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

Thu Jul 8 20:22:06 UTC 2021
Rich Bowen <rbowen at redhat.com>


On 7/8/21 4:08 PM, Neal Gompa wrote:
>> 1. Change mirrorlist to respond to 8 repo requests with 8-stream repos
>> at the EOL date.  This ensures that CentOS Linux 8 systems continue to
>> get security updates by way of converting them to CentOS Stream 8.  It
>> also reinforces that CentOS Stream 8 is the latest CentOS 8.
>> Obviously people who are not fans of the new project direction will
>> view this negatively and lash out about Red Hat for supposedly forcing
>> them to use CentOS Stream 8.
>>
>> 2. Same as 1, but wait some period of time after the EOL date, such as
>> 1-3 months.  Waiting much longer than that would result in effectively
>> updating from 8.5 directly to 8.7, which is less appealing.
>>
> I would prefer to do this change 1-2 months after December 31, though
> I'm quite fine with doing it on the EOL date. Having run CentOS Stream
> 8 for two years now, I feel that it's a solid experience and most
> people aren't going to have issues with it after upgrading from
> classic CentOS 8. And frankly, it's nice having people respond to my
> bug reports and actually*do*  something about it. Strictly speaking,
> that's an upgrade from the experience with classic CentOS 8.
> 

While I agree with you, that it's an upgrade, I anticipate that moving 
people from CentOS Linux 8 to CentOS Stream 8 automatically will result 
in a lot of backlash from people who continue to believe that Stream is 
a alpha/beta/testing/buggy/unstable/[pick your favorite complaint] 
distribution. Y'know, once they noticed that it had happened.

Surprising users seldom goes well, even if it's an overall positive 
surprise.