Fedora and its editions

Fedora has long had Workstation and Server editions and, back in August, added an edition for Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Those editions target different use cases for the distribution, as does the CoreOS "spin" (or "emerging edition"), which targets cloud and Kubernetes deployments. A proposal to elevate Fedora CoreOS to a full edition as part of Fedora 34 was recently discussed on the Fedora devel mailing list. As part of that, what it means for a distribution to be part of Fedora was discussed as well.

Fedora CoreOS edition?

Fedora program manager Ben Cotton posted the proposal in early December; making Fedora CoreOS an official edition "will help spread adoption and position Fedora as credible solution for running container workflow". As described in the proposal, there does not sound like a lot of work that needs to be done since "Fedora CoreOS is already being composed and released". Neal Gompa agreed with the idea, calling it simply a "paperwork change".

However, Adam Williamson was not so sure as there are a number of places where Fedora CoreOS is still fairly rough around the edges. He is concerned that people will ask "awkward questions" if that situation is not improved for Fedora 34; for example:

Dusty Mabe filled in some of the details of Fedora CoreOS releases. There are three "streams" for the distribution, stable, next, and testing, which are aligned differently. Currently the stable stream is from Fedora 32, but next and testing are both based on Fedora 33; "if you want Fedora 33 and you are a Fedora CoreOS user you can easily adopt a stream that has it". Fedora CoreOS does automatic updates by default, and there are several changes that came in Fedora 33 that could be disruptive, so the team is working through those before switching by default.

In a separate sub-thread, Williamson described some of the problems that came with the IoT elevation that he thinks will be worse for CoreOS. "I think this has a lot of the issues we had with IoT, but turned up to 11." For example, Fedora CoreOS is not built with the same tools nor does it integrate with the rest of the Fedora edition ecosystem.

Gompa seemed to change his mind a bit, agreeing that currently CoreOS does not mesh well with the rest of the project. He pointed out that it has led to real problems:

Integration difficulties

Jonathan Lebon admitted there are some difficulties integrating CoreOS, but that "the intent is always to match Fedora whenever possible"; the iptables problem was "an unfortunate slip up". In terms of build tooling, he said that there are discussions between the CoreOS Assembler and OSBuild teams to find common ground, but any change is a ways off. In the meantime, "we're open to integrating with Fedora processes in any way necessary"

Cotton agreed with Williamson about the alignment question; he also wondered if there were perhaps enough questions to be resolved that the change should be pushed to Fedora 35 instead.

But Clement Verna, who is the "owner" of the proposal, is concerned that Fedora CoreOS is simply not going to fit into the established model.

He pointed to the design document for more details on the stream promotion process. Verna wondered about the definition of an "edition", but also thinks that there will need to be some changes to Fedora in order to accommodate Fedora CoreOS. "I think if we don't want to accept a different philosophy about release schedule and release engineering we can just close that Change proposal." Williamson said that he is not pushing for that outcome, he just wants to see the implications thought through before adopting the change proposal.

It took a bit of back and forth, but Verna now has some ideas for improving the proposal to address the concerns of Williamson and others. Fedora project leader Matthew Miller also had some thoughts on what it means to be an edition and ways to decouple some releases from the traditional six-month cadence. In fact, he has a more sweeping vision of where things might go:

Whither Server?

The lack of any mention of the Fedora Server edition by Miller reflects another sub-thread where its future was discussed. In reply to his posting of the change proposal, Cotton noted that adding CoreOS raised an "uncomfortable question": should the Server edition be "demoted"? He suggested that the edition would still be created, but that it would perhaps be de-emphasized. The Server working group has gone dormant, though the edition is still maintained. While Fedora CoreOS is not really a replacement, it does seem to be where the action is at this point. An alternative might be to revive the working group, he said.

There is interest in helping to revive it, Gompa said, but Williamson wondered if that was really needed. The Server edition is basically dormant because it works and does its job just fine the way it is. That could of course continue without it being an edition, but "I'm not sure it just being sort of quiet and undramatic necessarily merits that, especially if we don't have clear replacements for its capabilities yet".

But Cotton would clearly rather see the project be a little more active, or even proactive, at least if it is going to be one of the flagship deliverables for Fedora. He noted that the working group "appears to be in zombie state for at least the last two years". Even though a server distribution should be not be super-adventurous: "Is Fedora Server doing what it should be doing now, or is it doing what it should have done two years ago?"

Miller would also prefer to have Server continue as an edition, "but we need it to be more active for that to work". Gompa is willing to help shepherd the working group back into a more active status, but he is concerned about simply "making changes just because". But that is not what Miller is trying to suggest:

Numerous folks stepped up to say they would be willing to help, which led to a thread in the previously moribund Fedora server mailing list. In the kickoff message, Miller outlined the kinds of things that need to be worked on; that has been met with several offers of help at this point. It would seem that the Server working group (and, thus, the Server edition) will rise again.

There is currently some overlap between the two community distributions from Red Hat: Fedora and CentOS. So the switch to CentOS Stream, which was announced on December 8 may also factor in here. CentOS has been the "go-to" server distribution for many and it is as yet unclear if CentOS Stream will still fill that role. If not, there might be even more use of Fedora Server, the one-year support cycle notwithstanding. Overall, it is a time of change for both Fedora and CentOS; it's going to take some time for the dust to settle.