RHEL and Alma Linux 9.3 arrive – one is free, one merely free of charge

The latest version of Red Hat's flagship distro appeared last week, closely followed by Alma Linux 9.3. RHEL 8.9 is coming soon – and presumably, so is Rocky Linux 9.3. Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 9.3 appeared last week, followed some five days later by Alma Linux 9.3, the now somewhat more distanced rebuild. Both …

[chasil]

Advanced Kernel

I am hoping that OpenELA releases a common kernel that takes the best from all the members.

It would include btrfs, io_uring (for rhel8 variants), all the hardware support that rhel kernels strip, and probably more features that RedHat would otherwise frown upon.

Alma's adoption of such a kernel would be a major blow.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Advanced Kernel

[Author here]

> Alma's adoption of such a kernel would be a major blow.

It would, but I can't see it happening. I think there's no love lost between Alma and Rocky, and I suspect Alma would go _far_ out of their way to avoid working with CIQ.

[chasil]

Re: Advanced Kernel

I have heard elsewhere that SuSE maintains its own set of custom backport patches for btrfs, since it is used as the root fileystem within their main distribution.

Oracle at one point actually distributed tools that would format btrfs with advanced hashes (sha256, xxhash, etc.), but their UEK didn't have the driver support for anything but crc32c - I don't think SuSE would have shipped anything so disjoint.

I'm assuming that Rocky doesn't really bring anything to the table from this perspective - they just rpm-rebuild whatever RedHat shipped. If Oracle and SuSE pooled their efforts, then I think the result would offer great advantages over stock rhel.

In the 90s, IBM/DEC/HP used POSIX to seize control of UNIX from AT&T and Sun. OpenELA would be able to do the same to IBM, if the advantages were compelling.

[Anonymous Coward]

RHEL and Alma Linux 9.3 arrive – one is free, one merely free of charge

> RHEL and Alma Linux 9.3 arrive – one is free, one merely free of charge

#Define “free”

#Define “free of charge”

Which one is “free” ?

Which one is “free of charge” ?

What is the difference?

Which one prevents you from passing on their source code and your source code in a commercial transaction ?

[Liam Proven]

Re: RHEL and Alma Linux 9.3 arrive – one is free, one merely free of charge

[Author here]

> What is the difference?

You know what, I regret that title now. Oh well. Too late.

What I was attempting to allude to is that Alma is free-as-in-freedom whereas RHEL can be obtained without paying only via a free developer's sub, but that was a poor way of putting it.

Blast.

[Mockup1974]

Re: RHEL and Alma Linux 9.3 arrive – one is free, one merely free of charge

Nah, you're right

[corb]

How are Red Hat's enterprise customers reacting to the change in licensing, or whatever they did, that's generating all the hostility from users who almost certainly have never used RH, and never will?

[chasil]

I actually used RedHat for many years, starting with the original RedHat 4.2. My company forced me onto Oracle Linux around 2009, and I haven't seen any need to go back.

I do find the rhel license changes disturbing, but this is an opportunity for OpenELA to make a better rhel than IBM can. The rhel kernel is highly objectionable.

I'm removing one of your downvotes.

[LionelB]

RHELatives

RHubastards

(Not sure about the "u"... you did say worse.)

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: RHELatives

RHELiberated

[Bebu]

Re: RHELatives

From IBM/RH's point of view Alma and fellow travellers would be taking a diabolical liberty viz HELLatives so with Redhat's offering R+HELLatives.

RHubastards - I thought this was an obscure reference to E.Ron but probably not. Although the (lack of) business ethics are likely comparable.

RHELibre?

[TVU]

I love the way that author Liam P has used the term 'Big Purple Hat' in jest and it's increasingly appropriate given all IBM (mis)management policies that are seeping down into Big Purple Hat such as the sacking of technical staff presumably to give an instant profit boost.

I wish that Red Hat had never been taken over by IBM and I equally wish that Oracle had never bought out Sun Microsystems.

[Liam Proven]

[Author here]

Thanks!

Agreed on both IBM and Oracle counts.

Although at one point I feared that Oracle would buy Apple and I am very glad that never happened. There was zero synergy and Oracle has screwed both the deal and Solaris.

IMHO there was one opportunity here and it failed:

Dump the entire Solaris userland, adopt the GNU one instead, and do a product that subsumed both OpenSolaris and Oracle Linux into one: the CentOS userland, on top of the OpenSolaris kernel. It could run Linux binaries natively -- Joyent SmartOS proved that. Preserve legacy Solaris stuff in branded Zones.

Too late now, and drivers would have probably killed it anyway.

[Youngone]

If Oracle had bought Apple they would have killed it stone dead.

I'm basing that on the assumption that you're talking about that mid-1990's period when Apple lurched from disaster to disaster and was something of a joke. (Speaking as someone who sat in front of an Apple Quadra all day swearing).

We all assumed Apple was on its last legs and we'd be "upgrading" to Windows machines at some point.

[Bebu]

If Oracle had bought Apple they would have killed it stone dead.

《If Oracle had bought Apple they would have killed it stone dead.》

No iphones. No apple stores. No apple fan<zombie-thingies>. The list is endless....

You could almost love oracle if they had whacked all things apple. But I wrote *almost* but even then that is still a bridge too far.

[allyw]

RHELatives?

RedShats?

RHEDoras?

ClonELs?

[Kbend]

Rhel-ish

I’ve been using the term “rhel-ish” for a while.

[Kbend]

Rhelish - relish

I’ve been using the term relish / RHEL-ish for over a year now! I like it.

[cjcox]

Fool me once...

IMHO, banking on a Red Hat "thing" like Stratis, where Red Hat often times "kicks you in the you-know-what" is a mistake.

Red Hat has proven to be the Microsoft of Linux distros. Promoting, deploying, supporting... and then completely dropping enterprise things.

Let the buyer beware.

[OffTropics]

Maybe RHELated, then when things go south RHELic could be used.