CentOS Linux abandoned, welcome CentOS Stream. Where to go now?

[Bert the Derp]

Hello Forum,

 

I don't know if you've read it or you are interested at all or something BUT

https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/?fbclid=IwAR06rjOBU7YWwo7bWSjl-_hZa-MdL_94UDbq5TQTbGuUXGXgV78pcTv5hvs

 

CentOS Linux as a stable release for RHEL is over. From now it will be a rolling release to test everything before they go live in Red Hat Linux.

 

"This is not a problem", said many people. Except those who use it on production servers like myself. Stability is mandatory and we cannot afford to use a rolling release. And not just me, about 20% of webservers in the world uses CentOS right now. So I raise you a question: Where to go now? What is your recommendation for webservers now? I know it is not a big deal, but I give credit for this forum and your oppinion.

• Ubuntu LTS
• Debian
• openSUSE Leap

Something else maybe?

[Master Disaster]

I fully understand the stability concerns but I never understand why its such a big deal which distro servers run on. They all run the same Kernel at the end of the day, on a server install with no GUI the only real difference is the package manager used to install packages.

 

As long as you keep your server on an LTS kernel and keep unnecessary packages off the system I just don't see what the difference between distro 1 & distro 2 is.

 

Having recently made the jump to Arch myself I also don't understand why its not WAAAAY more popular on servers. It comes with, quite literally, nothing except the bare minimum to boot & run. There's nothing preinstalled or preconfigured which allows you to start fresh so you don't have to adjust someone elses work. Sure setup time is longer than with something like CentOS or Ubuntu Server but you end up with a much cleaner install at the end.

[Bert the Derp]

2 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

I fully understand the stability concerns but I never understand why its such a big deal which distro servers run on. They all run the same Kernel at the end of the day, on a server install with no GUI the only real difference is the package manager used to install packages.

 

As long as you keep your server on an LTS kernel and keep unnecessary packages off the system I just don't see what the difference between distro 1 & distro 2 is.

 

Having recently made the jump to Arch myself I also don't understand why its not WAAAAY more popular on servers. It comes with, quite literally, nothing except the bare minimum to boot & run. There's nothing preinstalled or preconfigured which allows you to start fresh so you don't have to adjust someone elses work. Sure setup time is longer than with something like CentOS or Ubuntu Server but you end up with a much cleaner install at the end.

I agree with "they are basically all the same", but as you've said it, the main difference is the packet manager and the packages they use. You even mentioned Arch Linux (big bow before you, for using it). At the end, it all comes down for personal experiences and preferences. And the simplicity of the packet manager.

[Nayr438]

This has been know for awhile now. They plan to sit in between Fedora and RHEL. I don't really see what the concern is with stability, Fedora itself has always been rather stable and you wont get any updates until long after Fedora has moved onto there next recycle which is 6 months. All rolling release means is that you wont need to go through a major update process and you will have access to newer packages sooner. It doesn't mean you will be getting bleeding edge packages. Really though the idea behind stability across distros is largely blown out of proportion, Even Arch is relatively stable with it's bleeding edge rolling release model. Most package maintainers usually maintain separate branches for stability and testing with Distros like Arch only pulling from Stable Branches. From what I have seen, if there is a stability problem, it mostly comes down to how your Distro is preconfiguring your environment, if they are modifying packages, and pushing out there own home grown unstable packages. Looking at you Ubuntu. Though I will admit, there is always a chance something can make it's way into a stable branch, but that same thing could trickle down for years into any distro.

 

With that said, Ubuntu has largely taken over the server space so I am not surprised that CentOS is finally make a push towards less Legacy Support.

And if your looking at Ubuntu, just remember that there push towards snap / appliances is still going to push out newer packages than CentOS Stream will, just in a more confined hard to work with environment. CentOS as a rolling release will still sit towards the bottom of Legacy Products where it always has.

 

3 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

I fully understand the stability concerns but I never understand why its such a big deal which distro servers run on. They all run the same Kernel at the end of the day, on a server install with no GUI the only real difference is the package manager used to install packages.

It mostly comes down to the age of packages that they ship. Whether there Legacy products will work for years to come with neglect or if the people behind it actually need to maintain it. Newer packages also mean the potential for more bugs to creep in than if its further down the pipe.

 

3 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

As long as you keep your server on an LTS kernel and keep unnecessary packages off the system I just don't see what the difference between distro 1 & distro 2 is.

I personally see little reason to stay on a LTS kernel. I have never really found any advantages on LTS except for proprietary third party driver support. Staying on LTS means potentially limiting yourself to older hardware and missing out on various improvements to the kernel as well as bug fixes until the next LTS kernel rolls out.

 

3 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Having recently made the jump to Arch myself I also don't understand why its not WAAAAY more popular on servers. It comes with, quite literally, nothing except the bare minimum to boot & run. There's nothing preinstalled or preconfigured which allows you to start fresh so you don't have to adjust someone elses work. Sure setup time is longer than with something like CentOS or Ubuntu Server but you end up with a much cleaner install at the end.

Because a lot of people can't be bothered to keep server applications up to date or test anything before its pushed out. There is this heavy push in the server space to run neglected Legacy products as long as possible. Personally I run a Arch Server and tried to Migrate to Ubuntu and CentOS and ran into more issues than what I was trying to escape. Ubuntu ships so much bloat and the idea behind there push of appliances and snaps made things more difficult than they should be, not to mention our server crashed at least once a day for some reason. CentOS I kept running into issues with outdated or straight up missing packages. Not to mention the lack of documentation across both. Setting both of those systems up in a stable secure state was more of a chore than staying with Arch. It actually really got me thinking if people actually put any thought into what they are setting up or just install and go which is just bad practice, Ubuntu itself seems to encourage this.

[Master Disaster]

42 minutes ago, Bert the Derp said:

I agree with "they are basically all the same", but as you've said it, the main difference is the packet manager and the packages they use. You even mentioned Arch Linux (big bow before you, for using it). At the end, it all comes down for personal experiences and preferences. And the simplicity of the packet manager.

Totally agree, use what you know and are comfortable with.

30 minutes ago, Nayr438 said:

It mostly comes down to the age of packages that they ship. Whether there Legacy products will work for years to come with neglect or if the people behind it actually need to maintain it. Newer packages also mean the potential for more bugs to creep in than if its further down the pipe.

Fair point.

30 minutes ago, Nayr438 said:

 

I personally see little reason to stay on a LTS kernel. I have never really found any advantages on LTS except for proprietary third party driver support. Staying on LTS means potentially limiting yourself to older hardware and missing out on various improvements to the kernel as well as bug fixes until the next LTS kernel rolls out.

For a home user sure but on a server environment you shouldn't ever need the extra hardware support. Servers are kept as barebones as possible, both in terms of hardware and software, specifically to avoid potential issues. If I were to run a webserver for example I wouldn't give a damn about video drivers, audio drivers, WiFi support, Bluetooth support, heck even CPU power management isn't a necessity on a server simply serving files and new kernels modules shouldn't be a factor at all (obviously there are edge cases where you might need a certain module for something specific). What I'd care about is that the thing just worked for as close as 100% of the time as possible.

30 minutes ago, Nayr438 said:

 

Because a lot of people can't be bothered to keep server applications up to date or test anything before its pushed out. There is this heavy push in the server space to run neglected Legacy products as long as possible. Personally I run a Arch Server and tried to Migrate to Ubuntu and CentOS and ran into more issues than what I was trying to escape. Ubuntu ships so much bloat and the idea behind there push of appliances and snaps made things more difficult than they should be, not to mention our server crashed at least once a day for some reason. CentOS I kept running into issues with outdated or straight up missing packages. Not to mention the lack of documentation across both. Setting both of those systems up in a stable secure state was more of a chore than staying with Arch. It actually really got me thinking if people actually put any thought into what they are setting up or just install and go which is just bad practice, Ubuntu itself seems to encourage this.

Totally agree. I understand it more in the desktop space for for a server, why would I want Cannonicals predefined settings? Personally I'd rather install the default "blank slate" and configure everything myself though admittedly I find fun in learning how to set something up from scratch, maybe that's just my own bias getting involved in my opinion.

[Dutch_Master]

+1 on Debian. The Stable branch is, well, exactly that, the repo is the largest in the Linux eco system (27k+ packages!), supports multiple architectures (could actually be the most as well!) and if systemd is a no-go for you, cross over to Devuan (which is essentially Debian -/- systemd )

 

But, as stated by others already, this really is a matter of preference.

6 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

They all run the same Kernel at the end of the day

No, not really. Each distro chooses which kernel to build on and support in later phases of the lifecycle of that particular release. And each distro rolls out their own (sometimes distinctive) patches to that kernel(s) while prepping it for inclusion in the tree. Yes, the core code is the same, but it's the .config file that makes each pre-compiled kernel unique.

 

Then, what do I know, I've only been using it exclusively for 15 yrs (and counting!)

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, Dutch_Master said:

No, not really. Each distro chooses which kernel to build on and support in later phases of the lifecycle of that particular release. And each distro rolls out their own (sometimes distinctive) patches to that kernel(s) while prepping it for inclusion in the tree. Yes, the core code is the same, but it's the .config file that makes each pre-compiled kernel unique.

 

Then, what do I know, I've only been using it exclusively for 15 yrs (and counting!)

I realise this but c'mon, you're talking about distro specific patches and in development code like its part of the core kernel.

 

The core Linux kernel is the core Linux kernel, what others do to it after the fact doesn't change that.

 

Plus I was really referring to Linux Server from the users perspective, the vast majority of useful packages are available across all the major branches and if not you can always build anything from source.

 

When you're sat at an Arch CLI Vs an Ubuntu CLI the only thing you really need to know is the differences between pacman & apt. Pretty much everything else you'd ever need is shared (and if not identical close enough for a competent user to work out pretty quickly).

[Dutch_Master]

2 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

The core Linux kernel is the core Linux kernel, what others do to it after the fact doesn't change that.

Yes and I acknowledged that. But I stand by my statement that the .config file makes the kernel and those differ between distros. Distro X can have the WiFi drivers compiled into the kernel as it's aimed at desk- and laptops, while Distro Y is more focused on servers and keeps the WiFi drivers as modules because not many (if any!) server mainboards actually have WiFi The kernel is, in my book at least, more then just that core code that makes things run. It includes the drivers and all other hard- & software support it gets from, you guessed it, the .config file when it's compiled. But that's just my interpretation, I have no issue with anyone who disagrees, as long as it's respectful!

[Master Disaster]

14 minutes ago, Dutch_Master said:

Yes and I acknowledged that. But I stand by my statement that the .config file makes the kernel and those differ between distros. Distro X can have the WiFi drivers compiled into the kernel as it's aimed at desk- and laptops, while Distro Y is more focused on servers and keeps the WiFi drivers as modules because not many (if any!) server mainboards actually have WiFi The kernel is, in my book at least, more then just that core code that makes things run. It includes the drivers and all other hard- & software support it gets from, you guessed it, the .config file when it's compiled. But that's just my interpretation, I have no issue with anyone who disagrees, as long as it's respectful!

To be honest I don't really disagree with you, the sheer vastness of options and diversity available in Linux is one of the reasons I think its a great thing to learn.

 

Under the hood they're all the same thing while somehow being very different at the same time. The beauty is that anyone can take the core and build pretty much exactly what they need out of it. If you do a good enough job some of your work might even make it back into the core to help out others in the future.

 

Quite honestly, the only time I ever boot into Windows these days is when I'm gaming. I booted into Windows yesterday for the first time in 2 weeks to play Cyberpunk, I have my Arch install running exactly as I want it, everything I need I can do from it (apart from heavy gaming), its noticeably snappier than Windows and it doesn't ever force me to install crap I don't want exactly when I don't want it to or arbitrarily decide to swap my default browser back to Edge because of, well nothing I can fathom.

 

Sorry, rant over

 

I'm seriously consider swapping my laptop over to Arch this weekend.

[Dutch_Master]

31 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

I'm seriously consider swapping my laptop over to Arch this weekend.

I, for one, am not gonna try to persuade you otherwise

[Mling]

12 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Having recently made the jump to Arch myself I also don't understand why its not WAAAAY more popular on servers.

wait for an upgrade that breaks drivers. For me it was a new xserver release that was incompatible with the nvidia driver. I can imagine that happening with other hardware. 

[Master Disaster]

25 minutes ago, Mling said:

wait for an upgrade that breaks drivers. For me it was a new xserver release that was incompatible with the nvidia driver. I can imagine that happening with other hardware. 

That's why you would be running Nouveau on your server or preferably no dGPU at all.

[Dutch_Master]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

That's why you would be running Nouveau on your server or preferably no dGPU at all.

Depends on the task the server has. For stuff like webservers, storage etc, yes, totally agree. But render servers with expensive GPUs, the binary blob nVidia drivers are best for getting the most performance out of the chips. Mind, Nouveau is reverse-engineered w/o any support from nVidia, so kudos for their effort to get close, but their drivers aren't on par just yet.

[Nayr438]

5 hours ago, Mling said:

wait for an upgrade that breaks drivers. For me it was a new xserver release that was incompatible with the nvidia driver. I can imagine that happening with other hardware. 

If your on Arch these may be of some use in situations like this.

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/downgrade/

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/pacman#Skip_package_from_being_upgraded

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Linux_Archive

[ascendings]

On 12/11/2020 at 3:33 AM, Bert the Derp said:

Hello Forum,

 

I don't know if you've read it or you are interested at all or something BUT

https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/?fbclid=IwAR06rjOBU7YWwo7bWSjl-_hZa-MdL_94UDbq5TQTbGuUXGXgV78pcTv5hvs

 

CentOS Linux as a stable release for RHEL is over. From now it will be a rolling release to test everything before they go live in Red Hat Linux.

 

"This is not a problem", said many people. Except those who use it on production servers like myself. Stability is mandatory and we cannot afford to use a rolling release. And not just me, about 20% of webservers in the world uses CentOS right now. So I raise you a question: Where to go now? What is your recommendation for webservers now? I know it is not a big deal, but I give credit for this forum and your oppinion.

• Ubuntu LTS
• Debian
• openSUSE Leap

Something else maybe?

Personally, I run with Debian on my servers as that's what I've been using for ages and am the most familiar with. It's rock solid and provides a nice stable base to work from - if I need any newer software I can run it in a Docker container, or usually find a third-party repo that provides a newer version of the software I need.

 

If you'd rather try sticking with a RHEL-based distro, you may want to check out Rocky Linux. It's being started up by the person who originally started CentOS way back when, and it's intended to be like a new CentOS. I'm not sure how far along it is, but it may be worth checking out if you really want that.

[Conan Kudo]

On 12/11/2020 at 3:33 AM, Bert the Derp said:

CentOS Linux as a stable release for RHEL is over. From now it will be a rolling release to test everything before they go live in Red Hat Linux.

 

"This is not a problem", said many people. Except those who use it on production servers like myself. Stability is mandatory and we cannot afford to use a rolling release.

It was extremely unfortunate that the original announcement included the term "rolling release". That's not how CentOS Stream works. The core of it is CentOS Stream is Red Hat Enterprise Linux updates being released as they're made and validated with their QA processes. Historically speaking, updates (including security fixes and other bug fixes) would be held back until the next point release unless it was very urgent. However, what determines urgency is difficult to determine. More often than not, Red Hat partners and customers ask for Red Hat to release things faster, and CentOS Stream is an opportunity to provide that.

 

CentOS Stream is Red Hat Enterprise Linux being continuously delivered. This was explained in a followup blog post, but it's a shame it wasn't part of the original announcement. There is a major advantage here: if something does go wrong with an update, you can get RHEL developers to respond to it, fix the bug, and have that fix released within days of it being validated for correctness and release.

 

For me personally, I had already been moving my CentOS 8 boxes to CentOS Stream 8 shortly after CentOS Stream went live last year. Not just because I want security and bug fixes faster, but also because CentOS Stream also lets folks who have the inclination to contribute bug fixes and enhancements (that don't violate the principles of Red Hat Enterprise Linux) to help the broader community. This makes CentOS a much more participatory project.

 

Finally, Red Hat is working on making actual Red Hat Enterprise Linux available for production use for much lower cost (and even in many cases, for no cost at all!).

 

The Destination Linux podcast had a great interview with Mike McGrath, the VP of RHEL Engineering at Red Hat, to explain this better to everyone, and I encourage you all to take a listen.

 

[RKarim]

11 hours ago, Conan Kudo said:

It was extremely unfortunate that the original announcement included the term "rolling release". That's not how CentOS Stream works. The core of it is CentOS Stream is Red Hat Enterprise Linux updates being released as they're made and validated with their QA processes. Historically speaking, updates (including security fixes and other bug fixes) would be held back until the next point release unless it was very urgent. However, what determines urgency is difficult to determine. More often than not, Red Hat partners and customers ask for Red Hat to release things faster, and CentOS Stream is an opportunity to provide that.

 

CentOS Stream is Red Hat Enterprise Linux being continuously delivered. This was explained in a followup blog post, but it's a shame it wasn't part of the original announcement. There is a major advantage here: if something does go wrong with an update, you can get RHEL developers to respond to it, fix the bug, and have that fix released within days of it being validated for correctness and release.

 

For me personally, I had already been moving my CentOS 8 boxes to CentOS Stream 8 shortly after CentOS Stream went live last year. Not just because I want security and bug fixes faster, but also because CentOS Stream also lets folks who have the inclination to contribute bug fixes and enhancements (that don't violate the principles of Red Hat Enterprise Linux) to help the broader community. This makes CentOS a much more participatory project.

 

Finally, Red Hat is working on making actual Red Hat Enterprise Linux available for production use for much lower cost (and even in many cases, for no cost at all!).

 

The Destination Linux podcast had a great interview with Mike McGrath, the VP of RHEL Engineering at Red Hat, to explain this better to everyone, and I encourage you all to take a listen.

 

I'd agree that CentOS Stream is not "unstable" as in, likely to frequently crash/have major issues introduced, however the term "stable" is more often used to refer to *unchanging* software, not just software unlikely to crash. CentOS was stable. CentOS Stream simply isn't, to the same extent.

[Sandro Linux]

Maybe try Rocky Linux? It is RHEL based so just wait until Rocky is released