[CentOS] Blog article about the state of CentOS

Wed Jun 17 19:32:15 UTC 2020
Phil Perry <pperry at elrepo.org>

On 17/06/2020 20:06, Noam Bernstein via CentOS wrote:
>> On Jun 17, 2020, at 3:02 PM, Phil Perry <pperry at elrepo.org> wrote:
>>
>> Nothing has changed in this regard for as long as I've been a CentOS user or been involved in the CentOS community.
> 
> This is the essence of the question, to me.  I agree that _in_principle_ nothing has changed, and I don't even see any disagreement with that in the list.  However, there is a separate question, and that is whether _in_practice_ the lag between RHEL and CentOS updates has increased with CentOS 8.  I don't know what the answer is, because I'm not paying attention since I'm far from adopting CentOS 8, but it's a legitimate (and in fact empirical) question.
> 

I get what you are saying, but what difference does it make if it has? 
What does it matter if the lag is 1 week, or 1 month, or more? The only 
reason it will matter to you is if you are trying to do something with 
CentOS that is time critical - e.g, publicly facing server that needs 
security updates, using CentOS on test servers to validate production 
releases for RHEL, etc. At which point you probably should be using RHEL 
if it is important to you, not CentOS, and it was a mistake to deploy 
CentOS in those roles in the first place.

People need to hold their hands up and say, I took a gamble that CentOS 
would get updates out quick and I wouldn't get hacked in a week, and now 
updates are taking a lot longer my gamble is no longer paying off and I 
need to get myself a RHEL subscription or switch to Ubuntu or whatever 
other flavor you like the taste of. Coming here and complaining when 
(you) made a bet and lost doesn't achieve anything.

On my home file server for example, which is not connected to the 
internet, what does it matter if the release is 1 month or 3 months out 
of date? I can install the server in the knowledge it's going to work, 
and be supported with updates for 10 years and I can largely forget 
about it. My el5 box ran for more than 10 years until the hardware 
eventually died.