[LightDestory]

So, did you read the latest news? No?
Don't be shy, I am here to tell you everything!

Let's do a small re-cap:

• CentOS is developed using as base RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) but doesn't give any support;
  
• IBM has recently aquired Red Hat
  

So, what happened?
If you have some time, you can directly read the official blog's artiche.

My summary:
CentOS 8 is going to be deprecated in favour of a new OS called "CentOS Stream", what changes? Everything. This new OS will not be based on RHEL and it will change it's behavior from downstream to upstream. So CentOS Stream is just a brother of Fedora. They are likely the same!

What CentOS 8's users liked was the immense stability of the system thanks to the RHEL base, but now this stability is not guaranteed anymore. So why I should use CentOS Stream and not Fedora? They are:

• Both upstream development
  
• Both rpm based
  
• Both compiled from the same source
  

IMHO: CentOS Stream is like Ubuntu flavors but Fedora-based.

What do you think about it?

[deanhills]

Thanks for the info @LightDestory. This makes me very sad. I'm a CentOS enthusiast and I hate change. Mind you I'm an IBM enthusiast too. All I can say I hope it will work out so I can still use it.

I'd be very interested to hear @fChk's comments on this, since he's a very experienced and expert user of CentOS.

Can't help but wonder whether this will provide a gap for CentOS enthusiasts to create new forks based on RHEL. IBM may be creating demand for an alternative OS based on RHEL.

[LightDestory]

Thanks for the info @LightDestory.  This makes me very sad.  I'm a CentOS enthusiast and I hate change.  Mind you I'm an IBM enthusiast too.  All I can say I hope it will work out so I can still use it.  

I'd be very interested to hear @fChk's comments on this, since he's a very experienced and expert user of CentOS.

Can't help but wonder whether this will provide a gap for CentOS enthusiasts to create new forks based on RHEL.  IBM may be creating demand for an alternative OS based on RHEL.

A new project to continue the "CentOS way" already started. It is called Rocky Linux. No releases has been released yet, well it is too soon for them, but you can follow the project on their github.

[deanhills]

@LightDestory I really like the Rocky name. My first computer ever was called Rocky I. So Rocky Linux would be good for sure. Thanks for the feedback.

[fChk]

I'd be very interested to hear @fChk's comments on this, since he's a very experienced and expert user of CentOS.

Not much If it's not my own rant on the subject, so I'll leave that out :-)

This story was overdue really ever since 2 key events took place:
1> The acquisition of CentOS by RedHat in 2014
2> The acquisition of RedHat by IBM on July 2019 (Press release)

Basically, the classic capitalistic trend of Big Fish eats small Fish towards concentration and monopolization as the end-game.

What changes really here is that CentOS is going from being a stable down-stream RHEL (stripped from all enterprise-support) subset to a less stable up-stream RHEL; a beta version in other-words.

This effectively will upset a lot of communities who relied on a reliable FREE RHEL subset. And what you read Online on this subject is the expression of that RAGE (/felt as a betrayal.)

Clearly it makes a lot of sense from a business standpoint from the IBM perspective. RedHat knows that even RHEL may lose long-term if the majority of the CentOS community shift to Debian or Ubuntu LTS and issued a blog post on the matter:
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/centos-st...rise-linux
It's worth reading.

As to what's next for me, well, I consider myself more of a developer than a system manager, hence why I've chosen Fedora as my daily system; and there isn't too many systems as cutting edge as Fedora out there. Thus CentOS stream will still be OK no doubt.

Last point, checking this FAQ one can read:

Q3: Will the source code for Red Hat Enterprise Linux continue to appear on git.centos.org?

A: Yes, the source code for Red Hat Enterprise Linux will continue to be published on git.centos.org. Nothing will change about how the source code is published. This change is only related to the binaries the CentOS Project is building and how they are published.

So, the community by making use of the published source code, thanks to the GPL licence, can still re-create another stable down-stream RHEL subset (similar to CentOS Linux.) And in fact there is already a project taking this road but still in gestation.
https://rockylinux.org/
https://github.com/rocky-linux/rocky

The problem here -as always- is that without sound financing the project will hit the wall, just like CentOS in 2014 which needed RedHat intervention/acquisition...

[Sn1F3rt]

Well, in my opinion I'd keep using CentOS. Currently, CentOS 7 powers all of the VPSes which I personally own and even those which I maintain for my clients. It's a super-stable OS, and there's nothing really you can complain of. Yes, the package manager is outdated, but if you know how to build them from source, you've landed on the perfect choice with CentOS.

Coming to CentOS Stream, I'd use it instead of Fedora. Basically, I doubt CentOS users would switch to Fedora, they're more comfortable here. I know that RHEL base stability may not be guaranteed, but it isn't not guaranteed as well. We'll have to wait till trying it out ourselves.

Personally, if CentOS Stream suits my needs it'll be the OS that I'd be using as well. I hate switching systems, not that I can't work with Ubuntu/Debian, but I really like the CentOS base. As a end user myself, I'm completely okay with this change. Sometimes, just switches are necessary for progress. Now are these changes for the good, or the worse, we will see.

--

I just read up briefly about Rocket Linux, from the last post. Looks to be quite interesting to me, I'm eagerly waiting for their updates, indeed sounds a promising project.

[rudra]

Almost all of the people I know of who like to work with CentOS are rather unhappy about this. They feel like betrayed. The stability and peace of mind is just gone in one sweep. I guess some of them will take up the rocky road and some might choose to go the Fedora way as that has some track record of their own. May be some will even join the other camp and start working with Ubuntu.

I myself like to work with Ubuntu and debian at times and therefore I have very little to worry about right now.

[fChk]

So, the community by making use of the published source code, thanks to the GPL licence, can still re-create another stable down-stream RHEL subset (similar to CentOS Linux.) And in fact there is already a project taking this road but still in gestation.
https://rockylinux.org/
https://github.com/rocky-linux/rocky

The problem here -as always- is that without sound financing the project will hit the wall, just like CentOS in 2014 which needed RedHat intervention/acquisition...

While Rocky Linux is still in gestation, CloudLinux has announced the creation of its own new RHEL clone, ie a CentOS replacement, currently named AlmaLinux:
Announcing Open-sourced & Community-Driven RHEL Fork by CloudLinux.

The AlmaLinux GitHub page has already been published and the source code(+binaries +ISOs) have been published in the main download repository. Must be noted that this first release of AlmaLinux is a one-to-one binary compatible fork of RHEL 8.3.

For the FAQ page, check AlmaLinux Wiki.

[tiwil]

I believe cPanel until now only support centOS? If they don't try to support other OS, we might still see centOS here and there even though it's dead, since we all know that many host use cPanel. Therefore I think it's pretty much still a choice, well, until cPanel drop their support and move to a new OS.

[TrK]

I am no expert in business sector but CentOS for production is as fas ar dead for centos 8 and above while ther is Alma linux and oracle linux i am waiting for rocky to shine his time according to latest sources, rocky will have a release candidate by the end of april so this month gonna decide the professional hosting industry linux distribution while centos7 is still good seeing rocky linux at it's peak development might be interested i just hope they just don't shift their focus as centos did. Now comes to point how it happened CentOS is based on RHEL which is in defacto owned by IBM, RHEL purchased the entire CentOS project and made the descision to stop focusing on downstream development to make centOS an upstream vendor implementation for RHEL it is same what they are already doing with fedora(not recommended for production at all) while they say it is for the better good of centos users but it's not they are targeting centOS users as testing platform for their enterprise linux by sending patches first to centos then if reported perfectly to redhat. Well let's hope rocky change this whole situation for the better.

Regards