CentOS Stream
redhat.com>CentOS Stream is parallel to existing CentOS builds
So why does regular CenOS exist in this day and age given its semi-official status under the RH umbrella ? Why doesn't RH just let people use RHEL without support ? Isn't it a massive waste of everyone's resources to rebuild everything and remove the trademarks? This seems like a more interesting future for CentOS to have as something different from baseline RHEL.
I always assumed that it was a marketing decision, RedHat don't want people (especially the corporate type who buy a ton of servers but might not know the small details) to know that "RedHat, but free" is an alternative. Instead we have "wait, but the vendor said that the software ran on RedHat, what's this CentOS thing? Better not take the risk."
RedHat is the household name that everybody knows, it probably makes sense to preserve it for the project that actually makes them money.
From the perspective of a 3rd party making software targeting RHEL it's simpler as well. I don't want to have to deal with clueless users installing an unsupported OS to run my software and then asking me for support for things like "our CD drive is not supported" or "how can we patch this security vulnerability". I've enough work supporting my software, I don't want to deal with the client's clueless sysadmin on top of it.
"Trademark" is the key word. If RedHad permits things out into the market with their trademarks all over them that they did not sell, then they are at risk of losing their trademark. Remember the primary purpose of a trademark is to identify your products as yours, and not let anyone else identify their products as yours.
It's a contradiction in legal terms to have a trademark that is open source and anyone can use, and legal system's resolution is to declare your trademark isn't a trademark after all.
You are misinterpreting what I said. I'm not talking about someone else impersonating RHEL. Canonical has no issue with its OS out in the market. RHEL could just be free to use (with updates but without other support) if they choose. This is how it used to be before it became RHEL anyway. Hence, CentOS was created as an outsider effort. Nowadays, CentOS is half inside RH, which is why the distinction is a bit silly.
However, upon thinking a bit more, their current strategy still makes business sense since RHEL and CentOS are silos. While the sets of users that pay for support and the ones that don't are different, if they started giving updates for free, it reduces their bargaining power in general and more so when time comes to renew support. Right now, if you stop paying for support, you cannot use RHEL any more and it won't get updates.
"RHEL could just be free to use (with updates but without other support) if they choose."
But not with that name.
Centos is as close as it can get.
I don't see the argument. Trademark has nothing to do with money. They don't lose their trademark if they give away something gratis. Canonical doesn't lose their trademarks just because you can get Ubuntu without paying them. Before RHEL, there was Red Hat Linux which was free to use.
That is so very incorrect. Way back in the beginning, they offered RHEL without support but with updates. At some point they started charging for access and eventually they raised the prices high enough that I couldn't afford to use it any more.
Google is free to use, that doesn't mean that just anybody can take their trademark.
Trademarks have nothing to do with whether something is traded for money or not.
Red Hat bought out CentOS now. They own CentOS. There would be no trademark dillution from a legal standpoint if they used their own trademark for their free version of the distro.
Because they don't want to deal with someone who goes 5 years without support, runs into a hard system down situation, then tries to buy support on the spot.
While they can absolutely insist the customer pay support back 5 years, the political fallout is always ugly.
> Why doesn't RH just let people use RHEL without support ?
They do: it's called CentOS. CentOS was acquired by RedHat in 2014, keeping an independent governance body. But the reason RedHat didn't release itself as open source was Oracle. They were rebuilding RHEL and reselling it, so RedHat closed up its process and did the bare minimum required to comply with the GPL. Brian Stevens confirmed it. So now RedHat exists in order to make money off a supported product [and fend off competitors [and enforce trademarks]], and CentOS exists to keep control over the open-source spin-off of the same. So if you want the real deal certified supported enterprise distro, you have to pay for it, and if you want an uncertified slightly-not-the-same open-source alternative, that's free.
It's worth noting that the existential threat has eased a lot for Red Hat. Openshift is growing as alternative revenue stream but has a long way to go before it replaces RHEL subscriptions. But now that IBM is keeping the lights on, Red Hat has at least a decade of breathing room it didn't have before. It can afford to loosen the RHEL reigns a bit.
Disclosure: I work for Pivotal, we compete against Red Hat in a number of ways.
The crucial difference between CentOS and RHEL is the speed of security updates. While CentOS is building a new RHEL point release there are no security updates!
This makes me unhappy to connect a CentOS machine to a production network, let alone put it on the Internet.
In addition the metadata that lets you install only security updates or bugfixes is not present in CentOS.
Red Hat is selling RH to gain their revenue, but they know that they have a limited audience which is willing to pay for their services. The rest of the Linux world expects Linux to be free. So instead of pushing them towards other distributions they keep those in the Red Hat universe by supporting the "free" versions of RH Linux.
It also makes it easier for any open source author to test their software on Red Hat, as there is always a free version available.
Oracle Java is practically identical to OpenJDK Java too. I'm not sure if its branding or legal, but the big companies like it that way.
OpenJDK is based on Oracle Java. CentOS on the other hand is based on RHEL. That would be like OpenJDK being based on Oracle Java.
> That would be like OpenJDK being based on Oracle Java.
This days it's the opposite, Oracle is "selling" a forked version of their own product.
I like it, at least in theory. I develop some industrial software that runs on RHEL so being able to run somewhat similar distribution on my machine would be convenient. I tried running CentOS but it was too frustrating and limiting to deal with all the outdated packages on a dev machine.
I suppose it will also be good for devs who just like the RHEL environment but don't need a super stable, outdated packages.
Agreed, and I’ve appreciated RH putting in effort like Software Collections to bring more modern versions of tools. The implementation may leave a bit to be desired of SCL packages but it could be worse with 3rd party RPMs.
>I’ve appreciated RH putting in effort like Software Collections to bring more modern versions of tools
Then you are going to love Modularity and Application Streams:
https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2018/11/15/rhel8-introduc...
So who is this for? Blog post says this is for people who want to test stuff before it lands in RHEL. Valuable to enterprise hardware/software companies etc..
But, if it's sort of a rolling RHEL, then this could be excellent for people who trust RHEL and want stability, but more frequent updates (which is exactly why I know lots of people using Debian Testing over Stable).
So this is confusing. Does this mean following a Chrome-ish lifecycle of Fedora > CentOS Stream > RHEL/CentOS? Where do Atomic Host/CoreOS fit in?
Right now, after RHEL branches from Fedora, it's disconnected — basically a fork more than a branch. This provides a public upstream for the RHEL 8.y branches.
Atomic Host is being retired.
CoreOS has two branches, one which is part of OpenShift (RHCOS) and Fedora CoreOS. That's very different from the RHEL model, so it doesn't directly map.
Original CoreOS is also built on Gentoo, not an RPM base.
Sure. That became Container Linux. Now we have Fedora CoreOS, which combines tech and ideas from both Atomic Host and CoreOS/Container Linux. It uses Fedora packages but through rpm-ostree, not with the yum/dnf system you might be used to.
Since CentOS Stream and Fedora brances will exist in the same git system, I can see future Fedora CoreOS making use of slower-moving CentOS Stream branches where useful. But that's all to be worked out.
More or less what I got as well. This is a welcome change for ISVs and IHVs, and I’m glad to see CentOS have a place in the family beyond “RHEL for people who don’t want to pay for support”.
So if we strip all the market speak out we are just getting a rolling release distribution like Debian testing?
As far as I can tell it is more rolling than Debian testing because it wouldn't need to be occasionally frozen etc for releases
Would it still be frozen for a month or two when RHEL minor releases enter beta?
This is to be worked out, but I don't think so. I think there might be a frozen branch internally for that but the Stream branch should continue (and therefore might end up ahead of the beta).
>The CentOS Stream project sits between the Fedora Project and RHEL in the RHEL Development process, providing a "rolling preview" of future RHEL kernels and features.
Thats what Fedora was originally for. Fedora advancements were mainlined into RHEL, and RHEL was repackaged as Centos.
If i had to propose a theory...At worst, this is "embrace, extend, extinguish." Tacking on a vainglorious service for an already successful project thats siphoning potential customers. Centos cant directly relate their brand to RedHat, but Redhat gets to call their offering "Centos Stream" when Centos is itself a trademark? Its very suspicious.
At best, this is Redhat acknowledging that they were absolutely blindsided by Docker, Compose, and Kubernetes in RHEL7. This all existed in EPEL and customers clearly felt preferential to the offerings themselves, while RedHat had to scramble to allocate resources to Openshift, podman, and a potential ground-up fork of Docker itself into Redhat as Swarm was clearly a direct threat. SCL is dated and cludgy.
By injecting themselves into Centos, they may put themselves closer to a developer market that theyve historically not been able to tap. Startups and small businesses dont buy IBM/Redhat licenses or support. They also have a chance to react to potential disasters like Docker much faster, albeit seeing as they are a part of the big blue machine now, its hard to imagine this will help in the long run.
>Centos cant directly relate their brand to RedHat, but Redhat gets to call their offering "Centos Stream" when Centos is itself a trademark? Its very suspicious.
Sus? Sure. Illegal? Not possible. IBM holds all the trademarks here. They draw the lines where they please.
So basically the cloud competitor for Ubuntu, since they marketed Fedora wrong all the time.
More info and explanation here from the CentOS team: https://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOSStream
Wow, a CentOS with a rolling release model. Super cool! I really hope this makes CentOS a bit more competitive with Ubuntu for the hobbiest/project space. Seems like raspbian/debian/ubuntu could use some competition in the space.
You’re thinking more along the lines of Fedora, this probably tracks what Red Hat is aiming for in their regular point releases for RHEL.
CentOS 8 is a case of too little too late for me. There were so many cobwebs growing on CentOS 7, and no clear timeline ever being given on when (or if !) CentOS8 might ever arrive that we gradually shifted elsewhere.
It's curious that RHEL/CentOS 8 is using nftables instead of iptables by default and yet the next release of Fedora will continue to use iptables.
I wonder what future Fedora will have if this new CentOS Stream will be stable enough for developer daily driver. 6 month release cycle of Fedora always felt awkwardly in-between, not having the stability of lts nor the continuity of rolling. I guess lot depends on details on how the packages flow to CentOS Stream, do they come from released Fedora versions or rawhide etc.
>6 month release cycle of Fedora always felt awkwardly in-between, not having the stability of lts nor the continuity of rolling
I run both Arch and Fedora, and since I think around Fedora 28 I've found that the upgrades are painless enough that it hasn't been much of an issue. The recommendation years ago was to do a full re-install of Fedora (every 6 months!) which was kind of a hassle, but these days its very simple.
So a modern RHEL but more stable than say bleeding edge fedora? Interesting
yes, it's nice and everything, but where is CentOS 8.0 ?
thanks :) I was expecting to see it on the homepage, frankly...
Yeah - weird they haven't updated https://centos.org/ with the release announcement yet...
It shows up for me. There is an announcement at the bottom of the home page and the download links already show links to CentOS 8
Yup, it shows up now, but it wasn't there when I first posted the comment.
Super Kudos to the CentOS people!
No Docker image for the release yet, though, as far as I can see. Anyone know how long it usually takes for it to be made available?
Just released today, as scheduled.
Sounds like an interesting option to discover, considering the enterprise professional background of the project.
> – The new CentOS Stream is a rolling-release distro that tracks just ahead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) development
So if someone wanted a free RHEL through CentOS, now CentOS is no longer a free RHEL.CentOS is now RHEL-devel.
CentOS is still the same CentOS. CentOS Stream is "RHEL-devel".