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The "New" great debate: Centos "alternative"
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The "New" great debate: Centos "alternative"

seriesnseriesn Member
edited December 2020 in General

Cross posted from the "Other forum" since both community can equally benefit:

As most of you already read/heard/been told that centos is "Dead" (or not, depends on your perspective), I hope this thread can turn into a great resource for those, who in the near future will be googling "Centos alternative" or "Best centos alternative".

Note: Please don't turn this thread into an "E-Pen or my Momma is better than yo Momma contest"

So far, here are the options for those who are looking to migrate without reinstall/rebuild :

Point to be noted, both OL and CL are for profit companies and may or may not pull an IBM. RL founder did initially sell Centos to RHEL.

The followings are also an option, if you are looking to forget about Rhel, like it was that EX, you had great time with, but don't want anything to do with anymore.

  • Debian (supported by a decent amount of current softwares) and
  • Ubuntu (Supported by decent amount of commercial control panels, including Cpanel, announcing their future plan

What do you think? Share your expert/non expert opinions below. Feel free to share your pushup videos ( @yoursunny ) as well. Looking forward towards some exciting and interesting conversation/healthy debate.

If in doubt, simply blame and sue @deank and only sue @deank cause @deank has been saying since last year, End is neigh. Look at 2020.

Thanked by 1coreflux
«1

Comments

  • yoursunnyyoursunny Member, IPv6 Advocate
    edited December 2020

    Everyone should switch to Ubuntu LTS or Debian Stable.

    I do not use RHEL derivatives because, as a geocacher, the word "DNF" has a negative meaning.


    push-ups

    Push-ups solve all the problems. Serve push-up videos from all your VPS. Never leave a VPS idle again!

  • Any kind of CentOS: SCAM_DONT_BUY.

    Thanked by 2netomx Hotmarer
  • deankdeank Member, Troll

    Don't sue @deank.

    Sue Trump.

    Thanked by 1seriesn
  • @seriesn said: RL did initially sell Centos to RHEL.

    RL? Rocky Linux?

  • @angstrom said:

    @seriesn said: RL did initially sell Centos to RHEL.

    RL? Rocky Linux?

    Updated verbiage.

  • @seriesn said:

    @angstrom said:

    @seriesn said: RL did initially sell Centos to RHEL.

    RL? Rocky Linux?

    Updated verbiage.

    https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/3177070/#Comment_3177070

    (The RL founder was no longer involved with CentOS when it was acquired by Red Hat.)

    Thanked by 1seriesn
  • seriesnseriesn Member
    edited December 2020

    @angstrom said:

    @seriesn said:

    @angstrom said:

    @seriesn said: RL did initially sell Centos to RHEL.

    RL? Rocky Linux?

    Updated verbiage.

    https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/3177070/#Comment_3177070

    (The RL founder was no longer involved with CentOS when it was acquired by Red Hat.)

    Interesting bit from Wikipedia (I stand corrected).

    Prior to becoming known under its current name, CentOS originated as a build of CAOS Linux,[15] which was started by Gregory Kurtzer.[16]

    In June 2006, David Parsley, the primary developer of Tao Linux (another RHEL clone), announced the retirement of Tao Linux and its rolling into CentOS development. Tao users migrated to the CentOS release via yum update.[17]

    In July 2009, it was reported in an open letter on the CentOS project web site that CentOS's founder, Lance Davis, had disappeared in 2008. Davis had ceased contribution to the project, but continued to hold the registration for the CentOS domain and PayPal account. In August 2009, the CentOS team reportedly made contact with Davis and obtained the centos.info and centos.org domains.[18]

    In July 2010, CentOS overtook Debian to become the most popular Linux distribution for web servers, with almost 30% of all Linux web servers using it.[19] Debian retook the lead in January 2012.[20]

    In January 2014, Red Hat announced that it would sponsor the CentOS project, "helping to establish a platform well-suited to the needs of open source developers that integrate technologies in and around the operating system".[21] As a result of these changes, ownership of CentOS trademarks was transferred to Red Hat,[22] which now employs most of the CentOS head developers; however, they work as part of Red Hat's Open Source and Standards team, which operates separately from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux team.[9] A new CentOS governing board was also established.[10]

    On December 8, 2020, a representative of the CentOS Governing Board, and Red Hat employee, announced that the CentOS community would be "shift(ing) focus" from traditional CentOS, to CentOS Stream.[23] Initial community response to this announcement was overwhelmingly negative.

  • rm_rm_ IPv6 Advocate, Veteran
  • CentOS Stream YOLO

  • verovero Member, Host Rep

    This situation taught many to have an alternative. I also got one similar lesson two weeks earlier.

  • FreeBSD. Thanks.

  • @default said:
    FreeBSD. Thanks.

    Is the switch really that simple from Cent/deb to bsd environment?

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    @seriesn said: So far, here are the options for those who are looking to migrate without reinstall/rebuild :

    Rocky is a future option that does not exist as of today. In theory it'll be "like the old pre-IBM CentOS" but it's vaporware at present.

    @default said: FreeBSD. Thanks.

    OpenBSD. Thanks.

    Though I run a lot of Debian, too.

    Thanked by 1seriesn
  • For my own set up:

    Ubuntu for KVM nodes
    Cloudlinux for cpanel
    Ubuntu 20 for directadmin
    FreeBSD for everything else

  • rcy026rcy026 Member
    edited December 2020

    @seriesn said:

    @default said:
    FreeBSD. Thanks.

    Is the switch really that simple from Cent/deb to bsd environment?

    Depends a lot on what you use it for.
    Common software like apache, nginx, postfix etc runs just as good if not better on BSD. The downside is no support from panels like DA and cpanel, and some cutting edge software usually shows up on linux first.
    I use both and they both have their merits, altough I still sometimes just get fascinated over how organized and clean BSD is compared to most linux.

    Thanked by 1seriesn
  • And one point is ultimately depends on what web hosts also decide to offer out of the box image wise

    i.e. regarding Oracle Linux 8

    But if there is no demand for it by end users and if web hosts/VPS providers don't provide an easy out of box ISO/Image for instant deployment, then there is no point in supporting Oracle Linux 8. Web hosts probably more likely to provide Rocky Linux and Cloud Linux out of the box images I suspect.

    maybe that would change by 2024 ?

  • @rcy026 said:

    Common software like apache, nginx, postfix etc runs just as good if not better on BSD. The downside is no support from panels like DA and cpanel, and some cutting edge software usually shows up on linux first.

    Actually, we've supported FreeBSD since 2003. We still do, but that might change because nobody is ordering it. Less than 1 in 1000 licenses are for FreeBSD. :(

  • @DA_Mark said:
    Actually, we've supported FreeBSD since 2003. We still do, but that might change because nobody is ordering it. Less than 1 in 1000 licenses are for FreeBSD. :(

    See that's one of the things I hate about a control panel or anything that supports every Linux (or *nix) distribution under the kitchen sink.

    You may not be spending a lot of time - but you're spending at least some time on insuring that DA works with FreeBSD - and for very few people.

    ... but at the same time, I was a proponent of you dropping Debian support and staying just with RHEL/CentOS/CloudLinux ... and now that may need to be reversed.

    Of course... it's easier to drop support for something when it hasn't been around for as long as DirectAdmin has. How do you just cut off long time FreeBSD users of DirectAdmin?

    Hindsight is always 20/20 - but probably a good point of education to not open yourself up so much until you can accurately gauge just how much interest there is in a direction. One person clamoring for FreeBSD support, doesn't mean you should drop everything and work on supporting it for that one person, because then you're going to leave yourself in a potential development crunch later down the road.

  • @sparek All good points. In fairness, FreeBSD was a good enough seller (profitable) for a certain period of time but it certainly has dwindled in the last few years. It was never a great seller, but there was enough interest that we have no regrets about it.

    I agree it is most efficient to just pick one OS, but then it's putting all your eggs in one basket. I think 2-3 OS choices is a good safety net. We've supported Debian/Ubuntu for over a decade, and there is a pretty good amount of people using it, so there is no reason to drop it.

    We are derailing the thread a bit here -- I just noticed the comment about no BSD support and thought I'd maybe surprise people by how long we've supported it. :)

    Thanked by 3Bertie Edmond vimalware
  • BertieBertie Member
    edited December 2020

    @DA_Mark said: FreeBSD was a good enough seller (profitable) for a certain period of time but it certainly has dwindled in the last few years

    I would guess it's because Linux's network stack has considerably matured over the past decade (when you consider investment by big tech like FB into Linux networking), and FreeBSD's main virtue was it's legendary network stack at the time (critical for high load webhosting), which is now diminishing in relative terms.

    I should probably get back into FreeBSD now that KVM is the new norm.

    Thanks for being responsive to the community.

    Thanked by 2DA_Mark coreflux
  • Oracle Linux, forge that! they want your registration and birth certificate. :)

  • @DA_Mark said:
    Actually, we've supported FreeBSD since 2003. We still do, but that might change because nobody is ordering it. Less than 1 in 1000 licenses are for FreeBSD. :(

    I decided to go with Ubuntu 20 for directadmin in the end, but it was between that and FreeBSD. I wanted ZFS which both support well with FreeBSD having a slight edge for easier on zfs on root - but it came down to cgroups vs resource limits and bubble wrap vs ugidfw and Ubuntu won out. If bubblewrap hadn't been added in I would have chosen FreeBSD.

    Thanked by 1smtalk
  • raynorraynor Member
    edited December 2020

    FreeBSD (faster, leaner), Debian (main competitor, Ubuntu-users-friendly). All RH-based will be in IBM greedy hands, so I'll prefer avoid them.

  • Fedora Server is nice

  • @DA_Mark said:

    We are derailing the thread a bit here -- I just noticed the comment about no BSD support and thought I'd maybe surprise people by how long we've supported it. :)

    You surprised me. Granted, I do not use such panels, but I've been a borderline fanatic BSD advocate for 20 years and I had no idea you supported it, it surprises me that I was not aware of this.

  • More nuisance than real problem. FOSS-community will create a few centos-like offsprings with the same goal: having something like "RHEL without subscription". Over following years they will converge to one or two the most viable projects, and RH will be facing the same situation again...

  • Using Fedora Server on some VM’s. Quite stable and fast.

    But I have to admit, I had to reinstall two VM’s and switched to Debian. I have been switching to Debian the past year. This is just an extra push to totally forget about CentOS.

    Thanked by 2yoursunny vimalware
  • Our future DirectAdmin nodes will be on Debian.

    I'm using it for my personal servers anyway, so I'm betting on familiarity.

    Thanked by 1lokuzard
  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    @definitelyliam said:
    Our future DirectAdmin nodes will be on Debian.

    I'm using it for my personal servers anyway, so I'm betting on familiarity.

    I would wait for confirmation from cloudlinux that they will support it. Maybe they already do and im mental.

    Personally I expected IBM to sell Redhat to Microsoft and they use that for a base for Lindows.

    Francisco

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