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

On su, 27 joulu 2020, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:
>On 12/27/20 12:29 PM, Alexander Bokovoy wrote:
>> On pe, 25 joulu 2020, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:
>>> On 12/24/20 2:37 PM, Neal Gompa wrote:
>>>> In the strictest sense, it obviously is not. But in a very real
>>>> practical sense, it absolutely is. Aside from the kernel issues (which
>>>> I firmly believe are solvable), people are generally not going to
>>>> notice a difference between CentOS Linux 8 and CentOS Stream 8.
>>>>
>>>> My CentOS Linux 8 boxes were replaced with CentOS Stream 8 back in the
>>>> spring because it was strictly better for production *and*
>>>> development. I've been in the process of opportunistically switching
>>>> our build targets from CentOS Linux 8 to CentOS Stream 8 most of the
>>>> year. With the retirement of CentOS Linux 8, it now becomes more of a
>>>> priority, but it was already going to happen.
>>>>
>>>
>>> As I understood it, Stream is not in full swing yet, there is no
>>> active/daily contribution from RHEL team?
>>
>> "Active/daily" contribution is pretty much a seasonal thing unrelated to
>> the actual processes. Right now majority of engineers contributing to
>> RHEL 8 sources are on their holidays and end of year vacation time. You
>> can notice these "activity dives" also in Fedora Project annual reports by
>> Matthew Miller, like
>> https://mattdm.org/fedora/2020nest/StateOfFedora2020.pdf.
>> This is a well-known phenomenon in Fedora community.
>
>Johnny Hughes wrote that Stream is not yet ready, that certain parts are
>not in place. I did not bother to retain specifics since I will not be
>using it at any time in the future, I only need to know enough to notify
>or answer on Facebook where I am admin.
>
><snip>
>
>
>>> What will happen to your system when/if there is new kernel change every
>>> few days? How much "punishment" can your system handle safely?
>>
>> You certainly control when you can and want upgrade your deployment
>> systems. It has nothing to do with the cadence of updates coming into a
>> distribution.
>>
>> I find this fixation on the kernel updates is skewing things a lot.
>> Kernel, certainly, is important, but it is not the thing that is RHEL or
>> CentOS distribution, alone.
>>
>It is crucial issue if you install any kernel module not provided by Red
>Hat (3rd party drivers). If some software that you might or might not
>use brakes, you can mess around your working system and fix it.
>But if after dnf update your system crashes or network is down, and it
>is bare metal system, they you are f**ked, you need to reach the system
>manually (I install on regular PC hardware without ILO) and reverse to
>prior kernel. Even if I am quick about it, it will be very embarrassing
>for me in front of my clients (small in number as they are) whose work
>will stop for that period, so I will not be caught dead using CentOS
>Stream, I do not need the potential headache, embarrassment.

That's pretty obvious with any system, really, no need to repeat that.
I think this topic was raised multiple times (by you and others already)
to realize that. In an ideal collaborative world, perhaps, those
3rd-party drivers could be build and tested automatically on top of the
CentOS Stream, though we are yet to reach that point of collaboration.

Following your approach to a detailed information about the Stream,
we've been told there are various RHEL subscription programs coming next
year that would address use of RHEL for many existing CentOS users.
Perhaps, those programs would address the needs of consumers of
3rd-party drivers too, before we'd reach the collaboration ideal I
outlined above. Let's see how that goes. 


-- 
/ Alexander Bokovoy
Sr. Principal Software Engineer
Security / Identity Management Engineering
Red Hat Limited, Finland