Well, I guess that means the tens of thousands of cores of research compute I manage at a large University will be migrating to Debian. I've just started preparing to shift from Scientific Linux 7 to CentOS due to SL being discontinued by 2024. Glad I've only just started - not much work to throw away.
MLF says: December 8, 2020 at 7:15 pmIBM is declining, hence they need more profit from "useless" product line. So disgusting
MM says: December 8, 2020 at 7:28 pmAn entire team worked for months on a centos8 transition at the uni I work at. I assume a small portion can be salvaged but reading this it seems most of it will simply go out the window. Does anyone know if this decision of dumping centos8 is final?
Faisal Sehbai says: December 8, 2020 at 7:32 pmUnless the community can center on a new single proper fork of RHEL, it makes the most sense (to me) to seek refuge in Debian as it is quite close to CentOS in stability terms.
Already existing functioning distribution ecosystem, can probably do good with influx of resources to enhance the missing bits, such as further improving SELinux support and expanding Debian security team.
I say this without any official or unofficial involvement with the Debian project, other than being a user.
And we have just launched hundred of Centos 8 servers.
William Smith says: December 8, 2020 at 7:39 pmAnother one bites the dust due to corporate greed, which IBM exemplifies. This is why I shuddered when they bought RH. There is nothing that IBM touches that gets better, other than the bottom line of their suits!
Disgusting!
Daniele Brunengo says: December 8, 2020 at 7:48 pmThis is a big mistake. RedHat did this with RedHat Linux 9 the market leading Linux and created Fedora, now an also-ran to Ubuntu. I spent a lot of time during Covid to convert from earlier versions to 8, and now will have to review that work with my customer.
David Potterveld says: December 8, 2020 at 8:08 pmI just finished building a CentOS 8 web server, worked out all the nooks and crannies and was very satisfied with the result. Now I have to do everything from scratch? The reason why I chose this release was that every website and its brother were giving a 2029 EOL. Changing that is the worst betrayal of trust possible for the CentOS community. It's unbelievable.
a says: December 8, 2020 at 9:08 pmWhat a colossal blunder: a pivot from the long-standing mission of an OS providing stability, to an unstable development platform, in a manner that betrays its current users. They should remove the "C" from CentOS because it no longer has any connection to a community effort. I wonder if this is a move calculated to drive people from a free near clone of RHEL to a paid RHEL subscription? More likely to drive people entirely out of the RHEL ecosystem.
Ralf says: December 8, 2020 at 9:08 pmFrom a RHEL perspective I understand why they'd want it this way. CentOS was probably cutting deep into potential RedHat license sales. Though why or how RedHat would have a say in how CentOS is being run in the first place is.. troubling.
From a CentOS perspective you may as well just take the project out back and close it now. If people wanted to run beta-test tier RHEL they'd run Fedora. "LATER SECURITY FIXES AND UNTESTED 'FEATURES'?! SIGN ME UP!" -nobody
I'll probably run CentOS 7 until the end and then swap over to Debian when support starts hurting me. What a pain.
Tamas says: December 8, 2020 at 10:01 pmDon't trust Red Hat. 1 year ago Red Hat's CTO Chris Wright agreed in an interview: 'Old school CentOS isn't going anywhere. Stream is available in parallel with the existing CentOS builds. In other words, "nothing changes for current users of CentOS."' https://www.zdnet.com/article/red-hat-introduces-rolling-release-centos-stream/
I'm a current user of old school CentOS, so keep your promise, Mr CTO.
Konstantin says: December 9, 2020 at 3:36 pmThat was quick: "Old school CentOS isn't going anywhere. Stream is available in parallel with the existing CentOS builds. In other words, "nothing changes for current users of CentOS."
https://www.zdnet.com/article/red-hat-introduces-rolling-release-centos-stream/
Samuel C. says: December 8, 2020 at 10:53 pmFrom the same article: 'To be exact, CentOS Stream is an upstream development platform for ecosystem developers. It will be updated several times a day. This is not a production operating system. It's purely a developer's distro.'
Read again: CentOS Stream is not a production operating system. 'Nuff said.
Brendan says: December 9, 2020 at 12:15 amThis makes my decision to go with Ansible and CentOS 8 in our enterprise simple. Nope, time to got with Puppet or Chef. IBM did what I thought they would screw up Red Hat. My company is dumping IBM software everywhere - this means we need to dump CentOS now too.
vinci says: December 8, 2020 at 11:45 pmIronic, and it puts those of us who have recently migrated many of our development serves to CentOS8 in a really bad spot. Luckily we haven't licensed RHEL8 production servers yet -- and now that's never going to happen.
Peter Vonway says: December 8, 2020 at 11:56 pmI can't believe what IBM is actually doing. This is a direct move against all that open source means. They want to do exactly the same thing they're doing with awx (vs. ansible tower). You're going against everything that stands for open source. And on top of that you choose to stop offering support for Centos 8, all of a sudden! What a horrid move on your part. This only reliable choice that remains is probably going to be Debian/Ubuntu. What a waste...
Scott says: December 9, 2020 at 8:38 amWhat IBM fails to understand is that many of us who use CentOS for personal projects also work for corporations that spend millions of dollars annually on products from companies like IBM and have great influence over what vendors are chosen. This is a pure betrayal of the community. Expect nothing less from IBM.
OSLover says: December 9, 2020 at 12:09 amThis is exactly it. IBM is cashing in on its Red Hat acquisition by attempting to squeeze extra licenses from its customers.. while not taking into account the fact that Red Hat's strong adoption into the enterprise is a direct consequence of engineers using the nonproprietary version to develop things at home in their spare time.
Having an open source, non support contract version of your OS is exactly what drives adoption towards the supported version once the business decides to put something into production.
They are choosing to kill the golden goose in order to get the next few eggs faster. IBM doesn't care about anything but its large enterprise customers. Very stereotypically IBM.
technick says: December 9, 2020 at 12:09 amSo sad. Not only breaking the support promise but so quickly (2021!)
Business wise, a lot of business software is providing CentOS packages and support. Like hosting panels, backup software, virtualization, Management. I mean A LOT of money worldwide is in dark waters now with this announcement. It took years for CentOS to appear in their supported and tested distros. It will disappear now much faster.
Community wise, this is plain bad news for Open Source and all Open Source communities. This is sad. I wonder, are open source developers nowadays happy to spend so many hours for something that will in the end benefit IBM "subscribers" only in the end? I don't think they are.
What a sad way to end 2020.
ConcernedAdmin says: December 9, 2020 at 12:47 amI don't want to give up on CentOS but this is a strong life changing decision. My background is linux engineering with over 15+ years of hardcore experience. CentOS has always been my go to when an organization didn't have the appetite for RHEL and the $75 a year license fee per instance. I fought off Ubuntu take overs at 2 of the last 3 organizations I've been with successfully. I can't, won't fight off any more and start advocating for Ubuntu or pure Debian moving forward.
RIP CentOS. Red Hat killed a great project. I wonder if Anisble will be next?
John says: December 9, 2020 at 1:32 amHoping that stabbing Open Source community in the back, will make it switch to commercial licenses is absolutely preposterous. This shows how disconnected they're from reality and consumed by greed and it will simply backfire on them, when we switch to Debian or any other LTS alternative. I can't think moving everything I so caressed and loved to a mess like Ubuntu.
Concerned Fren says: December 9, 2020 at 1:52 amAssinine. This is completely ridiculous. I have migrated several servers from CentOS 7 to 8 recently with more to go. We also have a RHEL subscription for outward facing servers, CentOS internal. This type of change should absolutely have been announced for CentOS 9. This is garbage saying 1 year from now when it was supposed to be till 2029. A complete betrayal. One year to move everything??? Stupid.
Now I'm going to be looking at a couple of other options but it won't be RHEL after this type of move. This has destroyed my trust in RHEL as I'm sure IBM pushed for this. You will be losing my RHEL money once I chose and migrate. I get companies exist to make money and that's fine. This though is purely a naked money grab that betrays an established timeline and is about to force massive work on lots of people in a tiny timeframe saying "f you customers.". You will no longer get my money for doing that to me
William Ashford says: December 9, 2020 at 2:02 amIn hind sight it's clear to see that the only reason RHEL took over CentOS was to kill the competition.
This is also highly frustrating as I just completed new CentOS8 and RHEL8 builds for Non-production and Production Servers and had already begun deployments. Now I'm left in situation of finding a new Linux distribution for our enterprise while I sweat out the last few years of RHEL7/CentOS7. Ubuntu is probably a no go there enterprise tooling is somewhat lacking, and I am of the opinion that they will likely be gobbled up buy Microsoft in the next few years.
Unfortunately, the short-sighted RH/IBMer that made this decision failed to realize that a lot of Admins that used Centos at home and in the enterprise also advocated and drove sales towards RedHat as well. Now with this announcement I'm afraid the damage is done and even if you were to take back your announcement, trust has been broken and the blowback will ultimately mean the death of CentOS and reduced sales of RHEL. There is however an opportunity for another Corporations such as SUSE which is own buy Microfocus to capitalize on this epic blunder simply by announcing an LTS version of OpenSues Leap. This would in turn move people/corporations to the Suse platform which in turn would drive sale for SLES.
Christian Reiss says: December 9, 2020 at 6:28 amSo the inevitable has come to pass, what was once a useful Distro will disappear like others have. Centos was handy for education and training purposes and production when you couldn't afford the fees for "support", now it will just be a shadow of Fedora.
Ian says: December 9, 2020 at 2:10 amThis is disgusting. Bah. As a CTO I will now - today - assemble my teams and develop a plan to migrate all DataCenters back to Debian for good. I will also instantly instruct the termination of all mirroring of your software.
For the software (CentOS) I hope for a quick death that will not drag on for years.
cody says: December 9, 2020 at 4:53 amThis is a bit sad. There was always a conflict of interest associated with Redhat managing the Centos project and this is the end result of this conflict of interest.
There is a genuine benefit associated with the existence of Centos for Redhat however it would appear that that benefit isn't great enough and some arse clown thought that by forcing users to migrate it will increase Redhat's revenue.
The reality is that someone will repackage Redhat and make it just like Centos. The only difference is that Redhat now live in the same camp as Oracle.
Ganesan Rajagopal says: December 9, 2020 at 5:09 amEveryone predicted this when redhat bought centos. And when IBM bought RedHat it cemented everyone's notion.
Bomel says: December 9, 2020 at 6:22 amThankfully we just started our migration from CentOS 7 to 8 and this surely puts a stop to that. Even if CentOS backtracks on this decision because of community backlash, the reality is the trust is lost. You've just given a huge leg for Ubuntu/Debian in the enterprise. Congratulations!
Steve says: December 9, 2020 at 8:57 amI am senior system admin in my organization which spends millions dollar a year on RH&IBM products. From tomorrow, I will do my best to convince management to minimize our spending on RH & IBM, and start looking for alternatives to replace existing RH & IBM products under my watch.
Ralf says: December 9, 2020 at 10:29 amIBM are seeing every CentOS install as a missed RHEL subscription...
Michel-André says: December 9, 2020 at 5:18 pmSome years ago IBM bought Informix. We switched to PostgreSQL, when Informix was IBMized. One year ago IBM bought Red Hat and CentOS. CentOS is now IBMized. Guess what will happen with our CentOS installations. What's wrong with IBM?
PeteVM says: December 9, 2020 at 5:27 pmHi all,
Remember when RedHat, around RH-7.x, wanted to charge for the distro, the community revolted so much that RedHat saw their mistake and released Fedora. You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
Even though RedHat/CentOS has a very large share of the Linux server market, it will suffer the same fate as Novell (had 85% of the matket), disappearing into darkness !
Mihel-André
JadeK says: December 9, 2020 at 6:36 pmAs I predicted, RHEL is destroying CentOS, and IBM is running Red Hat into the ground in the name of profit$. Why is anyone surprised? I give Red Hat 12-18 months of life, before they become another ordinary dept of IBM, producing IBM Linux.
CentOS is dead. Time to either go back to Debian and its derivatives, or just pay for RHEL, or IBMEL, and suck it up.
Godimir Kroczweck says: December 9, 2020 at 8:21 pmI am mid-migration from Rhel/Cent6 to 8. I now have to stop a major project for several hundred systems. My group will have to go back to rebuild every CentOS 8 system we've spent the last 6 months deploying.
Congrats fellas, you did it. You perfected the transition to Debian from CentOS.
Paul R says: December 9, 2020 at 9:14 pmI find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad. The dreams in which I moving 1.5K+ machines to whatever distro I yet have to find fitting for replacement to are the..
Wait. How could one with all the seriousness consider cutting down already published EOL a good idea?
I literally had to convince people to move from Ubuntu and Debian installations to CentOS for sake of stability and longer support, just for become looking like a clown now, because with single move distro deprived from both of this.
Nicholas Knight says: December 9, 2020 at 9:34 pmHappy to donate and be part of the revolution away the Corporate vampire Squid that is IBM
Red Hat's word now means nothing to me. Disagreements over future plans and technical direction are one thing, but you *lied* to us about CentOS 8's support cycle, to the detriment of *everybody*. You cost us real money relying on a promise you made, we thought, in good faith. It is now clear Red Hat no longer knows what "good faith" means, and acts only as a Trumpian vacuum of wealth.
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Dec 10, 2020 | blog.centos.org
Sam Callis says: December 8, 2020 at 3:58 pm
Sieciowski says: December 9, 2020 at 11:19 amI have been using CentOS for over 10 years and one of the things I loved about it was how stable it has been. Now, instead of being a stable release, it is changing to the beta testing ground for RHEL 8.
And instead of 10 years of a support you need to update to the latest dot release. This has me, very concerned.
Joe says: December 9, 2020 at 11:47 amwell, 10 years - have you ever contributed with anything for the CentOS community, or paid them a wage or at least donated some decent hardware for development or maybe just being parasite all the time and now are you surprised that someone has to buy it's your own lunches for a change?
If you think you might have done it even better why not take RH sources and make your own FreeRHos whatever distro, then support, maintain and patch all the subsequent versions for free?
Ljubomir Ljubojevic says: December 9, 2020 at 12:31 pmThat's ridiculous. RHEL has benefitted from the free testing and corner case usage of CentOS users and made money hand-over-fist on RHEL. Shed no tears for using CentOS for free. That is the benefit of opening the core of your product.
Matt Phelps says: December 8, 2020 at 4:12 pmYou are missing a very important point. Goal of CentOS project was to rebuild RHEL, nothing else. If money was the problem, they could have asked for donations and it would be clear is there can be financial support for rebuild or not.
Putting entire community in front of done deal is disheartening and no one will trust Red Hat that they are pro-community, not to mention Red Hat employees that sit in CentOS board, who can trust their integrity after this fiasco?
fahrradflucht says: December 8, 2020 at 5:37 pmThis is a breach of trust from the already published timeline of CentOS 8 where the EOL was May 2029. One year's notice for such a massive change is unacceptable.
Move this approach to CentOS 9
Gregory Kurtzer says: December 8, 2020 at 4:27 pmThis! People already started deploying CentOS 8 with the expectation of 10 years of updates. - Even a migration to RHEL 8 would imply completely reprovisioning the systems which is a big ask for systems deployed in the field.
A says: December 8, 2020 at 7:11 pmI am considering creating another rebuild of RHEL and may even be able to hire some people for this effort. If you are interested in helping, please join the HPCng slack (link on the website hpcng.org).
Greg (original founder of CentOS)
ReplyMichael says: December 8, 2020 at 8:26 pmNot a programmer, but I'd certainly use it. I hope you get it off the ground.
Bond Masuda says: December 8, 2020 at 11:53 pmThis sounds like a great idea and getting control away from corporate entities like IBM would be helpful. Have you considered reviving the Scientific Linux project?
Rex says: December 9, 2020 at 3:46 amFeel free to contact me. I'm a long time RH user (since pre-RHEL when it was RHL) in both server and desktop environments. I've built and maintained some RPMs for some private projects that used CentOS as foundation. I can contribute compute and storage resources. I can program in a few different languages.
dovla091 says: December 9, 2020 at 10:47 amDear Greg,
Thank you for considering starting another RHEL rebuild. If and when you do, please consider making your new website a Brave Verified Content Creator. I earn a little bit of money every month using the Brave browser, and I end up donating it to Wikipedia every month because there are so few Brave Verified websites.
The verification process is free, and takes about 15 to 30 minutes. I believe that the Brave browser now has more than 8 million users.
dan says: December 9, 2020 at 4:00 amWikipedia. The so called organization that get tons of money from tech oligarchs and yet the whine about we need money and support? (If you don't believe me just check their biggest donors) also they keen to be insanely biased and allow to write on their web whoever pays the most... Seriously, find other organisation to donate your money
Chad Gregory says: December 9, 2020 at 7:21 pmPlease keep us updated. I can't donate much, but I'm sure many would love to donate to this cause.
Vasile M says: December 8, 2020 at 8:43 pmNot sure what I could do but I will keep an eye out things I could help with. This change to CentOS really pisses me off as I have stood up 2 CentOS servers for my works production environment in the last year.
LOL... CentOS is RH from 2014 to date. What you expected? As long as CentOS is so good and stable, that cuts some of RHEL sales... RH and now IBM just think of profit. It was expected, search the net for comments back in 2014.
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Dec 10, 2020 | aws.amazon.com
Amazon Linux 2 is the next generation of Amazon Linux, a Linux server operating system from Amazon Web Services (AWS). It provides a secure, stable, and high performance execution environment to develop and run cloud and enterprise applications. With Amazon Linux 2, you get an application environment that offers long term support with access to the latest innovations in the Linux ecosystem. Amazon Linux 2 is provided at no additional charge.
Amazon Linux 2 is available as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) for use on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). It is also available as a Docker container image and as a virtual machine image for use on Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), Oracle VM VirtualBox, Microsoft Hyper-V, and VMware ESXi. The virtual machine images can be used for on-premises development and testing. Amazon Linux 2 supports the latest Amazon EC2 features and includes packages that enable easy integration with AWS. AWS provides ongoing security and maintenance updates for Amazon Linux 2.
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Dec 10, 2020 | blog.centos.org
Orsiris de Jong says: December 9, 2020 at 9:41 am
Dear IBM,
As a lot of us here, I've been in the CentOS / RHEL community for more than 10 years.
Reasons of that choice were stability, long term support and good hardware vendor support.Like many others, I've built much of my skills upon this linux flavor for years, and have been implicated into the community for numerous bug reports, bug fixes, and howto writeups.
Using CentOS was the good alternative to RHEL on a lot of non critical systems, and for smaller companies like the one I work for.
The moral contract has always been a rock solid "Community Enterprise OS" in exchange of community support, bug reports & fixes, and growing interest from developers.
Redhat endorsed that moral contract when you brought official support to CentOS back in 2014.
Now that you decided to turn your back on the community, even if another RHEL fork comes out, there will be an exodus of the community.
Also, a lot of smaller developers won't support RHEL anymore because their target weren't big companies, making less and less products available without the need of self supporting RPM builds.
This will make RHEL less and less widely used by startups, enthusiasts and others.
CentOS Stream being the upstream of RHEL, I highly doubt system architects and developers are willing to be beta testers for RHEL.
Providing a free RHEL subscription for Open Source projects just sounds like your next step to keep a bit of the exodus from happening, but I'd bet that "free" subscription will get more and more restrictions later on, pushing to a full RHEL support contract.
As a lot of people here, I won't go the Oracle way, they already did a very good job destroying other company's legacy.
Gregory Kurtzer's fork will take time to grow, but in the meantime, people will need a clear vision of the future.
This means that we'll now have to turn to other linux flavors, like Debian, or OpenSUSE, of which at least some have hardware vendor support too, but with a lesser lifecycle.
I think you destroyed a large part of the RHEL / CentOS community with this move today.
Maybe you'll get more RHEL subscriptions in the next months yielding instant profits, but the long run growth is now far more uncertain.
... ... ...
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Dec 10, 2020 | www.zdnet.com
I'm far from alone. By W3Tech 's count, while Ubuntu is the most popular Linux server operating system with 47.5%, CentOS is number two with 18.8% and Debian is third, 17.5%. RHEL? It's a distant fourth with 1.8%.
If you think you just realized why Red Hat might want to remove CentOS from the server playing field, you're far from the first to think that.
Red Hat will continue to support CentOS 7 and produce it through the remainder of the RHEL 7 life cycle . That means if you're using CentOS 7, you'll see support through June 30, 2024
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Dec 10, 2020 | www.reddit.com
I bet Fermilab are thrilled back in 2019 they announced that they wouldn't develop Scientific Linux 8, and focus on CentOS 8 instead. https://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=SCIENTIFIC-LINUX-ANNOUNCE;11d6001.1904 l
clickwir 19 points· 1 day agoTime to bring back Scientific Linux.
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Dec 10, 2020 | www.reddit.com
KugelKurt 18 points· 1 day ago
I wonder what Red Hat's plan is WRT companies like Blackmagic Design that ship CentOS as part of their studio equipment.
The cost of a RHEL license isn't the issue when the overall cost of the equipment is in the tens of thousands but unless I missed a change in Red Hat's trademark policy, Blackmagic cannot distribute a modified version of RHEL and without removing all trademarks first.
I don't think a rolling release distribution is what BMD wants.
My gut feeling is that something like Scientific Linux will make a return and current CentOS users will just use that.
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Dec 10, 2020 | linux.oracle.com
Oracle Linux: A better alternative to CentOSWe firmly believe that Oracle Linux is the best Linux distribution on the market today. It's reliable, it's affordable, it's 100% compatible with your existing applications, and it gives you access to some of the most cutting-edge innovations in Linux like Ksplice and DTrace.
But if you're here, you're a CentOS user. Which means that you don't pay for a distribution at all, for at least some of your systems. So even if we made the best paid distribution in the world (and we think we do), we can't actually get it to you... or can we?
We're putting Oracle Linux in your hands by doing two things:
- We've made the Oracle Linux software available free of charge
- We've created a simple script to switch your CentOS systems to Oracle Linux
We think you'll like what you find, and we'd love for you to give it a try.
FAQ
- Wait, doesn't Oracle Linux cost money?
- Oracle Linux support costs money. If you just want the software, it's 100% free. And it's all in our yum repo at yum.oracle.com . Major releases, errata, the whole shebang. Free source code, free binaries, free updates, freely redistributable, free for production use. Yes, we know that this is Oracle, but it's actually free. Seriously.
- Is this just another CentOS?
- Inasmuch as they're both 100% binary-compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, yes, this is just like CentOS. Your applications will continue to work without any modification whatsoever. However, there are several important differences that make Oracle Linux far superior to CentOS.
- How is this better than CentOS?
- Well, for one, you're getting the exact same bits our paying enterprise customers are getting . So that means a few things. Importantly, it means virtually no delay between when Red Hat releases a kernel and when Oracle Linux does:
So if you don't want to risk another CentOS delay, Oracle Linux is a better alternative for you. It turns out that our enterprise customers don't like to wait for updates -- and neither should you.
- What about the code quality?
- Again, you're running the exact same code that our enterprise customers are, so it has to be rock-solid. Unlike CentOS, we have a large paid team of developers, QA, and support engineers that work to make sure this is reliable.
- What if I want support?
- If you're running Oracle Linux and want support, you can purchase a support contract from us (and it's significantly cheaper than support from Red Hat). No reinstallation, no nothing -- remember, you're running the same code as our customers.
Contrast that with the CentOS/RHEL story. If you find yourself needing to buy support, have fun reinstalling your system with RHEL before anyone will talk to you.
- Why are you doing this?
- This is not some gimmick to get you running Oracle Linux so that you buy support from us. If you're perfectly happy running without a support contract, so are we. We're delighted that you're running Oracle Linux instead of something else.
At the end of the day, we're proud of the work we put into Oracle Linux. We think we have the most compelling Linux offering out there, and we want more people to experience it.
- How do I make the switch?
- Run the following as root:
curl -O https://linux.oracle.com/switch/centos2ol.sh
sh centos2ol.sh- What versions of CentOS can I switch?
- centos2ol.sh can convert your CentOS 6 and 7 systems to Oracle Linux.
- What does the script do?
- The script has two main functions: it switches your yum configuration to use the Oracle Linux yum server to update some core packages and installs the latest Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. That's it! You won't even need to restart after switching, but we recommend you do to take advantage of UEK.
- Is it safe?
- The centos2ol.sh script takes precautions to back up and restore any repository files it changes, so if it does not work on your system it will leave it in working order. If you encounter any issues, please get in touch with us by emailing [email protected] .
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Dec 10, 2020 | blog.centos.org
Joe says: December 9, 2020 at 1:03 pmsays: December 8, 2020 at 8:44 pm
IBM is messing up RedHat after the take over last year. This is the most unfortunate news to the Free Open-Source community. Companies have been using CentOS as a testing bed before committing to purchase RHEL subscription licenses.
We need to rethink before rolling out RedHat/CentOS 8 training in our Centre.
TechSmurf says: December 9, 2020 at 12:38 amYou can use Oracle Linux in exactly the same way as you did CentOS except that you have the option of buying support without reinstalling a "commercial" variant.
Everything's in the public repos except a few addons like ksplice. You don't even have to go through the e-delivery to download the ISOs any more, they're all linked from yum.oracle.com
David Anderson says: December 8, 2020 at 7:16 pmNot likely. Oracle Linux has extensive use by paying Oracle customers as a host OS for their database software and in general purposes for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Oracle customers would be even less thrilled about Streams than CentOS users. I hate to admit it, but Oracle has the opportunity to take a significant chunk of the CentOS user base if they don't do anything Oracle-ish, myself included.
I'll be pretty surprised if they don't completely destroy their own windfall opportunity, though.
Bill Murmor says: December 9, 2020 at 5:04 pm"OEL is literally a rebranded RH."
So, what's not to like? I also was under the impression that OEL was a paid offering, but apparently this is wrong - https://www.oracle.com/ar/a/ocom/docs/linux/oracle-linux-ds-1985973.pdf - "Oracle Linux is easy to download and completely free to use, distribute, and update."
k1 says: December 9, 2020 at 7:58 pmSo, what's the problem?
IBM has discontinued CentOS. Oracle is producing a working replacement for CentOS. If, at some point, Oracle attacks their product's users in the way IBM has here, then one can move to Debian, but for now, it's a working solution, as CentOS no longer is.
Because it's a trust issue. RedHat has lost trust. Oracle never had it in the first place.
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Dec 10, 2020 | blog.centos.org
Charlie F. says: December 8, 2020 at 6:37 pm
David Anderson says: December 8, 2020 at 7:15 pmOracle has a converter script for CentOS 7, and they will sell you OS support after you run it:
Max Grü says: December 9, 2020 at 2:05 pmThe link says that you don't have to pay for Oracle Linux . So switching to it from CentOS 8 could be a very easy option.
Phil says: December 9, 2020 at 2:10 pmOracle Linux is free. The only thing that costs money is support for it. I quote "Yes, we know that this is Oracle, but it's actually free. Seriously."
Replythis quick n'dirty hack worked fine to convert centos 8 to oracle linux 8, ymmv:
repobase=http://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL8/baseos/latest/x86_64/getPackage wget \ ${repobase}/redhat-release-8.3-1.0.0.1.el8.x86_64.rpm \ ${repobase}/oracle-release-el8-1.0-1.el8.x86_64.rpm \ ${repobase}/oraclelinux-release-8.3-1.0.4.el8.x86_64.rpm \ ${repobase}/oraclelinux-release-el8-1.0-9.el8.x86_64.rpmrpm -e centos-linux-release --nodeps dnf --disablerepo='*' localinstall ./*rpm :> /etc/dnf/vars/ociregion dnf remove centos-linux-repos dnf --refresh distro-sync # since I wanted to try out the unbreakable enterprise kernel: dnf install kernel-uek reboot dnf remove kernel
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Dec 09, 2020 | centosfaq.org
Is Oracle A Real Alternative To CentOS?Home " CentOS " Is Oracle A Real Alternative To CentOS? December 8, 2020 Frank Cox CentOS 33 CommentsIs Oracle a real alternative to CentOS ? I'm asking because genuinely don't know; I've never paid any attention to Oracle's Linux offering before now.
But today I've seen a couple of the folks here mention Oracle Linux and I see that Oracle even offers a script to convert CentOS 7 to Oracle. Nothing about CentOS 8 in that script, though.
https://linux.oracle.com/switch/ CentOS /
That page seems to say that Oracle Linux is everything that CentOS was prior to today's announcement.
But someone else here just said that the first thing Oracle Linux does is to sign you up for an Oracle account.
So, for people who know a lot more about these things than I do, what's the downside of using Oracle Linux versus CentOS? I assume that things like epel/rpmfusion/etc will work just as they do under CentOS since it's supposed to be bit-for-bit compatible like CentOS was. What does the "sign up with Oracle" stuff actually do, and can you cancel, avoid, or strip it out if you don't want it?
Based on my extremely limited knowledge around Oracle Linux, it sounds like that might be a go-to solution for CentOS refugees.
But is it, really?
Karl Vogel says: December 9, 2020 at 3:05 am
Gianluca Cecchi says: December 9, 2020 at 3:30 am... ... ..
Go to https://linux.oracle.com/switch/CentOS/ , poke around a bit, and you end up here:
https://yum.oracle.com/oracle-linux-downloads.htmlI just went to the ISO page and I can grab whatever I like without signing up for anything, so nothing's changed since I first used it.
... ... ...
[snip]
Only to point out that while in CentOS (8.3, but the same in 7.x) the situation is like this:
[g.cecchi@skull8 ~]$ ll /etc/redhat-release /etc/CentOS-release
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 30 Nov 10 16:49 /etc/CentOS-release lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Nov 10 16:49 /etc/redhat-release -> CentOS-release
[g.cecchi@skull8 ~]$[g.cecchi@skull8 ~]$ cat /etc/CentOS-release CentOS Linux release 8.3.2011
in Oracle Linux (eg 7.7) you get two different files:
$ ll /etc/redhat-release /etc/oracle-release -rw-r–r– 1 root root 32 Aug 8 2019 /etc/oracle-release -rw-r–r– 1 root root 52 Aug 8 2019 /etc/redhat-release$ cat /etc/redhat-release Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 7.7 (Maipo)$ cat /etc/oracle-release Oracle Linux Server release 7.7This is generally done so that sw pieces officially certified only on upstream enterprise vendor and that test contents of the redhat-release file are satisfied. Using the lsb_release command on an Oracle Linux 7.6 machine:
# lsb_release -a LSB Version: :core-4.1-amd64:core-4.1-noarch Distributor ID: OracleServer Description: Oracle Linux Server release 7.6 Release: 7.6 Codename: n/a #Gianluca
Rainer Traut says: December 9, 2020 at 4:18 am
Rainer Traut says: December 9, 2020 at 4:26 amAm 08.12.20 um 18:54 schrieb Frank Cox:
Yes, it is better than CentOS and in some aspects better than RHEL:
– faster security updates than CentOS, directly behind RHEl
– better kernels than RHEL and CentOS (UEKs) wih more features
– free to download (no subscription needed):
https://yum.oracle.com/oracle-linux-isos.html
– free to use:
https://yum.oracle.com/oracle-linux-8.html
– massive amount of extra packages and full rebuild of EPEL (same link): https://yum.oracle.com/oracle-linux-8.html
Hi,
Am 08.12.20 um 19:03 schrieb Jon Pruente:
KVM is a subscription feature. They want you to run Oracle VM Server for x86 (which is based on Xen) so they can try to upsell you to use the Oracle Cloud. There's other things, but that stood out immediately.Oracle Linux FAQ (PDF): https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/docs/027617.pdf
There is no subscription needed. All needed repositories for the oVirt based virtualization are freely available.
Rainer Traut says: December 10, 2020 at 4:40 am
Am 09.12.20 um 17:52 schrieb Frank Cox:
I'll try to answer best to my knowledge.
- No Account needed.
Niki Kovacs says: December 10, 2020 at 10:22 amI have an oracle account but never used it for/with Oracle linux. There are oracle communities where you need an oracle account: https://community.oracle.com/tech/apps-infra/categories/oracle_linux
Ljubomir Ljubojevic says: December 10, 2020 at 12:53 pmLe 10/12/2020 à 17:18, Frank Cox a écrit :
That's it. I know Oracle's history, but I think for Oracle Linux, they may be much better than their reputation. I'm currently fiddling around with it, and I like it very much. Plus there's a nice script to turn an existing CentOS installation into an Oracle Linux system.
Cheers,
Niki
--
Microlinux – Solutions informatiques durables
7, place de l'église – 30730 Montpezat Site : https://www.microlinux.fr Blog : https://blog.microlinux.fr Mail : [email protected] Tél. : 04 66 63 10 32
Mob. : 06 51 80 12 12Johnny Hughes says: December 10, 2020 at 4:10 pmThere is always Springdale Linux made by Princeton University: https://puias.math.ias.edu/
Niki Kovacs says: December 12, 2020 at 11:29 amAm 10.12.20 um 19:53 schrieb Ljubomir Ljubojevic:
I did a conversion of a test webserver from C8 to Springdale. It went smoothly.
Frank Cox says: December 12, 2020 at 11:52 amLe 08/12/2020 à 18:54, Frank Cox a écrit :
I spent the last three days experimenting with it. Here's my take on it: https://blog.microlinux.fr/migration-CentOS-oracle-linux/
tl;dr: Very nice if you don't have any qualms about the company.
Cheers,
Niki
--
Microlinux – Solutions informatiques durables 7, place de l'église – 30730 Montpezat Site : https://www.microlinux.fr Blog : https://blog.microlinux.fr Mail : [email protected] Tél. : 04 66 63 10 32
Mob. : 06 51 80 12 12Peter Huebner says: December 15, 2020 at 5:07 amThat's a really excellent article, Nicholas. Thanks ever so much for posting about your experience.
Am Dienstag, den 15.12.2020, 10:14 +0100 schrieb Ruslanas Gžibovskis:
According to the Oracle license terms and official statements, it is "free to download, use and share. There is no license cost, no need for a contract, and no usage audits."
Recommendation only: "For business-critical infrastructure, consider Oracle Linux Support." Only optional, not a mandatory requirement. see: https://www.oracle.com/linux
No need for such a construct. Oracle Linux can be used on any production system without the legal requirement to obtain a extra commercial license. Same as in CentOS.
So Oracle Linux can be used free as in "free-beer" currently for any system, even for commercial purposes. Nevertheless, Oracle can change that license terms in the future, but this applies as well to all other company-backed linux distributions.
--
Peter Huebner
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