Alternative for CentOS

[inittux]

Hello All,

CentOS going to Stream only it's basically becoming an upstream beta of RHEL making it not binary compatible with RHEL anymore.

https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream

I was using ScientificLinux and just migrated all my personal systems to CentOS8 this last summer. Now I have to migrate everything within a year again and since ScientificLinux discontinued that makes SpringdaleLinux the only RHEL clone left as an alternative option since I am not needing RHEL or Oracle support and as it seems neither can be trusted. So from what I read on the website Springdale has been around before CentOS started,  so that makes me think I can trust it for having been  around that long and not come in for another surprise. I just I'd drop by to get some first hand experience of those already using Springdale before making a decision. So my question from all of those using Springdale, is Springdale a good alternative option now that CentOS will be out of the picture in a year?

Regards,
Maarten

[Brian Epstein]

We've used Springdale since its inception and have found it very stable for our production machines. The dedicated build team are experts in the field and continue to impress with their reliability.

I would defer to them for an official statement about the future of Springdale Linux, but I haven't heard of any deviations at this point.

Thanks,
Brian

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[Predrag Punosevac]

Springdale Linux is an essentially in house Princeton University, Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, Rutgers University super computer center rebuilt of RHEL. Some of us from Carnegie Mellon University has been along for a ride for the past 10 years. It is a small academic community of professionals and people who care mostly about High Performance Computing. Personally my choice of OS for Internet facing servers is OpenBSD (Alpine Linux if you are uncomfortable with BSDs) but as long as you were comfortable with CentOS in that role you will be at home. I personally picked Springdale over now defunct Scientific Linux and CentOS due to the fact that it was closer to RHEL and more stable with CUDA
computing in the past.

Cheers,

Predrag

[inittux]

Thanks for taking the time to reply, glad to hear about the positive experiences with Springdale Linux  How do I contact them for an official statement?

I have zero experience with BSD's and I think I would have a hard time switching over from GNU/Linux to BSD. CentOS and ScientificLinux were the two I have always used with systems facing the internet and they have never let me down for my personal home systems en vpses. And I get the impression that there is more support fort GNU/Linux than there is with the BSD's, but I may be wrong since I am not at home with the BSD. Is it worth having a look at? I did try installing BSD once but I got more confused as in how BSD works compared to GNU/Linux.

Regards,

Maarten

[Predrag Punosevac]

inittux <mrvand...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for taking the time to reply, glad to hear about the positive
> experiences with Springdale Linux How do I contact them for an official
> statement?
>

Just hang on there and somebody (usually Josko Plazonic from Princteon
University) will respond to this thread. The day just started here on
the East Cost of US and all of us are busy working.

> I have zero experience with BSD's and I think I would have a hard time
> switching over from GNU/Linux to BSD. CentOS and ScientificLinux were the
> two I have always used with systems facing the internet and they have never
> let me down for my personal home systems en vpses. And I get the impression
> that there is more support fort GNU/Linux than there is with the BSD's, but
> I may be wrong since I am not at home with the BSD. Is it worth having a
> look at? I did try installing BSD once but I got more confused as in how
> BSD works compared to GNU/Linux.
>

This is probably best left from Springdale Linux mailing list. Just ping
me off the list to my CMU email address

https://www.scs.cmu.edu/directory/predragp

and I will be happy to replay to your email.

Cheers,
Predrag

> >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/springdale-users/56ffe3e3-51fa-4eb0-bfb0-08fbd2a62be1n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>
> >> .

> >>
> >
>
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[Martin Rushton]

I suspect that there will be quite a few refugees from CentOS trialing Springdale over the next few days/months.  I've downloaded it into a VM and so far it seems nice and familiar.  Installation was easy - use the 8.2 ISO, run "dnf update" and hey presto I've got 8.3, just I would expect/hope.  I'm configuring mate (I'd prefer xfce4 given mates slightly shaky support at the moment) and apart from borking the window manager all seems fine.  For reference, this is a home server running about a dozen testbed VMs, DHCP/DNS for the home network, Amanda, NFS and Samba for other machines, ownCloud, Apache, Zotero and DokuWiki for the family, so I need a stable OS under that lot.

Greetings from the East Coast - of the UK that is.

Martin

[inittux]

I did find  this: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q12 and the original founder of CentOS has started a project Rocky Linux as a new rhel clone.

[Brian Epstein]

At first, I thought you meant that Lance Davis was starting Rocky Linux.

https://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/CentOS-Admin-Mysteriously-Missing

But, it looks like it is Greg Kurtzer instead.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/12/centos-shifts-from-red-hat-unbranded-to-red-hat-beta/

Thanks,
ep

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Key fingerprint = A6F3 9F5A 26C5 5847 79ED C34C C0E5 244A 55CA 2B78

----- Original Message -----
From: "inittux" <mrvand...@gmail.com>
To: "springdale-users" <springda...@googlegroups.com>

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[inittux]

Yes Greg Kurtzer:

https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/#comment-183642

https://github.com/rocky-linux/organization/wiki/Contributing

[R P Herrold]

On Thu, 10 Dec 2020, Brian Epstein wrote:

> At first, I thought you meant that Lance Davis was starting Rocky Linux.
>
> https://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/CentOS-Admin-Mysteriously-Missing
>
> But, it looks like it is Greg Kurtzer instead.
>
> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/12/centos-shifts-from-red-hat-unbranded-to-red-hat-beta/

no -- it was Rocky McGeogh, Lance Davis, and I. Greg and the
others were more into HPC distributions when CentOS fired up
and split off from cAos

'The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie
became the truth.'
-- Orwell, 1984

I see that history has been ... locked and scrubbed, and that
my contemporaneous remarks on the topic are no longer
accessible. see: https://wiki.centos.org/Newsletter/0904 and
try to click the link. the 0903 and 0905 still work fine

section 5 discusses the matter.

In case the mailing list strips the attachment, I just put a
copy at:
http://lists.colug.net/centos-Pulse_0904.pdf

-- Russ herrold

[Benjamin Rose]

Hello all,

While there have been significant developments in the RHEL-derivative world lately, be cautioned against any kind of knee-jerk reaction to such news. The reality is that significant change has not yet occurred, and many news articles will be as inflammatory "click-bait" as possible. This message is meant to be an anti-inflammatory, please read it as such.

Springdale is a community project, as was CentOS, as was Scientific, and as were countless other projects over the years. Some live on as-are, some change, some die. Such is life in an open source ecosystem.

The Springdale community has no plans to go anywhere. Taking source code and re-compiling it is not in any way a novel or unique concept. We have the resources to remain independent and this has set us apart, for now.

Keep abreast of the situation, and keep in mind this storm has been brewing for a long time if one has followed the news of acquisitions over the years. If you're just battening down the hatches now, you've missed the weather reports.

For all open source projects, it comes down to person-hours. On this side, we (mostly Josko) spend countless hours endeavoring to produce a bug-for-bug compatible RHEL derivative. It gets more difficult with each release, for example AppStreams with 8. If you learned exactly "how the sausage is made" behind the scenes, you might see us for what we really are, some friendly people working together to benefit ourselves. If in this process you can be of benefit, even better.

There have been many messages over the years about Springdale lacking features, or having issues, or not building a DVD for every release. What there *has not* been is a time investment other than writing to this list. This is not a call to arms, again, anti-inflammatory. You can choose to gripe about a situation over which you have no control, or you can be the change you want to see. We endeavor to do the latter to the best of our abilities and with the time we have available. We will not get political or engage others who attempt to make it so.

If Springdale works for you, great. If not, that's fine too. Do not look to us to solve your OS issues for you, but if our product is useful to you, have at it. We encourage you to sublimate any angst you may have over the situation into productivity.

TL;DR: Be excellent to each other.

Ben

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[Brian Epstein]

Very well said, Ben, very well said.

All the best, and happy holidays,

ep

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Brian Epstein <beps...@ias.edu> +1 609-734-8179
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Benjamin Rose" <pu...@allmybase.com>
To: "springdale-users" <springda...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2020 11:07:25 AM
Subject: Re: Alternative for CentOS

> <mailto:springdale-use...@googlegroups.com>.

> To view this discussion on the web visit
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[Shay Gover]

Do you use your own binaries or centos binaries?

[Predrag Punosevac]

Springdale Linux formerly known as PUIAS (Princeton University Institute for Advanced Studies) is older than CentOS and it compiles it's own binaries from the upstream source code. It is unrelated to CentOS and in my experience CentOS RPMs are not 100% safe. I tend to avoid them. Springdale has it's own repos, EPEL is ok and RPM Fusion works for me. For CUDA I use RHEL RPMs not CentOS RPMs the same goes for Chrome or anything else.

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[Shay Gover]

Thanks

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[Theresa Arzadon-Labajo]

Hello,

The School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study has been using Springdale (formerly PUIAS, then PU_IAS) since its inception.  All of our *nix servers and workstations (yes, workstations) are running Springdale.  On the server side, everything "just works",  as is expected from a RHEL clone.  On the workstation side, most of the issues we run into have to do with NVIDIA drivers, and glibc compatibility issues (e.g Chrome, Dropbox, Skype, etc), but most issues have been resolved or have a workaround in place.

Ben is right that Springdale is a community project and that it mostly comes down to the hours (mostly Josko) that we can volunteer to the project.   The way people utilize Springdale varies.  Some are like us and use the whole thing.  Others use a different OS and use Springdale just for its computational repositories.

Best,
Theresa

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[inittux]

@Benjamin Rose

I don't expect anyone to solve my OS issues I was just looking for an alternative for my personal home server and personal VPSes since CentOS8 life cycle got shortened to end of 2021. I understand that's it a community project and people put time in it, I have always appreciated the time and work the developers put in such projects. So thank you for the time and work all the developers put time into the Springdale Linux project! I am not a programmer and neither a developer so won't be much of help on that part(I think not sure what type of work goes into maintaining a rhel clone?), is there anyway to donate to the project I would be willing to donate a bit here and there when I can.

Regards,

Maarten 

[Bjorn Em]

I have tried all (Centos, Springdale, Oracle). Switching Centos to rolling distro is the kiss of death. I need stable systems for compiling packages. I certainly hope Springdale continues. I also use opensuse Leap. I expect it's tiny market share (about 1/100th of Centos) will go up too.

[Shay Gover]

OpenSUSE leap is not relevant til v 15.3. Currently it's not stable enough.

I'm currently going to install Springdale in a test environment and hope that rocky linux will be stable enough by the end of 2021.

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[Tom Bishop]

I am thinking about moving from Centos8, is there any reason I can't point to your repos and do an update and move forward that way?  Is there anything else that I would need to do in order to move?

Thanks!

[inittux]

@bish...@gmail.com

I was trying out FreeBSD as a replacement for CentOS and still learning how FreeBSD works, but found a way to switch my CentOS8 installation to Springdale Linux 8 without re-installation which saved me a lot of time.

You can contact me directly if you want hear how I did it, mailin...@feedmebits.nl.

Regards,

Maarten

[Theresa Arzadon-Labajo]

Dear Maarten,

I won't speak for Josko or Ben, but in general, areas that could use help would be the creation of the DVD isos and images ( live, docker, vagrant), Springdale Logos, artwork, etc., and of course documentation. Since we are a small community, our set up doesn't really scale up for lots of contributors at the moment.  We have been looking at updating our github since it's been idle for years. 

Regards,

Theresa

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[Prentice Bisbal]

Springdale Linux was originally created for internal use at Princeton University, and the Institute for Advanced Study. It has been used for years at both institutions. It is currently being used for all the HPC clusters at Princeton University, and in a number of departments. I worked with Springdale Linux for 4.5 years at IAS, and now I'm using it again for HPC clusters I assist with managing at PU.

It is a good alternative to CentOS. However, do not expect much in the way of user support. The team that maintains Springdale are very good at what they do, but it is a small team, and and Springdale was meant mainly for internal use, so they don't have the staff or time time to provide much support to the community at large.

Prentice

On 12/9/20 7:55 AM, inittux wrote:

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[inittux]

I didn't run CentOS for the community user support and I am not running Springdale Linux now for User support but because it's a RHEL clone. If I needed support I would get a RHEL subscription, I can find

my way around RHEL just fine. The only contact I've had with RHEL support was for my Red Hat Learning subscription and I have to say I have I was never impressed by their support, so I wouldn't expect a

whole lot more from their Tech Support.

[Jay F. Shachter]

inittux write on Mon Dec 21 12:00:12 2020:

>
> .... The only contact I've had with RHEL support was for my Red Hat

> Learning subscription and I have to say I have I was never impressed
> by their support, so I wouldn't expect a whole lot more from their
> Tech Support.
>

I don't want to trouble this entire mailing list with an e-mail that
may be of interest only to "inittux", but I am unable to determine an
e-mail address for "inittux". If you are "inittux" (or if you think
you may be interested in my response to his e-mail, quoted in
pertinent part above), please contact me using any of the means
indicated below.

Jay F. Shachter
6424 North Whipple Street
Chicago IL 60645-4111
(1-773)7613784 landline
(1-410)9964737 GoogleVoice
j...@m5.chicago.il.us
http://m5.chicago.il.us

"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur"