OK, I'm staring a new thread. On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 9:53 AM, Timothy Murphy <gayleard at eircom.net> wrote: > Phelps, Matthew wrote: > > >> > Oh, wait: CentOS, love it or leave it. > >> > >> Correct. > >> > >> In fact, I would prefer you leave. > > > > Really? > > > > This is what we're dealing with now? > > > > OK. I will recommend we move away from CentOS. > > This seems to be raising what to me is a trivial issue > to an absurd level of hostility. > Johnny Hughes' comment was uncharacteristically harsh; > and yours is even harsher. > > To me, CentOS is a highly stable OS for my home servers, > and I am eternally grateful to Johnny Hughes and his colleagues > for carrying out what looks to me like an impossibly complex task. > > The numbering of packages is a very small part of this. > On the other hand, a kernel panic would be very worrying to me > if it were in fact likely to happen. > I am glad to hear that I have no need to worry. > To you, and probably a majority of CentOS users, the "version number" of CentOS is indeed a trivial, cosmetic issue. However, there are those of us who use CentOS in a very large enterprise environment. That is, in fact, the intended audience of the whole distro. When there is a "new version" of Red Hat (and I know that means nothing with hundreds of constantly updating packages; however, my bosses don't get that), and hence CentOS, there is a huge amount of work that needs to be done in a typical enterprise. These include, but are not limited to: - setting up a new internal-only mirror of the distribution - setting up a new tftp/PXEboot/kickstart environment for network installs. - Editing several install scripts to match the new environment - Testing all these changes - Checking that all security recommendations/edicts from a higher authority (e.g. the US Government), which are also based on the "version", are followed - Checking that all commercial software supports the release (most of these use "RHEL X.y", what is that in CentOS now?) - Trying to get support from commercial software when the "version numbers" don't match - Coordination of other repositories (e.g. EPEL) is based on the "version", how does that work now? All of these things ran in parallel with the RHEL release cycle, and the work could be done at the same time. That was the overriding philosophy of CentOS, "we are a recompile of RHEL." Now, the impression is (rightly or wrongly, it doesn't matter to me) CentOS is totally becoming a separate Linux distro, and needs to be treated as such. And that has huge implications for system administrators in a large environment. Huge. There are answers to all these questions, but there is a lot of confusion that's been generated by this seemingly cosmetic change in version numbers. I've checked, and there was no,"We're considering creating this basic difference from RHEL, how will this affect you?" on this list, or the website, etc. From our viewpoint, it was sprung on us out of nowhere, and now were being told "deal with it, or leave." It sucks. -- Matt Phelps System Administrator, Computation Facility Harvard - Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics mphelps at cfa.harvard.edu, http://www.cfa.harvard.edu