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

Thu Jul 15 20:36:09 UTC 2021
Johnny Hughes <johnny at centos.org>

On 7/9/21 7:18 PM, Leon Fauster via CentOS-devel wrote:
> 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?

That is actually true .. people will need to support stream, IF they
want to support stream.

> 
> 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 ...
> 

Yes .. this same error will happen on the switch to RHEL 8.5, as that is
the version that will be in 8.5.  So it happened a little earlier, but
it would have also happened in both RHEL and CentOS 8.5.

Other than the kernels, I'm sorry but you would be hard pressed to find
something in Stream that doesn't also happen in CentOS and even RHEL.
It just happens a month or two earlier in Stream.  BUT, so do bugfixes :)

> 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.
>