Red Hat returns with another peace offering in the wake of the CentOS Stream affair: More free stuff

Red Hat today further extended its olive branch to open-source groups with another freebie of sorts: this time, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for Open Source Infrastructure. The IBM-owned Linux distro giant will offer selected bodies free "RHEL subscriptions for any use within the confines of their infrastructure." By …

[Anonymous Coward]

Bit late.....

A number of my customers have already put plans in place to migrate to other distributions as opposed to CentOS, now support has been cut short. Not only that, some have initiated plans to move whatever RedHat stuff they do have to other distributions. That unhappiness has certainly cost RedHat customers. Not that its going to cause them much of a dent in profits I suppose....

Life goes on.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Bit late.....

I’m confused... if they were using CentOS rather than RHEL then why would Red Hat care, they’re not paying customers anyway, which was the whole point...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Bit late.....

Not the OP, but can probably give a relevant answer.

There are orgs I know of who were primarily using CentOS, but also had RHEL in some places (for various reasons). The two are similar enough that support staff don't have any headaches switching between the two when doing ticket work.

But, with CentOS no longer being viable, they're also pulling the RHEL installs to help keep the fleet a little more homogenous.

Again, not a massive loss to Red Hat, but still a loss.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Bit late.....

I'm the OP...

Exactly that. Some things were primarily tested/developed on CentOS and then went on to run on RHEL in production. The CentOS estate was relatively small in comparison but very fluid, with the RHEL estate being more stable and larger. When the CentOS announcement was made, it was found that to move it all to RedHat was too expensive, and a decision was made to consolidate it on a cheaper Linux platform with less headache (another story).

[needmorehare]

Yep... big losses for everyone here

Folks will inevitably move on to Debian in the name of avoiding the risk factor (corporate backstabbing) and they bastardise their packages so much that once people learn the Debian way of doing things, there's no putting the genie back in the bottle.

This is exactly the same mistake Oracle made with OpenSolaris to put short term profits over a long-term future. In the case of Red Hat, this will cost them big money if they're no longer seen as the standard option. Which is a massive crying shame, as Red Hat provides better security out-of-the-box than any other distro on the market today.

I still think the negative claims people have been making about CentOS Stream are unfounded but clearly Red Hat should have known people would throw their toys out the pram...

[Alan Brown]

Re: Bit late.....

"There are orgs I know of who were primarily using CentOS, but also had RHEL in some places (for various reasons). "

We have a site license (six figure fees) and had been encouraging people to get OFF Centos and onto a supported OS, but encountering more and more problems with RHEL coupled with shitty helpdesk responses)

On top of that RHEL Satellite 6 was fairly nice. Satellite server 7 is a Neptunian monster that takes MONTHS to setup (no, you can't "simply upgrade" and keep all your settings)

[Alan Brown]

Re: Bit late.....

"Not only that, some have initiated plans to move whatever RedHat stuff they do have to other distributions. "

It's a redhat own goal. They've been keeping the distros so far behind the curve that it's difficult at times to find new desktop hardware which will run it

Driving everyone into the loving arms of Debian (No, NOT SUSE: Suse have history of running away and hiding when things get difficult - even refusing to answer questions from Novell on a 300k system which wouldn't behave. That put them on my "never ever do business with this company ever again" list)

[chololennon]

No way

No way RHEL... it's too late, quoting Dylan/Hendrix... "all along the Rocky tower"

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Shareholder perk?

In a desperate bid to prop up the shares, could they give free subscriptions as a perk for small shareholders?

[swampdog]

My usage is irrelevant..

..as I'm semi-retired and will hopefully be turning off the triple KVM centos7 hypervisors and retiring my server room by year end. I figure I can already do without the redhat subscription so that's me out of the loop. My current knowledge will be worthless in 18 months.

That's the thing though. I won't know redhat any more so won't be recommending it.

[mikus]

So ultimately CentOS* is deaed

All my customers using CentOS are still crapping themselves, but they're ditching IBM/RH as quick as they can.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bait

and Switch.

[msknight]

Stem the exodus?

They're kidding, right? What did they think would happen?

I mean, I can understand the reasons and why this has happened, but there is no way that they can have thought they'd pull the trigger on something like this, and not see people leave. If anything, it points to them not understanding their, "customers," in the first place. But... meh... it is what it is.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Stem the exodus?

"What did they think would happen?"

There's an implied assumption in that question.

Think?

[nijam]

Re: Stem the exodus?

> an implied assumption ...

No, just bad punctuation:

"What! Did they think? ...."

[Alan Brown]

Re: Stem the exodus?

"There is no way that they can have thought they'd pull the trigger on something like this, and not see people leave."

The issues using RH predate IBM. This was just the final nail in the coffin

In brief: RH have only been making profits out of a small group of clients (banks) with a LOT of homogeous hardware (terminals) running stripped builds and everything else has been noise for a long time

They stopped being a responsive distro operator at least a decade ago

[Steve Davies 3]

Too late RH/IBM

I've been testing Alma Linux for a few weeks now. A very good replacement for CentOS. I'll be migrating my systems over once they come out of Beta release.

https://almalinux.org/

All I need now in an ARM version of it. There is an R-Pi 4 on my shelf ready and waiting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Too late RH/IBM

Alma is looking VERY good indeed - and Igor and his team have very solid experience of packaging a distro like this.

I know many folks are pinning their hopes on Rocky Linux, but given that progress there is slow and Alma is already in RC, it's looking like there may be a clear winner.

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds suspiciously like we need the tech support revenue to make back the cost of buying RedHat. Please don't run away.

As if I need to persuade anyone here - big blue have made their intentions to screw over "community" usage abundantly clear. Plan to jump ship accordingly.

[A.P. Veening]

By now I am glad I never was aboard that ship, saves me a jump and a soaking.

[Jay 2]

After much pondering I think we're going to end up on a mix of supported/non-supported Oracle Linux going forward. Though we're extremely wary about Oracle for the usual reasons. On the up side I'm sure some of our devs will like a bit of support for their kernel needs, EL6 support is also offered (albeit at a not-insignificant cost) and it may give some people a warm fuzzy feeling that we have a supported OS.

Possibly we could look at Rocky Linux for stuff in the future when it's fully up and running and got a bit of momentum. I'm somewhat wary of Alma Linux. I applaud their willingness to step into the breach and provide a product for free, but given their day job is a paid offering I do wonder about their long term commitment and any possible ulterior motive (a la RHEL).

[Anonymous Coward]

If you move to Oracle Linux, you should be prepared for Oracle to pull the same move in a couple of years.

Just have a look at the history of Java SE. For a long time it was free (cost-wise); suddenly it changed so that any business use required a paid license. Now anyone who downloads Java SE in their business, without buying a license, is opening up a huge risk of audit and fines.

This came with a weasly-worded FAQ:

"Is Java still free?

Yes. [...]"

You have to open the next question to get the real answer.

"What about Java SE 8?

Java SE ... continues to be free for personal use, development, testing, prototyping, demonstrating and some other important uses" [only]

[Nate Amsden]

really the same situation can be there for any "free" linux distribution as well, the maintainers could find themselves not interested in doing it anymore for any number of reasons "forcing" the customer to make a move.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Linux (similar to CentOS)

There was another one(probably more) I think many years ago that was similar to CentOS that quit too saying they were just going to use CentOS. And of course think of how many distributions out there have come and gone over the past 20 years. I thought it was named Scientific Linux which is why I looked it up but seems I remembered wrong, or maybe there was another Scientific Linux in the 2005-2010 time frame.

I haven't used CentOS since ~6.something in a professional environment and haven't used RHEL since RHEL v3(I remember going from RH7.2->RHEL 2.1). Not that I have anything against either distro just the past two companies I've been at(almost 11 years now) have been Ubuntu based and I haven't felt enough of a need to make that big change(I did like aspects of CentOS/RHEL after having used them for many years despite using Debian on my personal stuff since 1998 - since all my Debian systems have gone to Devuan). The whole systemd thing has long soured me on RHEL, not that Ubuntu doesn't have that same issue but it's just more reason not to bother with moving to another distro.

if your not willing to pay for support, just be prepared to have to jump distros every now and then.

[Alan Brown]

" I remembered wrong, or maybe there was another Scientific Linux in the 2005-2010 time frame."

Perhaps you're thinking of SLES? (which was a scientific Linux distro)

The people behind Scientific Linux only did it because the science community insisted on using Redhat because "history" long after Redhat stopped caring about the science community

[Anonymous Coward]

No one uses the Oracle distro of Java anymore... and there are heaps of free and supported non-Oracle OpenJDK Java builds available, including from Red Hat and IBM (AdoptOpenJDK, now managed by Eclipse Foundation)

[Fonant]

Too late, trust has gone.

The problem is less about stopping CentOS as a robust clone of RHEL, but the sudden way they did this. What confidence am I expected to have that if I switch to using a free version of RHEL they won't just pull the plug again without warning?

Trust is everything. Difficult to generate, easy to lose.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Too late, trust has gone.

And damn-near impossible to restore.

[Morrie Wyatt]

Re: Too late, trust has gone.

"And damn-near impossible to restore."

What, they don't have it backed up on tape somewhere?

[Marty McFly]

Re: Too late, trust has gone.

That really is the issue. Trust is always earned and should be cherished by those who have it. When that trust is lost it is difficult to regain. It doesn't matter if we are talking about Linux distros or love life.

RH took 'until death do us part' wedding vows with the CentOS crowd, and then decided to file for divorce. Doesn't matter what they say now, the bedroom life will never be the same.

[zuckzuckgo]

Re: Too late, trust has gone.

> Doesn't matter what they say now, the bedroom life will never be the same.

Once you've forked another distribution there is no going back.

[tekHedd]

Relationships

There are two things a relationship can not recover from: abandonment and betrayal.

I wonder if this applies to business relationships as well?

[Smirnov]

Too late - we're off to SUSE now

It looks like RH is in some kind of panic mode to try and and salvage what's left. For u, a shop that was mixed RHEL/SEL and used CentOS and openSUSE for areas where vendor support was not required, the termination of traditional CentOS has resulted in the decision to move completely over to the SUSE platform, essentially ending a high 5-digit USD amount per year going to RH's koffers.

SUSE is the #2 in the enterprise Linux segment, it's a major contributor to Linux and many other FOSS projects, and unlike RH has made an increasing commitment to its free Linux variant openSUSE. For SEL customers, support is great, and the costs are generally lower than with RH, where support quality also has dropped in recent years.

If you're on CentOS and looking for a better platform, have a look at openSUSE Leap (which is the stable distro and now essentially a free variant of SEL; Tumbleweed is rolling-release, more like Fedora on the RHEL side).

[Alan Brown]

Re: Too late - we're off to SUSE now

Our experience with Suse is WHY we stuck with Redhat for so many years.

Until recently Redhat haven't had a tendency to run and hide when things got "difficult"

[Vocational Vagabond]

Contempt repaid in full ...

. . . One thinks Rocky will be relased before the 'Big Blue' ~Not~ Sales Team would return email with an approval for extesnion of free RHEL in my org . . most of every one happier, less spam in my email box, and a clearer relationship.

. . . Or I might just accept that gap of 5 years betwixt LTS in Debian based boxen and RHEL reroll's, and change horses.

Either way, what ever `they` choose to spin it as, I'm not going back and the few real RH boxes remaining will quietly pass, each in turn, pining for the fjords, in true Norwegian Big Blue style.

[GraXXoR]

As a Japanese customer...

CentOS is/was the default OS of choice for Japan's number one KVM hosting platform (by install volume), Onamae.com, so I wonder what their plan is now... Completely by chance, I did notice a few weeks ago that their list of available Linux flavours had suddenly blossomed from Red Hat / Fedora / CentOS to include a far wider slew of big and small options. Related? Perhaps...

I'm curious what effect, if any, this will have on the linux "balance of power."