CentOS - What is the current opinion here?
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@adamf said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
So I have 1 server that needs migrated from CentOS8. What is the current state/opinion here about migration? Ubuntu is a clear choice, and most likely the path I will take, but wanted to get some other opinions as well. Is anyone using CentOS stream in a production scenario?
I have a lot of CentOS Stream in production for customers who don't have a clear understanding of release and support schedules and need the smoke and mirrors of the CentOS marketing to make them feel better. On technical grounds, I would never deploy it by choice. It isn't terrible, but it's a pretty goofy idea that I do not feel has any reasonable place in production. It exists to placate politics where middle managers who don't know IT need to inject a truly foolish opinion.
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@jaredbusch said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@adamf said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
Is anyone using CentOS stream in a production scenario?
I don't but I would, but then I already use Fedora in production.
Right, if you think you want CentOS Stream, Fedora is like the production ready improvement on it. It's not that Stream is bad, it's that Fedora is better in like every way, while being essentially the same basic product. Stream is just a ridiculous half-assed byproduct of Fedora. If you love the ecosystem, stick with Fedora. I use about half Fedora and half Ubuntu. Both are great.
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@pete-s said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
My opinion is that a company should pick one linux OS as their standard and stick to that for everything possible.
I wrote about this in my book. It feels good, but I think it is generally impossible. And once you have variation, attempting homogeneity falls apart in value. You can generally get by with a few different OSes with minor variation. For us that means Ubuntu, Ubuntu LTS, Fedora, Debian, and CentOS Stream are required in some combination. We can't standardize on any one because we have a workload here or there that requires something "niche". When we have the choice, we are using Ubuntu first. Then Ubuntu LTS, then Fedora. But it's always workload based and going with just one wouldn't be practical unless we were only running software that we wrote ourselves exclusively.
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@pete-s said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@jaredbusch said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
But this is the thing, not all applications are designed to run on various operating systems. So you do not always have the luxury.
That's true, you have to run what works. But most of the time you can stick to one OS.
Not that we've found. Finding an environment where you are running Linux, and can avoid all variation is pretty rare, I think. So many apps only work on Ubuntu XOR CentOS. It's a mes out there.
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@scottalanmiller said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@pete-s said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@jaredbusch said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
But this is the thing, not all applications are designed to run on various operating systems. So you do not always have the luxury.
That's true, you have to run what works. But most of the time you can stick to one OS.
Not that we've found. Finding an environment where you are running Linux, and can avoid all variation is pretty rare, I think. So many apps only work on Ubuntu XOR CentOS. It's a mes out there.
You can say that again.
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@dashrender said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@scottalanmiller said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@pete-s said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@jaredbusch said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
But this is the thing, not all applications are designed to run on various operating systems. So you do not always have the luxury.
That's true, you have to run what works. But most of the time you can stick to one OS.
Not that we've found. Finding an environment where you are running Linux, and can avoid all variation is pretty rare, I think. So many apps only work on Ubuntu XOR CentOS. It's a mes out there.
You can say that again.
Ok, I will, just look at my home lab! Fedora, Ubuntu and Debian because things either only run or run much better on different ones.
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@travisdh1 said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@dashrender said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@scottalanmiller said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@pete-s said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@jaredbusch said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
But this is the thing, not all applications are designed to run on various operating systems. So you do not always have the luxury.
That's true, you have to run what works. But most of the time you can stick to one OS.
Not that we've found. Finding an environment where you are running Linux, and can avoid all variation is pretty rare, I think. So many apps only work on Ubuntu XOR CentOS. It's a mes out there.
You can say that again.
Ok, I will, just look at my home lab! Fedora, Ubuntu and Debian because things either only run or run much better on different ones.
Say what one wills about Microsoft Windows, this conversation makes it clear that things are relatively homogeneous on that side of things. All things being equal and the company is not stuck on some encapsulated AS400 app or something.
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@scottalanmiller said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@pete-s said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@jaredbusch said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
But this is the thing, not all applications are designed to run on various operating systems. So you do not always have the luxury.
That's true, you have to run what works. But most of the time you can stick to one OS.
Not that we've found. Finding an environment where you are running Linux, and can avoid all variation is pretty rare, I think. So many apps only work on Ubuntu XOR CentOS. It's a mes out there.
I'm curious about what workloads you are thinking about.
I try but I can't think of any major application that doesn't run on both debian and redhat based distros. I'm not counting appliances here, because the OS under the hood is fixed and not something you can select.
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Fedora seems like a logical choice. Fedora it is!
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@pete-s said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
I'm curious about what workloads you are thinking about.
I try but I can't think of any major application that doesn't run on both debian and redhat based distros.Zimbra is one that always gets me. RHEL / CentOS/ Ubuntu LTS only. And they've tried to block CentOS in the past, but gave up on that.
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@phlipelder said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@travisdh1 said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@dashrender said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@scottalanmiller said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@pete-s said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@jaredbusch said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
But this is the thing, not all applications are designed to run on various operating systems. So you do not always have the luxury.
That's true, you have to run what works. But most of the time you can stick to one OS.
Not that we've found. Finding an environment where you are running Linux, and can avoid all variation is pretty rare, I think. So many apps only work on Ubuntu XOR CentOS. It's a mes out there.
You can say that again.
Ok, I will, just look at my home lab! Fedora, Ubuntu and Debian because things either only run or run much better on different ones.
Say what one wills about Microsoft Windows, this conversation makes it clear that things are relatively homogeneous on that side of things. All things being equal and the company is not stuck on some encapsulated AS400 app or something.
It seems that way, but I feel like Linux apps tend to be almost always for current versions of the OS. At least production ones. But on Windows the amount of "we only support really old versions" is really high (of course, you can argue, anything that does that can't be production, right?)
But really, the issue is that Windows is an OS and Ubuntu is an OS. So there is no fracturing. The thing that gets weird is when you look at a large family of similar operating systems and compare them to the single OS of Windows. Sure, it seems fractured. That's because we are comparing an orchard to a tree. OS to OS, there is no fracturing.
There's no direct comparison. In the Windows world, though, you get "only licensed for Server" or "only runs on desktop" version issues that create similar fractures even on a single OS. We are constantly talking to clients about having gotten the wrong OS version for their needs. That never happens with Linux because there aren't those licensing limits or version in that way. It's a totally different style of problem, but it exists there, too.
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@phlipelder said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
Say what one wills about Microsoft Windows, this conversation makes it clear that things are relatively homogeneous on that side of things.
I think that the bigger thing in the Linux world is that sure, we have this "problem" where we often need Ubuntu, Fedora and maybe something else to deploy all of our apps. But the big question is... why does it matter? They are all free. They are all the same licensing. They are all effectively the same - if you know one you know them all. The same tools and management works across them. You don't need special cross training or anything. It's trivially annoying to have these tiny differences, but they are truly tiny. At the end of the day, I run at least five or six different distros of Linux for our fleet and the amount of time that I have to think about it is... zero. It's a zero problem issue.
Sure, in theory, it adds some problems. But in practice it doesn't. And if you start using any amount of automation, it truly vanishes completely to the point that you'll never even know that there are different distros in the fleet. Now, if you get Windows to the same point, it'll just merge into the fleet too, in theory. But some things, like licensing, always remain unique. As do drivers and stuch.
So while I might need to have a few deployment images for Linux to cover my bases, it's essentially background noise. I have to have different Windows images too for my Windows needs (OEM, generic, server, desktop, and each licensed version), and even being primarily a Linux shop, we have way greater Windows variety in practice (customers running every version from 2003 and forward because of licensing problems) with Linux being almost entirely current (or current LTS) and only about four distros in practice.
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@scottalanmiller said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@pete-s said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
I'm curious about what workloads you are thinking about.
I try but I can't think of any major application that doesn't run on both debian and redhat based distros.Zimbra is one that always gets me. RHEL / CentOS/ Ubuntu LTS only. And they've tried to block CentOS in the past, but gave up on that.
OK, yeah, that seems to be one that is particularly sensitive.
IMHO if an application needs heavy integration into the OS and depends on specific package versions then it's better to turn the whole thing into an turn-key linux appliance. Like proxmox, xcp-ng, vyos, pfsense, freepbx, 3cx and other have done.
My guess is that Zimbra is getting by on mostly legacy installations though. Self-hosted email is hard to justify nowadays.
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@scottalanmiller said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@phlipelder said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@travisdh1 said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@dashrender said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@scottalanmiller said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@pete-s said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@jaredbusch said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
But this is the thing, not all applications are designed to run on various operating systems. So you do not always have the luxury.
That's true, you have to run what works. But most of the time you can stick to one OS.
Not that we've found. Finding an environment where you are running Linux, and can avoid all variation is pretty rare, I think. So many apps only work on Ubuntu XOR CentOS. It's a mes out there.
You can say that again.
Ok, I will, just look at my home lab! Fedora, Ubuntu and Debian because things either only run or run much better on different ones.
Say what one wills about Microsoft Windows, this conversation makes it clear that things are relatively homogeneous on that side of things. All things being equal and the company is not stuck on some encapsulated AS400 app or something.
It seems that way, but I feel like Linux apps tend to be almost always for current versions of the OS. At least production ones. But on Windows the amount of "we only support really old versions" is really high (of course, you can argue, anything that does that can't be production, right?)
But really, the issue is that Windows is an OS and Ubuntu is an OS. So there is no fracturing. The thing that gets weird is when you look at a large family of similar operating systems and compare them to the single OS of Windows. Sure, it seems fractured. That's because we are comparing an orchard to a tree. OS to OS, there is no fracturing.
There's no direct comparison. In the Windows world, though, you get "only licensed for Server" or "only runs on desktop" version issues that create similar fractures even on a single OS. We are constantly talking to clients about having gotten the wrong OS version for their needs. That never happens with Linux because there aren't those licensing limits or version in that way. It's a totally different style of problem, but it exists there, too.
A better analogy in my mind would be in grafting.
With Windows, we are essentially grafting onto the same trunk.
With *NIX that is not the case. Each distro has its own trunk and requires its own set of processes to graft on.
An OS is an OS is an OS. But, the apps/roles that run on top of that OS need Windows Server for server apps and Windows Desktop for desktop apps without getting into the Modern mess.
As I see it, that is not the case with *NIX / *BSD as each would require its own system of management, knowledge to install and and support both the OS and the apps, and then there's the post deployment support.
With support our preference is to be as homogeneous as possible. Having so many distros to manage and update instead of just one Windows OS with perhaps a few versions online looks to be a lot more complex.
Then, there's the whole University of Minnesota affair with the *NIX Kernel Team. Hypocrite Commits. SolarWinds anyone?
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@pete-s said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@scottalanmiller said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@pete-s said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
I'm curious about what workloads you are thinking about.
I try but I can't think of any major application that doesn't run on both debian and redhat based distros.Zimbra is one that always gets me. RHEL / CentOS/ Ubuntu LTS only. And they've tried to block CentOS in the past, but gave up on that.
OK, yeah, that seems to be one that is particularly sensitive.
IMHO if an application needs heavy integration into the OS and depends on specific package versions then it's better to turn the whole thing into an turn-key linux appliance. Like proxmox, xcp-ng, vyos, pfsense, freepbx, 3cx and other have done.
My guess is that Zimbra is getting by on mostly legacy installations though. Self-hosted email is hard to justify nowadays.
I like this.
I do think that there's some of this in a few different appliances that have hit the market over the last while in the Windows world. There is definitely a set it and forget it market out there though, in my mind, with a very important caveat that the appliance needs to be highly isolated for its specific purpose.
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@phlipelder said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
With support our preference is to be as homogeneous as possible. Having so many distros to manage and update instead of just one Windows OS with perhaps a few versions online looks to be a lot more complex.
In theory, and if that is a need, you can force yourself to a single distro / image. But in practice, they are so similar as to be the same. The cross platform knowledge delta is nominal and even having to patch four or five distros literally means 1% maximum the effort and risk of patching a single version of Windows. From a Windows world perspective, where the single "trunk" is fragile and constantly breaking, adding more trunks is scary because we assume each is as fragile. In the Linux world where most of the enterprise trunks are super stable, you get a different reaction. It's safer and easier to manage a large variety of Linux than one Windows.
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@phlipelder said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@pete-s said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@scottalanmiller said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
@pete-s said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
I'm curious about what workloads you are thinking about.
I try but I can't think of any major application that doesn't run on both debian and redhat based distros.Zimbra is one that always gets me. RHEL / CentOS/ Ubuntu LTS only. And they've tried to block CentOS in the past, but gave up on that.
OK, yeah, that seems to be one that is particularly sensitive.
IMHO if an application needs heavy integration into the OS and depends on specific package versions then it's better to turn the whole thing into an turn-key linux appliance. Like proxmox, xcp-ng, vyos, pfsense, freepbx, 3cx and other have done.
My guess is that Zimbra is getting by on mostly legacy installations though. Self-hosted email is hard to justify nowadays.
I like this.
I do think that there's some of this in a few different appliances that have hit the market over the last while in the Windows world. There is definitely a set it and forget it market out there though, in my mind, with a very important caveat that the appliance needs to be highly isolated for its specific purpose.
The problem with that is that you tend to get much slower package updates. It has its merits, but it isn't without drawbacks. It's a strength of Linux that you can do this, but often a problem that people chose to do it.
VyOS is different in that they made a completely new OS. The others are just apps on top of an OS.
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@pete-s said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
OK, yeah, that seems to be one that is particularly sensitive.
It is, and it's gone to crap. So I'm not defending it. But lots of "not quite the best" apps have a tendency to do this. I'd love to eliminate them all and mostly do, but I'm more aggressive with that than most.
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@pete-s said in CentOS - What is the current opinion here?:
My guess is that Zimbra is getting by on mostly legacy installations though. Self-hosted email is hard to justify nowadays.
I think moreso they are killed off by their crap licensing, BS installation practices, lack of updates, and MailCow coming along and taking their candy away.
IF you feel the crazy need to host your own email, MailCow does it better than Zimbra, and is truly OS (and deploys natively to Docker.)
