Author | Yu Ying
At the end of 2020, Red Hat announced that CentOS 8 would end its lifecycle in one year. Since then, there have been many different voices in the developer circle around this matter, some advocating immediate migration; some are undecided; some are moving to the paid version; and some are questioning whether Red Hat is ready to cut leeks, and the popularity of this matter is directly proportional to the popularity of CentOS, so that the decision has been under discussion more than a year after it was announced. At a recent media briefing, Red Hat, which has been dormant for more than a year, responded.
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The term "stop" itself is not accurate
CentOS originated as a build of CAOS Linux as an RPM-based Linux distribution compatible with its upstream source, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), launched in 2002 by Gregory Kurtzer.
In 2014, Red Hat recruited key members of the CentOS community, including project leaders and core project contributors at the time. Red Hat and the CentOS project have teamed up to develop next-generation Linux innovations for enterprise IT, but CentOS itself is independent of RHEL.
As a result, since 2014, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux ecosystem has formed a synergistic development of Fedora, RHEL, and CentOS Linux, with the upstream of the community providing developers with continuous innovation and technical architecture integration of desktop operating systems through Fedora, about once every 6 months; Red Hat Enterprise Linux, primarily for enterprises and application developers, characterized by stability, security, and performance optimization; and downstream is led by the community CentOS Linux, aimed at cost-sensitive users and ecosystem developers, features no cost, is easy to access, and was released about a few months after the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
At the end of 2020, Red Hat announced that CentOS 8 would end its lifecycle in one year. The CentOS Linux community gradually stops the more downstream version of CentOS Linux 7 and 8, and the main work of the community will shift to the rhEL upstream to develop and maintain a new version of CentOS Linux, CentOS Stream.
While this doesn't mean immediate unavailability, security can't be guaranteed, and it's hard to imagine how many important services are running on the system, such as CERN and Fermilab, which said in a joint statement that the decision could have a significant impact on the particle physics community around the world.
Speaking about this decision, Cao Hengkang, global vice president and president of Red Hat Greater China, said that the reason why developers like Linux is that innovation is very important, and the reason why Red Hat began to invest in CentOS Stream is also to increase its efforts in innovation. In the past, many customers and developers based on CentOS to add a lot of features will not give back to the upstream community, it has become a branch, over time these branches because of no one to maintain and become the "orphans" in the community, which is a pity, Red Hat hopes to restore the concept of community upstream priority, put CentOS Stream in front of RHEL, ecosystem partners can record innovation in CentOS Stream, Facebook, Intel and other large IT The company is very happy about this because it means they can put the features they need on CentOS Stream early.
From a technical point of view, the term "stop service" itself is not accurate enough, Red Hat China chief architect Zhang Jiaju said that from CentOS to CentOS Stream can be understood as an upgrade, the original CentOS users only need a few commands to easily migrate to CentOS Stream, CentOS all previous security updates, CentOS Stream all have. In this sense, there is no suspension, and Red Hat's service to users around the world has always been there.
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From downstream to midstream, CentOS exists in a different way
So, what is the new CentOS Linux version, CentOS Stream?
CentOS Stream itself is between Fedora and RHEL, closer to RHEL, equivalent to all the features developed on RHEL have been available in CentOS Stream, the version is also free for everyone, to ensure that developers get new RHEL features in advance, on this basis to do such as the development of third-party components and other work, expand their impact on the RHEL ecosystem. The equivalent of centOS Stream is a test field for RHEL. The ecological positioning of Fedora and RHEL has not changed during this process. (Users can obtain the installation media for CentOS Stream from this address: https://centos.org/download)
CentOS 7 will end support on June 30, 2024, given that CentOS 8 has been discontinued and there is no so-called CentOS 9 in the future, CentOS Sream will become the focus of the entire community, the future centOS features will all be transferred to centOS stream, and Red Hat's investment has also shifted from CentOS Linux to CentOS Stream on December 31, 2021. CentOS' legacy SIG groups will also be gradually migrated to CentOS Stream. Users of CentOS 7, 8 can continue to use CentOS Stream for free and will not be affected.
The benefit of the change is that centOS Stream's version updates are relatively faster, and the ecosystem's feature updates are all reflected in it, and Red Hat makes it ready to use ci/CD to make it ready to use. CentOS Stream and RHEL completely share a set of systems, a set of code base, two compilation systems (one is internal compilation, one is external compilation), all compilation and testing are the same, but CentOS Stream released earlier than RHEL, which also reflects the principle of Red Hat upstream priority.
If you sum up the relationship between the two in one sentence: CentOS Stream aims to be as stable as RHEL, which is a continuous delivery version of RHEL.
Some developers may ask: If they are consistent, why are there two versions? CentOS Stream can be pre-opened to Red Hat's ecosystem partners before the RHEL release is officially released, and if the partner has similar requests such as developing third-party drivers, it can be added to RHEL for testing early, which can ensure that it can catch up with the official rhEL release cycle.
For the majority of developers, especially in the field of operating systems, CentOS Stream is of great benefit. For the average user, it is also possible to use it directly without exploring innovation. As for how to choose the version of CentOS Stream, you can refer to the behavior patterns of RHEL users and update to the current most stable version when you see fit.
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How do existing CentOS users choose the right platform?
If you want to continue to use the free version, you can continue to use the community version of CentOS Stream; if you want to use a safe, stable, and reliable version, you can choose the subscription version; if you want the features and services to be equally stable and reliable, you can choose the paid enterprise version of RHEL, which is almost the same as the function of CentOS, except that it is supported by Red Hat engineers.
Of course, since Red Hat announced the discontinuation of CentOS 8, there have been many other options in the industry, each of which has given its own migration strategy, and developers may wish to think more before making a choice. Cao Hengkang gave the following suggestions.
First, whether the code is really open source. Since you want to use open source, you need to determine whether the code is really open source. Frankly speaking, there are many manufacturers on the market hanging open source logo, in fact, do not do open source, centOS community has a lot of takers, based on CentOS processing or direct packaging and selling, if not abide by the law of open source, the increased code will be given back to the upstream community, frankly speaking, it is no longer open source, but closed source.
Second, code rights and interests protection. To be sure that there is no infringement of other people's code, Red Hat RHEL is absolutely certain that the code is not infringing, and once the use of [infringing code] is sued, the amount of damages is very high, so this is very important.
Third, the way of delivery. The delivery method is to have a very good service, 24 hours of support and service, when there is a patch to automatically help you do patches, etc., these enterprise-level services are required.
Fourth, the response time is not fast enough. Frankly speaking, in the past, most developers who used CentOS were DIY, serving themselves and hiring some outsourced personnel at most, but these services may not be enterprise-level services, and no one has done patches.
Fifth, product life cycle & technology ecology. Red Hat's past tradition is that any version must have a very long life cycle when it comes out. Red Hat RHEL8, 8.1 or 8.2, 8.3, the entire kernel lifecycle will have long-term support, do not have to worry about constantly updating, constantly reconfiguring and making some changes, it is very stable.
Sixth, product stability. When choosing a Linux platform, stability, security, and reliability are all very important decision factors.
In the past, we were used to CentOS being the next version of RHEL, but didn't think that CentOS Stream might be a better approach. The world is constantly changing, and the development process needs to be constantly innovated and optimized, so if you're struggling with what to do after CentOS 8 goes down, try CentOS Stream.
Installation media for CentOS Stream: https://centos.org/download