[CentOS] Transition test report going from CentOS8 to Debian 10.

Wed Aug 4 17:03:50 UTC 2021
Lamar Owen <lowen at pari.edu>

On 2/4/21 10:39 AM, Lamar Owen wrote:
> ...
> I haven't decided whether to stay on Debian or not; too early to 
> tell.  ..... 

Six months on, and no longer too early to tell.  I have found Debian to 
be minimally different from CentOS, in all actuality; much less 
different than transitioning to a *BSD would be.  I've transitioned 
already deployed and configured production CentOS 8 machines to either 
Alma or Rocky (path of least resistance), keeping CentOS 7 machines on 7 
until I need to revisit in 2023, and CentOS 6 machines went to Debian 
10.  Now, I'm going to say that the availability of both Rocky and Alma 
is a very good thing, and that availability made things a lot easier for 
a few already deployed production systems that needed to stay stable 
through the end of the year.

New servers are being deployed on Debian 10; new virtualization hosts on 
Proxmox 6.4, although I am testing the Proxmox 6 to 7 upgrade path at 
one site and on my development hosts at the main site.  Proxmox is 
SLICK.  The upgrade path for simple servers from Debian 10 to Debian 11 
is relatively simple, with a few caveats (no python 2.x in 11, so no 
Mailman 2.x, for instance).  I have upgraded a few development servers 
from 10 to 11, and no issues were noted.

Your mileage may vary, of course, but I've had a reasonably good 
experience with this transition.   Thought I'd never say that; I've been 
a Red Hat user (partisan, even) for a very long time.