[CentOS-devel] Documenting the CentOS Linux 8 EOL process

On 09.07.21 17:41, Carl George wrote:
> I disagree with the suggestion that participation is required to use
> CentOS Stream.  It's certainly recommended, but I have had multiple
> people tell me personally that they switched from CL8 to CS8 and
> forgot they did it and didn't notice a difference.  They didn't file
> bugs, they didn't participate in IRC or the mailing list, they just
> used it and it was fine.  CS8 hasn't been a constant thorn for them.
> I'm not claiming it's been perfect, there have certainly been
> regressions, but they are fixed faster than they ever were in CL8 (or
> previous major versions) and I strongly feel that most users will be
> best served by getting switched to CS8 at or just after the CL8 EOL.


Hands on - I tried to switch some workstations to CS8 like it would be
done at the end of the year. The next monday would bring me angry users
into my "virtual" office because there applications does not run
anymore. What happens?
Applications from 3rd party repos like RPM Fusion that link against
"qt5-qtbase(x86-64) = 5.12.5" do not have any providers anymore
(CS8 got an upgrade to 5.15.2. So, like EPEL it seems that
everything else needs also a -next branch (just kidding).
What would be new in 8.6? That will be state of CS8 at the end
of the year?

I expect that such upgrades will happen in RHEL productions phase.
When this phase ends then CS8 is also EOL, and that point would be
the only dist upgrade situation where no surprises would happen ...

The bottom line here is that a slightly more complex setup/configuration
of a system would lead into a higher risk that the mentioned upgrade
path would fail. Complex means here every things that uses more then
just CentOS artifacts (ISV/proprietary software, 3rd/custom repos,
etc.). As mentioned elsewhere because RHEL has stripped a lot of
packages out of the compose, people are forced to compensate this with 
there own builds, what leads to the above mentioned system
configuration.

--
Leon