“Open-Washing” is a thing these days, many companies are trying to spin their AI offerings as “Open”, and piggyback on the brand image of Open Source, when actually they’re really not that open. Some even have it in their name – eg, “Open AI”, which isn’t…
We’ve known this since the beginning of when the “Cloud” momentum started in the marketplace a decade or two ago, but it’s always refreshing to see the media coverage supporting this –
As many of our readers know, CentOS (Community Enterprise Operating System) was developed in response to the trademark issues surrounding RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) in the early 2000s, and provided a functionally-compatible OS to the corresponding upstream RedHat version.
Around 2014, RedHat bought CentOS, and agreed to keep it as-is, and separate from RHEL.
CentOS is Dead
As so often happens after acquisitions, in December 2020, Red Hat discontinued CentOS development, causing much upheaval in the Open Source community, and leaving the existing CentOS user base without a clear path forward.
Long Live CentOS
In response, CentOS original founder Gregory Kurtzer created the Rocky Linux project, as a successor, true to the original goals of CentOS.
CentOS Linux was discontinued at the end of 2021 in favor of CentOS Stream, a distribution positioned upstream of RHEL, but below Fedora.
CentOS Stream is still useful for many, despite having different goals now and a different use-case, and no longer being binary-compatible with RedHat – it’s a bit like a “Release Candidate” idea for Fedora, now.
This gets RedHat’s offerings a bit closer to the Debian release of Stable/Testing/Unstable, corresponding roughly to RHEL/CentOS/Fedora, in order.
RedHat Backtracks
In Addition, RedHat addressed all the Bruhaha by making RHEL free for up to 16 systems, as a migration path, considering that they also chopped 8 years off the previously announced and counted-on 10-year support period for Centos8.
But given their track record, many (including this writer) are skeptical that RedHat may again use this to tighten the grip of Vendor Lock-In, in some future version of doing as they did in 2020.
eRacks Systems Offerings
Be that as it may, eRacks Systems now offers all the OSes preinstalled and pre-configured to your preferences, in the dropdowns:
Centos 7 (last supported RHEL clone, currently 7.9)
CentOS Stream Latest (Currently 9)
Rocky Linux Latest (Currently 9)
Rocky Linux Previous (Currently 8)
Alma Linux Latest (Currently 9)
Alma Linux Previous (Currently 8)
RedHat Enterprise Linux (Now available preinstalled at no charge, for you to set up with your account on receipt)
As always, if you want a more specific version or distro, just ask.
As of late April, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS “Focal Fossa” is now available on all eRacks systems, both Desktop and Server.
It should appear in the “Operating system” dropdown when you configure your system, and is the default on many / most of our systems.
If you don’t see it, or if you this it should be the default, (or shouldn’t!), please let us know – We are always listening for feedback!
Our initial testing with it, is that it is very solid, albeit a little bigger than the 18.04 LTS release, likely due to the increased usage of the Snap packaging system, which tends to favor freedom from dependencies over disk space.