From what I've read, the role of Fedora won't really change. Here's my understanding of what the plan is: - Fedora: unchanged. This is basically the playground for what RedHat will one day become. Every once in a while, they pick a Fedora release, and use it as the foundation for the next RHEL release. For example, RHEL 8 was based off of Fedora 28. - CentOS Stream: despite sharing the name, this is something completely new. It appears to basically be a pre-release of candidate updates that are slated for full release into the RHEL channels. Think of it as pre-release, but post-beta. - RHEL: unchanged. The commercial release we all know, and some of us love. - CentOS: gone. The old CentOS that was designed as a binary compatible, bug for bug match of RHEL, is no more. On Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 11:01 PM Zori Babroudi via WLUG wrote:

Well that's a fun announcement. What is going to be the role of Fedora then? <Z>

On Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 10:36 PM Frank Sweetser via WLUG < wlug@lists.wlug.org> wrote:

...

Well, there's plenty talk about for CentOS users, like what you're going to switch to now that CentOS is becoming something completely different:

https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/

On Tue, Dec 8, 2020, 10:33 PM Tim Keller via WLUG wrote:

...

Well, we made it.. The last wlug meeting of 2020!

I hope everybody has stayed healthy and safe.

The meeting is going to be at our usual virtual hang out.. https://meet.jit.si/WlugMA @7pm.

I don't have a topic yet, I suspect something natural will emerge.

Later, Tim.

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-- - Frank

And for anyone looking to contribute to Greg's efforts: https://github.com/hpcng/rocky On Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 11:23 PM Chuck Anderson via WLUG wrote:

On Tue, Dec 08, 2020 at 10:35:24PM -0500, Frank Sweetser via WLUG wrote:

...

Well, there's plenty talk about for CentOS users, like what you're going to switch to now that CentOS is becoming something completely different:

https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/

My favorite comment on that post:

"Gregory Kurtzer says: December 8, 2020 at 4:27 pm

I 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)" _______________________________________________ WLUG mailing list -- wlug@lists.wlug.org To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave@lists.wlug.org Create Account: https://wlug.mailman3.com/accounts/signup/ Change Settings: https://wlug.mailman3.com/postorius/lists/wlug.lists.wlug.org/ Web Forum/Archive: https://wlug.mailman3.com/hyperkitty/list/wlug@lists.wlug.org/message/ON4X3N...

-- - Frank

This might not be as bad as it initially sounds. Centos Stream will consist of rolling updates that start from what will become each RHEL point release to what will become the the next RHEL point release, so for example from RHEL 8.1 to 8.2 to 8.3 etc. In fact, Centos 6, 7, and 8 already is a "forced" minor upgrade every quarter or so since they stop supporting x.y after RHEL x.y+1 comes out and your normal system yum updates just migrate you to the newer x.y+1 anyway. This is in contrast to how RHEL itself works, or how Scientific Linux used to work, where you actually have to take explicit action to upgrade to a new point release either using new install media or manual "yum" commands. See for example: https://scientificlinux.org/documentation/faq/faq-releases/ And here is what one of my Centos 7 systems looks like:

cat /etc/centos-release CentOS Linux release 7.9.2009 (Core) rpm -qf /etc/centos-release centos-release-7-9.2009.1.el7.centos.x86_64 rpm -qi centos-release Name : centos-release Version : 7 Release : 9.2009.1.el7.centos Architecture: x86_64 Install Date: Thu 03 Dec 2020 07:27:24 AM EST ..

See how the Centos 7.9.2009 release package was installed this month? Previously, I had older versions of that package:

sudo grep centos-release /var/log/yum.log* /var/log/yum.log:Nov 13 08:46:49 Updated: centos-release.x86_64 7-9.2009.0.el7.centos /var/log/yum.log:Dec 03 07:27:24 Updated: centos-release.x86_64 7-9.2009.1.el7.centos /var/log/yum.log-20181204:Jul 30 14:47:20 Updated: centos-release-7-5.1804.el7.centos.2.x86_64 /var/log/yum.log-20181204:Aug 14 12:15:35 Updated: centos-release-7-5.1804.4.el7.centos.x86_64 /var/log/yum.log-20181204:Oct 10 05:45:04 Updated: centos-release.x86_64 7-5.1804.5.el7.centos /var/log/yum.log-20181204:Dec 04 07:19:18 Updated: centos-release.x86_64 7-6.1810.2.el7.centos /var/log/yum.log-20200428:Jan 08 09:08:24 Updated: centos-release-7-7.1908.0.el7.centos.x86_64 /var/log/yum.log-20200428:Apr 28 07:47:22 Updated: centos-release.x86_64 7-8.2003.0.el7.centos

So over the years, this server got upgraded automatically from Centos 7.5 to 7.6 to 7.7 to 7.9. I have nightly automatic "yum updates" turned on, so it just gets updates as they come out and I reboot the server once every so often so the updates get fully applied (new kernels, new shared libraries). The difference with Centos Stream is you'll get updates continually /before/ RHEL releases it eventually as a "snapshot in time" called RHEL x.y+1. Sure, they won't be as heavily tested as RHEL point releases, but if you really need/want that, then you can either buy RHEL or stage your Centos Stream updates from TEST-->STAGE-->PROD, and/or stagger them across your PROD systems to minimize impact. On Wed, Dec 09, 2020 at 02:59:30PM -0500, Tim Keller wrote:

I've got a fair amount of centos in production... this sucks... guess I'm going to Debian now...

On Wed, Dec 9, 2020 at 9:10 AM Frank Sweetser via WLUG wrote:

...

And for anyone looking to contribute to Greg's efforts:

https://github.com/hpcng/rocky

On Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 11:23 PM Chuck Anderson via WLUG < wlug@lists.wlug.org> wrote:

...

My favorite comment on that post:

"Gregory Kurtzer says: December 8, 2020 at 4:27 pm

I 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)"

On Tue, Dec 08, 2020 at 10:35:24PM -0500, Frank Sweetser via WLUG wrote:

...

Well, there's plenty talk about for CentOS users, like what you're going to switch to now that CentOS is becoming something completely different:

https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/

Juniper QFX runs Wind River Linux. If you can control your update deployment, you can stay on the same package versions/releases that end up in RHEL. There may be someone working on a tool to make this easier. On Wed, Dec 09, 2020 at 04:12:24PM -0500, Frank Sweetser wrote:

It depends on the use case. If all you want is a free, reasonably stable version of RHEL, Centos stream might just be good enough.

If your goal is to support software that wants RHEL, this could be hit or miss, as you'll always be running on an approximation of RHEL. You could say you should always have been just buying RHEL if it's that critical, but it's now that much less optional.

I'm also really curious to see what's going to happen to the various black box appliances out there that currently run on CentOS, like Aruba Clearpass, Aruba wireless controllers, and the Juniper QFX switches. I doubt they'll want something stablish like CentOS Stream, so they most likely have three basic choices.

1. Run on CentOS 7 for as long as they can get away with it, and hope something better appears in the meantime 2. Work out a licensing deal for RHEL, and pass along the costs to the customers 3. Switch to an alternate distro like Ubuntu LTS

The next year is going to be interesting for more than a few vendors...

On Wed, Dec 9, 2020 at 3:59 PM Chuck Anderson wrote:

...

This might not be as bad as it initially sounds. Centos Stream will consist of rolling updates that start from what will become each RHEL point release to what will become the the next RHEL point release, so for example from RHEL 8.1 to 8.2 to 8.3 etc. In fact, Centos 6, 7, and 8 already is a "forced" minor upgrade every quarter or so since they stop supporting x.y after RHEL x.y+1 comes out and your normal system yum updates just migrate you to the newer x.y+1 anyway. This is in contrast to how RHEL itself works, or how Scientific Linux used to work, where you actually have to take explicit action to upgrade to a new point release either using new install media or manual "yum" commands. See for example:

https://scientificlinux.org/documentation/faq/faq-releases/

And here is what one of my Centos 7 systems looks like:

...

cat /etc/centos-release CentOS Linux release 7.9.2009 (Core) rpm -qf /etc/centos-release centos-release-7-9.2009.1.el7.centos.x86_64 rpm -qi centos-release Name : centos-release Version : 7 Release : 9.2009.1.el7.centos Architecture: x86_64 Install Date: Thu 03 Dec 2020 07:27:24 AM EST ..

See how the Centos 7.9.2009 release package was installed this month? Previously, I had older versions of that package:

...

sudo grep centos-release /var/log/yum.log* /var/log/yum.log:Nov 13 08:46:49 Updated: centos-release.x86_64 7-9.2009.0.el7.centos /var/log/yum.log:Dec 03 07:27:24 Updated: centos-release.x86_64 7-9.2009.1.el7.centos /var/log/yum.log-20181204:Jul 30 14:47:20 Updated: centos-release-7-5.1804.el7.centos.2.x86_64 /var/log/yum.log-20181204:Aug 14 12:15:35 Updated: centos-release-7-5.1804.4.el7.centos.x86_64 /var/log/yum.log-20181204:Oct 10 05:45:04 Updated: centos-release.x86_64 7-5.1804.5.el7.centos /var/log/yum.log-20181204:Dec 04 07:19:18 Updated: centos-release.x86_64 7-6.1810.2.el7.centos /var/log/yum.log-20200428:Jan 08 09:08:24 Updated: centos-release-7-7.1908.0.el7.centos.x86_64 /var/log/yum.log-20200428:Apr 28 07:47:22 Updated: centos-release.x86_64 7-8.2003.0.el7.centos

So over the years, this server got upgraded automatically from Centos 7.5 to 7.6 to 7.7 to 7.9. I have nightly automatic "yum updates" turned on, so it just gets updates as they come out and I reboot the server once every so often so the updates get fully applied (new kernels, new shared libraries).

The difference with Centos Stream is you'll get updates continually /before/ RHEL releases it eventually as a "snapshot in time" called RHEL x.y+1. Sure, they won't be as heavily tested as RHEL point releases, but if you really need/want that, then you can either buy RHEL or stage your Centos Stream updates from TEST-->STAGE-->PROD, and/or stagger them across your PROD systems to minimize impact.

On Wed, Dec 09, 2020 at 02:59:30PM -0500, Tim Keller wrote:

...

I've got a fair amount of centos in production... this sucks... guess I'm going to Debian now...

On Wed, Dec 9, 2020 at 9:10 AM Frank Sweetser via WLUG < wlug@lists.wlug.org> wrote:

...

And for anyone looking to contribute to Greg's efforts:

https://github.com/hpcng/rocky

On Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 11:23 PM Chuck Anderson via WLUG < wlug@lists.wlug.org> wrote:

...

My favorite comment on that post:

"Gregory Kurtzer says: December 8, 2020 at 4:27 pm

I 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)"

On Tue, Dec 08, 2020 at 10:35:24PM -0500, Frank Sweetser via WLUG wrote:

...

Well, there's plenty talk about for CentOS users, like what you're going to switch to now that CentOS is becoming something completely different:

https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/