> On 2020/12/29 8:32, Lamar Owen wrote: >> Will Stream cut it for me? One issue that keeps getting glossed over is >> that >> many drivers that are already in-kernel, not 3rd party, but disabled by >> Red Hat, >> still have users who need them. > > Yes, that's a problem for me. I mentioned it at > https://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-devel/2020-December/075631.html > . > I have an LSM module named TOMOYO which is in-kernel since Linux 2.6.30 . > Since Fedora cannot afford enabling LSM modules other than SELinux > ( https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=542986 ), unlike other Linux > distributions, TOMOYO is enabled in CentOS Plus kernels, which is > difficult for > RHEL users because CentOS Plus kernels are completely unsupported by RH. > >> ELrepo and others have provided support >> at the >> "point release" milestones for these "unsupported" drivers; it really >> looks like >> Stream will break this hard. > > Any chance that RH moves from "RH is responsible for supporting all code > RH is > shipping" to "RH ships as much code as possible (basically any GPL code), > but > RH supports only some portion of shipped code" ? > >> >> For instance, I need megaraid_sas for my servers; that's not a 3rd party >> binary >> driver, but is already in-kernel; it is intentionally not built by Red >> Hat. >> ELrepo rebuilds this AND most importantly provides a working driver disk >> for >> installs; I just don't see Red Hat providing these drivers, even in a >> SIG, for >> hardware they have already decided is "unsupported "; but I always >> reserve the >> right to be wrong. > > Who are the intended audience of RHEL/CentOS Linux/CentOS Stream ? > > While some people mention absence of security fixes in CentOS Linux upon > RHEL minor release, > it is common that RHEL servers with uptime of over 1 year (i.e. no kernel > updates). > There are servers using kernels as of e.g. RHEL 7.3 or so. That is, while > RHEL is > providing security fixes quickly, not all users are applying security > fixes so quickly. > > Since I'm a Linux kernel developer, I don't know about trends of > userspace. > But let me try to think about characteristics of several distributions. > > Gentoo is targeting for providing newest possible versions. But since > Gentoo is a > distribution which asks users to "compile", Gentoo is difficult for > administrators > who are not developers. > > Ubuntu is targeting for easy to use, with reasonably newest versions. > Since the design > of Ubuntu is fundamentally different (e.g. setting root password is not > mandatory, > multiple Linux Security Modules are available compared to SELinux-only), > CentOS Stream > won't be able to behave like Ubuntu due to constraint between Fedora and > RHEL. > > Default gcc provided in CentOS 7 became too old to compile Linux kernels. > Many projects which follow the trend want latest version of compilers. > Wouldn't developers who want latest versions already using Fedora/Ubuntu ? > > After all, isn't RHEL/CentOS a distribution for providing reasonably > oldest versions, > with plenty of documents and knowledge prepared for circumspect users? > > The idea of moving CentOS Linux to CentOS Stream might be just a > "The grass is always greener on the other side of fence." thing... For me the characteristics of RedHat EL/CentOS have always been: * It's stable, and stable for 10 years minus the first ~1-2. * It's old and outdated, nothing to make developers happy. * It provides a quite limited package set with high stability and quality. A lot of interesting stuff (things like Tomcat) have to be installed from elsewhere without stability and high quality or easy management. * It has a lot of competitors but the long support is unique. * As an admin, if you have a lot developers around you, you ALWAYS have to defend the usage of RHEL/CentOS because ALMOST EVERY developer would like to use something else. Now for CentOS, reduce the long support to 5 years and slightly reduce on the overall stability. What do you get? How do you sell it to your customers/users who wanted something else anyway? How do you defend your decision for RHEL/CentOS? Difficult times for all of us in this situation! Simon