[CentOS-devel] [EXT] Balancing the needs around the CentOS platform

Peter Georg

peter.georg at physik.uni-regensburg.de
Sat Dec 19 09:13:05 UTC 2020



On 19/12/2020 07.44, Karsten Wade wrote:
> I wrote a blog post to share with you:
> 
> https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/balancing-the-needs-around-the-centos-platform/ 
> 
> 
> Below is a fair summary of the blog post, but I encourage you to read 
> the whole thing for the context around the "availability gap" and the 
> "openness gap":
> 
> Summary
> =======
> Letting an outsider take care of the availability gap after the RHL to 
> Fedora/RHEL split meant there was no vehicle for closing the openness 
> gap. Red Hat needed to create or bring-in a solution that was highly 
> available (easy to get) in order to close the gap around openness (easy 
> to contribute to). That was the joining forces with CentOS. And now we 
> think we have something that can cover both the availability and 
> openness gaps, please try it out.
> 
> All along Red Has been making a Linux OS that we want to be open, to be 
> available, to be stable enough, and to be sustainable. And now we think 
> we have the next evolution in that decades of work, in the form of 
> CentOS Stream.
> =======
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> - Karsten

Hi Karsten,

I agree with you that CentOS Stream might actually be a good way forward 
and consider (even looking forward to) switching from CentOS Linux to 
CentOS Stream for the reasons you mentioned.
However I disagree on one point: You mention CentOS Stream can cover 
"95% (or so)" of the current users. As long as 3rd party drivers are not 
working with CentOS Stream the number will be lower.
This topic has already been mentioned several times on this mailing list 
by various users. So far feedback has been positive here on the list.

In my opinion, the only way to guarantee compatibility is by 100% kernel 
ABI compatibility. The only way I can think of implementing this is by 
offering an optional "RHEL kernel repository" containing the (updated) 
kernel of the current RHEL minor release. Feedback to this proposal has 
been positive so far as well, but no concrete feedback yet.
I even suggested this to centos-questions at redhat.com. So far I only got 
a response that I shall wait till next year for no- and low-cost RHEL 
offerings. Let's wait and see if I get a useful answer to my proposal.

Sorry for mentioning this issue once again here on the mailing list, but 
I just hope that by mentioning it often enough, the possibility of this 
issue/proposal being acknowledged goes up.

This issue (and the fact that the Devel repository is non existing for 
CentOS Stream yet) is (are) the only blocker(s) for me that keep me from 
switching to CentOS Stream. Otherwise I very likely would have switched 
by now.

As you can see, I, and I assume others as well, want to get involved in 
CentOS Stream. However there are still some issues to solve and the 
infrastructure how to get involved is not yet in place. I'm looking 
forward to and am curious how all of this works out in the next months.


Best,

Peter


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