[CentOS] I'm looking forward to the future of CentOS Stream

Mon Dec 14 15:00:24 UTC 2020
James Szinger <jszinger at gmail.com>

On Sun, 13 Dec 2020 09:15:52 +0100
Nicolas Kovacs <info at microlinux.fr> wrote:

> Le 11/12/2020 à 02:25, Gordon Messmer a écrit :
> > Personally, I think that changing focus on CentOS Stream is going
> > to make CentOS (and maybe even RHEL) better in the same way and for
> > the same reasons that Fedora is a better distribution than Red Hat
> > Linux was.  
> 
> Using Fedora on production servers is like climbing without a rope.
> 
> It's possible. I've even seen some folks do it.

Since the release of CentOS 8, I have been moving my stuff over to
Fedora.  The combination of modularity and missing -devel packages
make developing and building software on EL8 impractical.  As a
result, EL8 is poor choice for deploying custom software.

Fedora has other advantages.

1. More changes.  Bugs are likely to be addressed sooner and I find
addressing small changes one at a time is more manageable than many
big changes all at once.  Having a good test suite helps.  Our
sysadmin at work spent most of 2020 doing the upgrade from CentOS 6 to
8.  I like to think there were better uses of his time.

2. More software.  Fedora packages much more software than CentOS.
Even adding in EPEL leaves a big gap and EPEL is Fedora, not RHEL.  I
spend less time building dependencies and more time adding value.

3. Easy licensing.  Fedora may be used anywhere for anything.  We have
a RHEL license at work, but I don’t use it because I do not want the
headache of tracking where and how it is deployed.  I’ve wasted too
many days fighting licensing and compliance issues to want to ever do
it again.  It is huge advantage for Free Software.

Your needs may differ, but it is not an insane choice, so please stop
insulting us.

Jim

P.S. It seems to me that compared to Fedora, Stream has the
disadvantages of RHEL but not the advantages.  It’s not clear to me
how Stream will be an improvement.