What's in a (CentOS) version number?

Posted Jun 12, 2014 0:40 UTC (Thu) by johannbg (guest, #65743)
In reply to: What's in a (CentOS) version number? by andresfreund
Parent article: What's in a (CentOS) version number?

You may view me pointing out how Red Hat truly operates with non upstream community's as an act of a scorned lover but I will stop the moment Red Hat get's it's act together or eight years have passed or am I dead before those eight years have passed which is not unlikely to happen sooner rather then later.

Either way the outcome for you is the same so prepare yourself to get used to it until it does...

What's in a (CentOS) version number?

Posted Jun 12, 2014 6:46 UTC (Thu) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link] (5 responses)

There is a basic problem here: Red Hat may be a huge US-based company, a Linux leading light and an innovator but it has no coherent, voiced strategy for what it is about. I'm unsure whether it is trying to become a pure services company, get out of the Linux distribution business altogether, become part of a New World Order super-cosortium ...

This is becoming worse not better and is has its roots in the way that Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora were split all those years ago. Fedora was left as a rump, feeding the commercial product line but at several removes - but Red Hat had to release sources so the copycat distributions followed.

Pink Tie, White Hat and others were either shut down by legal action or by the weight of managing a distribution build on too few shoulders. CentOS and Scientific remained as the only two successful clones. CentOS was alternately disparaged / recommended as the way to learn proper, paid for supported Red Hat (but without support) and Fedora was for very committed bleeding edge enthusiasts, for Red Hat to cherry pick and for no support ever. Scientific just ticked over.

Now Red Hat has a huge legacy support burden of installed Linux on its hands 4,5,6 still in support, 7 just released and is now pushing cloud, SAAS, PAAS, Docker, Openhatch ...

Meanwhile, CentOS and Fedora now occupy the same space and CentOS is being made deliberately incompatible with RHEL as the days and months go by. The people who may have built a business on CentOS now have nothing and Fedora have a new adoptive sibling in their space, competing for their toys and their parents' money.

Red Hat should make some decisions - pure Linux distribution or Linux-based services in cloud / independent existence at the head of a vibrant Linux community or only as a more anonymous part of the big consortia (think Fujitsu / HP / Oracle). Sadly, Red Hat hasn't had ordinary users since Red Hat 9 ten years ago - it's had corporate paid for customers and "freeloaders" and customers on its certification courses.

If I were advising someone to build a heavyweight Linux based business today, I couldn't recommend Red Hat (or SUSE) and Ubuntu also seems slightly too widely focussed - is it that commercial Linux has had its day?

What's in a (CentOS) version number?

Posted Jun 12, 2014 12:52 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link]

> Now Red Hat has a huge legacy support burden

That's not a burden, that is their main product. Stable versions supported for a very long time. You see doom and gloom, while Red Hat saw it (ages ago) as an opportunity to make loads of money :-P

What's in a (CentOS) version number?

Posted Jun 12, 2014 13:42 UTC (Thu) by NRArnot (subscriber, #3033) [Link] (3 responses)

As I understand it, Scientific Linux is the result of a large mistake or misconceptualisation by Redhat concerning CERN. They did not understand the vast number of instances that CERN requires, of which a very tiny fraction would ever give rise to support calls. A pay-per-instance licensing scheme was unthinkable for CERN, a perpetual site-wide licensing scheme wasn't acceptable to RedHat, so CERN used the source ....

Unlike CentOS, Scientific Linux did not set out to be bug for bug compatible, but so far there has been very little divergence between RHEL and SL. It will be very interesting to see where they go with Scientific Linux 7.

What's in a (CentOS) version number?

Posted Jun 12, 2014 14:09 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

Scientific Linux is out of Fermi Lab (a US Department of Energy Laboratory) which they built in coordination with CERN. [The rest of the items may be correct, I just wanted to not leave the people from Fermi not getting the credit for the hard work on rebuilding).

What's in a (CentOS) version number?

Posted Jun 12, 2014 16:45 UTC (Thu) by ewan (guest, #5533) [Link] (1 responses)

The future of SL is very much up in the air, but there's been serious consideration of its being a CentOS SIG in the future.

What's in a (CentOS) version number?

Posted Jun 12, 2014 17:23 UTC (Thu) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link]

The comments on SL are very interesting. I knew, of course, that it was well maintained by Fermi labs and CERN. They are hard working enough that they will maintain backports of all security fixes for each point release and also maintain archives of all point releases.

I knew also that there was discussion about SL becoming a CentOS SIG. That would be good and useful so long as it doesn't impact the level of support SL currently provide.

The rationale behind starting SL does make sense - I can't see anyone paying for 10,000+ servers and the servers needed to run an additional PB of storage each and every month for the LHC :)