Rocky Linux 8.4

[Posted June 21, 2021 by ris]

Rocky Linux is a community enterprise operating system, created by Gregory Kurtzer, founder of the CentOS project. Rocky Linux 8.4 has been released for x86-64 and aarch64. "Sufficient testing has been performed such that we have confidence in its stability for production systems."

Rocky Linux 8.4

Posted Jun 22, 2021 2:02 UTC (Tue) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link] (13 responses)

How is this different from AlmaLinux?

Rocky Linux 8.4 - how is this different to Alma Linux?

Posted Jun 22, 2021 8:23 UTC (Tue) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link] (8 responses)

At the moment, honestly? Very little difference: different IRC channels, different people behind each project. Both projects built off Red Hat sources: both at parity with Red Hat now in terms of major version.
Rocky got press coverage initially: largely because Cloudlinux always had infrastructure, Alma beat them to 8.4 at least in part because of release timing.. They obviously have different logos and both now have the annoyance of a) stripping Red Hat branding and b) building a vibrant community/reputation/market place fit for themselves. [And some mirror operators have had to double disk space].
It's a two way split and dilution of effort in the old community where there weren't that many experts to do this well when needed so both have had to learn on the job to some extent.
Meanwhile, CentOS folk are still working at Red Hat (until the 8.5 release, at least, I assume) and CentOS Streams is still there.
Oh, and there's probably a Wikipedia edit war on who gets to say what about CentOS - nothing to see here folks, move along please.

Rocky Linux 8.4 - how is this different to Alma Linux?

Posted Jun 22, 2021 11:23 UTC (Tue) by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118) [Link] (2 responses)

Mirror space comment made me thinking. If Red Hat was providing reproductive builds, both Alma and Rock would result in identical binaries. And could be hard-linked on mirrors, right?

Rocky Linux 8.4 - how is this different to Alma Linux?

Posted Jun 22, 2021 11:26 UTC (Tue) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (1 responses)

An rpm package includes a signature (and a build host, build time, and other fields). Even if the content would be identical, the resulting packages will not be identical.

Rocky Linux 8.4 - how is this different to Alma Linux?

Posted Jun 22, 2021 16:55 UTC (Tue) by sheepdestroyer (guest, #54968) [Link]

Hosting package repositories is a good case for using block level deduplication like VDO I assume?

Rocky Linux 8.4 - how is this different to Alma Linux?

Posted Jun 22, 2021 17:54 UTC (Tue) by jccleaver (guest, #127418) [Link] (2 responses)

One is none; two is one.

Given what just happened with CentOS, I consider this to be an important duplication of effort, and having two different teams doing things independently reduces the chances of the entire downstream EL community being affected again. Both deserve our support and utilization.

Rocky Linux 8.4 - how is this different to Alma Linux?

Posted Jun 23, 2021 8:26 UTC (Wed) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] (1 responses)

There were multiple Redhat re-packaging distros before. Remember Scientific Linux?

Rocky Linux 8.4 - how is this different to Alma Linux?

Posted Jun 23, 2021 18:23 UTC (Wed) by jccleaver (guest, #127418) [Link]

> There were multiple Redhat re-packaging distros before. Remember Scientific Linux?

There were. And before that, White Box Enterprise Linux, and probably others I forget. However all of those eventually went by the wayside, not to be restarted, once Red Hat officially blessed and incorporated CentOS Linux as the One True Rebuild. By encourage-allowing other rebuild products to go fallow, everyone put their faith in Red Hat not screwing downstream users over.

Never again. Keep backup projects running so that rebuild forking is easy and knowledge is distributed.

Rocky Linux 8.4 - how is this different to Alma Linux?

Posted Jun 24, 2021 11:26 UTC (Thu) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link] (1 responses)

My comment was from my personal perspective: as someone who has done RHCE courses, has run Red Hat and CentOS. If I came to set something up now/had to sell it to my bosses as to what to choose: "So - CentOS has gone: which one of these two should I choose?" - and the answer (unless you're an insider/have knowledge of the history) is "Meh, they're almost indistinguishable". I'm not a partisan of either and couldn't speak to their technical merits as against each other.

There's a couple of things where there are loose ends: CentOS had a group of SIGs and it's not clear what happens to that sort of development from here on in (once CentOS 8 ceases at the end of 2021).

As I wrote on IRC - it's a shame that both have tied themselves absolutely to EL compatibility - in some sense, it would be good for something to pull together the widest RPM community rather than limiting to strict RHEL compatibility. As someone who used to co-write a Distributions-HOWTO for LDP: I appreciate the mortality rate for distributions and forks - it will be interesting to see how the world looks in another five years for Rocky and Alma - and whether Scientific will build on either or build something else CentOS 8[+] compatible for CERN/Fermilab and the wider scientific community.

Rocky Linux 8.4 - how is this different to Alma Linux?

Posted Jun 24, 2021 17:16 UTC (Thu) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link]

> There's a couple of things where there are loose ends: CentOS had a group of SIGs and it's not clear what happens to that sort of development from here on in (once CentOS 8 ceases at the end of 2021).

I don't get this. CentOS Linux 8 is ending, but CentOS is continuing, including those SIGs.

Rocky Linux 8.4

Posted Jun 22, 2021 19:10 UTC (Tue) by themayor (guest, #152895) [Link]

I think am important distinction is that AlmaLinux operated under a true 501(c)6 non-profit which has an independent board which is governed by the community and the community owns all those assets and IP, in order to prevent the past from ever happening again.

Rocky on the other hand is a for-profit B-Corp which owns all the assets and is under the control of one person.

Source: https://forums.rockylinux.org/t/community-update-february...

Rocky Linux 8.4

Posted Jun 24, 2021 10:55 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

At the moment, Rocky has aarch64 (ARM64) and Alma does not. After that there is probably different build systems and tooling to make various parts of the distribution. Deep down it is probably different long term goals of Cloud Linux as a company and the Rocky crew as a bunch of people wanting to do something.

Rocky Linux 8.4

Posted Jun 27, 2021 15:09 UTC (Sun) by BirAdam (guest, #132170) [Link] (1 responses)

Rather wonderfully, there isn’t a difference. Both projects have accomplished their goals of being 1:1 compatible with RHEL, which then means they are compatible with one another.

The main difference is how they came about and how they’re funded and supported. AlmaLinux came out of CloudLinux and is developed/supported by an independent foundation as well as volunteers. The fact that CloudLinux was already doing this internally meant that it hit the market first, and that also provides a good track record for it. Rocky, otoh, was started by the founder of CAOS Linux and some volunteers. They were starting from zero so it took them a little longer. Kurtzer doesn’t have the best track record but did have a successful career, and I suspect he’s learned a lot over the years. I hope both projects succeed and do well, and thereby provide some redundancy in the market.

Rocky Linux 8.4

Posted Jun 28, 2021 2:46 UTC (Mon) by ljubljana (guest, #152984) [Link]

I just started using Rocky Linux. I do not know any of the back story except for the fact that it was highly touted as being run by the CentOS co-founder. I looked up your comments on CAOS and it seems like it had very little to do with CentOS aside from the fact that one was spun out from the other at some point? I could be wrong though. Can you please elaborate on Kurtzer doesn’t have the best track record?