Oh, i have no doubt of that, NethServer is by far the best All in One i ever worked…
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Not supporting multiwan, lots of “bells an whistles” like peek and splice or other “gateway” like different user access for management,
It’s strongly and willingly developed as kernel, optimizations, performance tuning (multi-core QoS based, nifty!) and hardening… But also lacking so much on other interesting/necessary customer oriented options. I hope the best for the team, but this is the third year in a row that i cannot think/rely on a project like that for firewalls.
Going back to development: cockpit is enabling a so deeper access to the hardware and linux management compared to NethGUI, so IMVHO is currently the core for the future of NethServer. If SystemD is a necessory for Cockpit. the only alternative seems to be Debian compared to CentOS Stream.
Or am i missing something?
Side story similar environment, different derived project: Also Rockstor is leaving CentOS7 for OpenSuse based-installation for version 4.0
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Well is you meant HAProxy, they have it, but it is not as “easy” to configure I suppose :
https://wiki.ipfire.org/addons/haproxy
The UI is not the best and most of their plugins (doing a bit of research yesterday) do not have any UI for them.
I personally could live very well with that decision to go the Debian route. Going Debian would mean a lot of work for sure. All the packages would have to be redone from rpm to deb, and that is just one part.
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As far as i can feel from Filippo’s words, the current decision is “stay with stream”, only for avoiding troublesome major release problems and backportings. And maybe the stability of the releases by IBM Linux… Sorry… RedHat CentOS Stream department will be satisfactory.
The step we are talking about is on a “what if” streams sucks more than (put your worst considered distro as stability, security and quality here), and it’s just… talk.
Well, I guess I’ll stick to Nethserver 7.x for a while and see how things goes with version 8 but then again this will probably be a while 
Everybody who is proposing Debian and Ubuntu seams to forget how to migrate from NS 7 to NS 8 ?
Except by a full re-installation and a data migration I don’t see how ?
But to go with the flow
Why not using cockpit on CentOS 8 than build service in container such as LXC/Docker, …
Cockpit manage very well container.
@stephdl in fact I still don’t understand why NS7 use portainer for that
sudo yum install epel-release
sudo yum -y install dnf dnf-plugins-core
dnf download cockpit-docker
sudo rpm -Uvh --nodeps cockpit-docker-138-6.el7.centos.x86_64.rpm
sudo service cockpit restart
The idea of making Nethserver OS agnostic is very seductive but it also means a lot of works
and What about OpenSUSE, nobody like it ?
Hi Jonathan
That was in the past the same thing. NS6 → NS7 needed a complete new installation, an in place upgrade was not possible…
My 2 cents
Andy
ah, so everything is fine 
I installed few time Nethserver 6 but never truly used it
Does Nethserver is elligible to Extended Support (ELS): TBD or it will end the 30 Jun 2024
Extended support basically comes from RedHat, meaning that in 2024, RHEL7, Centos7 and anything built upon these will reach EOL, after an LTS of 10 years!
AFAIK RHEL7 came in 2014…
I’d also prefer a clean in-place migration, at least for some clients… 
NethServer is at the moment planing NS8. What that will contain / look like is hard to say at the moment, but there will be a Migration path, most likely as before using Backup / Restore…
My 2 cents
Andy
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In-place upgrade to ns7 is available since 2018 and marked stable since 2020, long before ns6 EOL.
A migration path like backup/restore is a requirement for NS8 too. In-place upgrade sounds more like a “nice to have”. In the end, it is the same approach we applied from 6 to 7: we can’t promise in-place until we decide where NS8 is going.
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I did my first migration 6->7 in 2017 and my last migration 6->7 in 2019…
Since then only new installs of NS7…
My 2 cents
Andy
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I can assure you I realize very well that a clean migration probably wouldn’t be possible. Well nothing is impossible however it would come with a lot of blood, sweat and tears. So my guess is, if they would go with something like Debian or whatever that isn’t Red Hat or close to CentOS, it would most likely need a clean install, start from scratch. For some this may not be a very big issue if you can just replicate everything while keeping your current system up, granted that all packages have been ported and functional, etc.
As for OpenSuse, well, as someone stated for Ubuntu which is based on Debian, Ubuntu is owned by a company. Isn’t OpenSUSE owned by SUSE Software Solutions? In which case, wouldn’t we be facing the same issues as with Ubuntu, depending on a company? If the idea is to be more independent then something like Debian would make more sense perhaps.
Sure, but it will fail if you have anything installed that is not considered ‘official’.
I think the most reliable way is still doing a vanilla NS7 install and recreate users and restore data.
btw, don’t you just love to have a virtualized environment so you can just create a new VM, sync data with the ‘old’ VM. Create a new virtual server without the need to format or delete the old virtual server.
not sure about the link between OpenSUSE and SUSE if it is more like CentOS or Fedora and RedHat relation and/or more like Ubuntu and Canonical but it said SUSE sponsor OpenSUSE. SUSE as been bought by EQT Partners firm in 2018 and became the 3rd most profitable Open Source Project (after RedHat and Canonical if I remember well), since then they focus on K8 like RedHat.
I don’t know if I mentionned Independent, but if yes, my meaning what more OS independent, more versatile, aka more Distro Agnostic (aka could work on Debian/Ubuntu/CentOS/OpenSUSE/Alpine/Arch Linux/…)
not sure about the link between OpenSUSE and SUSE if it is more like CentOS or Fedora and RedHat relation and/or more like Ubuntu and Canonical but it said SUSE sponsor OpenSUSE. SUSE as been bought by EQT Partners firm in 2018 and became the 3rd most profitable Open Source Project (after RedHat and Canonical if I remember well), since then they focus on K8 like RedHat.
Perhaps having to reinstall everything was very painful for me, my team and our customer when Debian decided to adopt SystemD
CentOS was maintained by Red Hat was it not? OpenSuse maintained by Suse again in part maybe with contributions from the outside. What happens if Suse decides let go of that project? Wouldn’t we find ourselves in the same boat?
To manage a container what is better than another container, portainer is under heavy development and it is a reference, maybe not the best but it is a challenger.
Why did you need dnf
Salutatous, (Hello2all),
So actually we do not know on wich OS will Nethserver be based.
Does the developers/board whatever have somehow a deadline to take a decision ?
Because for my parts i have a big one who’s named “Customers”.
I do not have so much, but I know it gonna be a big move for them when i’ll tell that i have to change their IS and rebuild it from scratch.
I do not even know how to do that as most of them have only ONE small server (small companies).
I know they gonna ask me to manage the changes when they will not be on duty, eg, during holidays : July/August in France. So i must inform them a looong time before the work have to be done.
So 1.) when will we certain to know on wich OS Nethserver will run for the next 10 years 
And 2.) Do we will have a “migration” guideline/procedure whatever ?
Thank you & Happy New Year.
Rémy.
Salutatous Remy,
(long time no see)
To me this sounds (reads) a bit harsh. That is if you realize Rhel/CentOS “dropped the bomb” Centos Linux 8 will be supported until end 2021 (instead of 2029) just a mouth ago.
This discussion taking place is a strong commitment from Nethesis to work with the community and there for it’s customers in the first place.
(Note I’m just a community member like you)