Red_hat on passthejoe

Goodbye CentOS Stream 8. I guess we didn't click.

Mon, 09 May 2022 04:25:16 -0800

Writer’s note on March 3, 2024: I think I took this post off my CentOS blog at some point because it might have been too “mean,” or maybe just too “critical.” I felt bad. Being the bull in Red Hat’s CentOS china shop wasn’t a fun role. Since this post was first written, CentOS 9 has been released and feeding into RHEL 9 for some time. I think the way it still goes is that development happens in Stream 9 and then moves to RHEL 9. But critical security patches begin in RHEL 9 and eventually make their way to Stream 9. I’m not sure if there is a regular cadence, but the evidence of patches — especially to Stream’s Linux kernel — really only exists in the changelogs on commits in the CentOS Stream Gitlab.

Not a review of CentOS Stream 8

Wed, 06 Oct 2021 12:00:12 -0700

I have so many notes. I started running CentOS Stream 8 five months ago, and I wanted to document every win, loss, setback and solution as I tried to make what isn’t really a desktop distribution — Red Hat Enterprise Linux (and its clones) — into my laptop operating system.

I’m not going to look at my notes. This non-review won’t write itself, and the notes aren’t going to do it for me.

Why CentOS Stream and the end of CentOS Linux doesn’t really matter

Wed, 23 Dec 2020 17:18:25 -0800

There were clones of — or more accurately downstream projects based on — Red Hat Enterprise Linux before Red Hat bought CentOS in 2014.

CentOS started in 2006, and there have been other distributions based on RHEL. (My favorite is still Nux’s Stella from the CentOS 6 days.)

There are many (many!) other Linux distributions and BSD projects that can supply a server or desktop operating system. Most of them are not owned by corporations that can limit their distribution on a whim. CentOS was a big deal before Red Hat acquired the project in 2014. New projects will now take its place.

CentOS Stream and the end of the CentOS clone: perils, pitfalls, risks and opportunities for Red Hat

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 17:06:24 -0800

Red Hat unleashed the kraken with its recent announcement that its CentOS 8 clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux would be shut down in 2021 instead of 2029, to be replaced by the newish CentOS Stream 8.

What is CentOS Stream? It is a reimagining of CentOS as a continuously delivered yet version-constrained development distribution that tracks ahead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 yet stays within the RHEL 8 world from an ABI (Application Binary Interface)-compatibility standpoint.