Did you have a look at alpine-linux ? I realize it is a bit out of the ordinary… no bash but busybox, no glibc but musl-libc and no systemd…
Lean and mean , would not surprise me the hole DC could run in RAM…
Really feels like running old-style efficient software on modern hardware: small, fast and up to date !!
Use alpine-containers regularly and they can be spun up with nspawn if you wish.
Agree…
However, because the arm gcc 4.8.x compiler lags a bit behind @ GLIBCXX versioning eager to move forward from el7. Used CentOS8-Stream around the time CentOS-Llinux was on 8.1 on all arch’s: utterly unusable!
Every time fingers crossed DNF could resolve the dependencies, best=0 - best=1 did not help, and note that was not the fault of DNF! the repo was just a mess.
No official SCL’s releases although devtoolsets for arm are build.
Even with those not able to (re)build most of the node.js and golang stuff… (as a mater of fact: evebox we are running on NS-arm is build on fedora )
I bet you be amazed… I mean it, for a single use chroot/container it is a serious proposition. Alpine is around for more than a decade, its used as docker’s default container. As said “a bit out of the ordinary”, IMHO not far fetched.
Thank you ALL for a very interesting and informative discussion.
It’s definitely sad to see that the success of CentOS may actually lead to its downfall. When IBM purchased Red Hat, we all knew that any follow up moves would be about nothing but the company bottom line, share prices and shareholder returns.
What could possibly go wrong with IBM at the helm? This is the behemoth that brought us OS/2 Warp and did wonders with Lotus Smart Suite!!
I’m watching Rocky Linux with interest as it has the potential to be the saviour of projects/releases like NethServer, yet will also give Stream a chance.
Another major project I use, have announced their own custom delayed repositories based on Stream:
While I would hate to lose the SME heritage in templates and db configs, I have to agree that a changeover to Debian may be the best long term solution to consider at this stage. I’m not a developer, yet would be happy to contribute and support the Nethserver team any way I can - because you guys Rock!
I’m still trying to find resources for NethServer to have a full test suite. I’ve looked at t_functional in the past, but I couldn’t keep momentum and I had to drop the idea. But it’s still on our plans. I think we are “mature” enough to try to handle stability by ourselves.
I did, I like it, but it is not using systemd, meaning that we can’t use cockpit.
Moreover, alpine is more and more used for containers, it may become less tested on real hardware.
If we think about hardware and software compatibility, RHEL is still the better option.
Hiya folks!
It’s been a ‘hot minute’ since I’ve posted here… actually 2015 if I remember correctly. A lot of water has passed under the bridge, and things have changed significantly for myself as I am retired now, but still like to have some security on my local network. That said, I’ve been limping along with SME 9.2 for a good while now until they yanked the rug out from under the Community Edition as far as the update repos. No upgrade path to Ver. 10, and everyone seems very tight-lipped about the fact that Redhat just kicked CentOS into the weeds because umm… IBM. We know what they’re after. I decided it’s time for a change and just finished downloading the .iso for Nethserver 7.9 for install later this evening…
That said, I believe that a move to Rocky Linux may be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Is it eventually going to go down the same way as CentOS in the near future? Who knows? I know it would be a monumental task to reconfigure everything to work with Debian, but that would be my first choice, as it’s rock stable and not yet infected with that Snap framework like Ubuntu Server (what a mess that turned into!)
Second logical choice would be FreeBSD as it’s also stable and has a lot of features that Linux doesn’t. I currently have it on my home NAS setup running XigmaNAS with ZFS. I actually don’t know a lot about FreeBSD, since the XigmaNAS setup was pretty much a no-brainer and everything just works!
I have a much better understanding of Debian with the command and directory structure, and it runs on about 60% of the machines on my network. The rest are divided between a Mac-Pro as my everyday driver and a couple of Windows machines for R&D and a bit of gaming. Incidentally, it seems if I want my Win 10 R&D machine to properly see any of my Samba clients again, I’ll almost HAVE to upgrade to something that supports Samba V. 4.
I trust you guys will make the right decision, whatever that happens to be, so I’m all for it. Good to be back in an open community that actually talks about the problems at hand!
That’s a bit premature I think. But in a way there are very limited options. A CentOS replacement could be springdale, weren’t it that Springdale does not even have a running el8 version. So that one is not too viable.
Another el8 based distro could either be Oracle Linux or Cloud Linux. The problem with Oracle Linux is… yeah, Oracle. And although probably less risky in terms of money driven ‘sudden changes’, Cloud Linux is also initiated by a (commercial) company.
Then what’s left is Rocky Linux or base NS on, as you mentioned, Debian.
My point is, that in the tradition of true open source work, I think we should not undermine OUR project by running after unreliable corporations. Now they change CentOS from rock solid downstream 1:1 copy of RHEL to the upstream playground of bughunting. Even if this is doable for our project to still deliver a stable NethServer OS, imo it is the wrong signal to our community.
If institutions like CERN are left hanging by RedHat, this doesn’t bode well for us SME users!
The question isn’t if Stream is usable or not.
I trust Stream less than I trust IBM or RedHat.
At least with Blue Sh*t you knew where you stood… And why you’re left singing the blues…
What speaks for Stream? Broken promises? Oh, we didn’t check the community page, some user put up unverified data. You mean they had NO logs? No Monitoring? No notifications of important changes?
I think I trust those hot air bags even less now, come to think of it!
Besides which, since inception, CentOS has replicated the support timeframe of RHEL…
More BS and issue evading…
Like the recent Lib Issue in the Stream Repo…
Oh, it’s only a migration issue…
If a company the size of RedHat can’t create a flowing stream, but a bumpy ride, why call it Stream?
Interesting is the fact that the company RedHat was founded in 1993, it’s first release was in 1995.
Debian and FreeBSD actually had first release in 1993. And both are rock solid and have more or less stable release cycles - both Debian and FreeBSD with absolutely no corporate ties.
Sure, Debian had issues in the past - before Centos - but cleaned up and streamlined their act very well.
Attempted, not succeeded, @robb. Because the angry machine guns are ready to throw a lot of lead to RedHat.
Nice add-on, i hope that give you some smile: ClearOS (still relying on CentOS) currently supports until march 2022 only the 7.x version. And there were no in-place upgrade path from 6 to 7, only a restore from config (and please, put manually data into your directories).
HPE afaik relies a lot on ClearOS for selling SME users servers with a “easy payed linux with support” option.
Funny the way they “mention” their sources, they don’t realy admit they take a lot from CentOS…
It is also relatively easy for us. We have already built a fully functional fork of RHEL 8. We have a team of experts who maintain it every day and are getting paid for it. We can reuse about 95% of that.
Funnier is:
We tried to join the RockyLinux effort, but at some point, we realized that it would not work at this stage. We already have a build environment that works, and we have been improving it for a decade. By the time I got in touch with RockyLinux, they already had plans for their build environment - one that would be very different from ours.
I’ll play with you as long as you use my bat and my ball…
CentOS 8 EOL Dec 2021: it was an important decision and widely unpopular.
I don’t feel that article and others like that are just for damage control. I think the decision and the history behind it is actually more complex than a neat 100% percentage. Any attempt to explain that complexity is good.
Interesting point of view over the Rocky Linux initiative in “Question 9”.
A lot of water has passed under the bridge, and things have changed significantly for myself as I am retired now, but still like to have some security on my local network. That said, I’ve been limping along with SME 9.2 for a good while now until they yanked the rug out from under the Community Edition as far as the update repos. No upgrade path to Ver. 10, and everyone seems very tight-lipped about the fact that Redhat just kicked CentOS into the weeds because umm… IBM. We know what they’re after.
I decided it’s time for a change and just finished downloading the .iso for Nethserver 7.9 for install later this evening…
