Red Hat Hires CentOS Developers

Maybe by bobstreo · 2014-02-11 03:13 · Score: 1

They could take over Solaris development too...

Re:Maybe by wiggles · 2014-02-11 03:20 · Score: 3, Insightful

Nah. Oracle would rather kill Solaris than let that happen.
Re:Maybe by DougOtto · 2014-02-11 03:35 · Score: 2

Sadly, I believe you're correct.

--
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
Re:Maybe by bobbied · 2014-02-11 03:50 · Score: 3, Insightful

Nah. Oracle would rather kill Solaris than let that happen.
Good riddance... Solaris is nothing special or unique, at least these days. It's best feature was that it ran on Sparc based hardware, which when Sun Micro Systems was in it's heyday said "Rock Solid reliability". So if you wanted something to run for a decade or two, you purchased Sun hardware which locked you into Solaris. Now days, who cares about Solaris? Running Solaris on X86 hardware it is pointless because it buys you nothing in reliability while costing you in obscurity. Just go to a stable Linux distribution.
The ONLY reason you field Solaris now, is if your customer demands it or your legacy application is not easily ported. The one possible exception to this might be if you are putting up an Oracle cluster.
Solaris is going to die... It probably should too.

--
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Re:Maybe by RabidReindeer · 2014-02-11 04:59 · Score: 2

Nah. Oracle would rather kill Solaris than let that happen.
Good riddance... Solaris is nothing special or unique, at least these days. It's best feature was that it ran on Sparc based hardware, which when Sun Micro Systems was in it's heyday said "Rock Solid reliability". So if you wanted something to run for a decade or two, you purchased Sun hardware which locked you into Solaris. Now days, who cares about Solaris? Running Solaris on X86 hardware it is pointless because it buys you nothing in reliability while costing you in obscurity. Just go to a stable Linux distribution.
The ONLY reason you field Solaris now, is if your customer demands it or your legacy application is not easily ported. The one possible exception to this might be if you are putting up an Oracle cluster.
Solaris is going to die... It probably should too.
Actually, Solaris had several good features. It had much better resource management than Linux does, and the introduction of Solaris Zones allowed a high-performance VM environment while minimizing the amount of gratuitous replication of resources. Basically, sort of a chroot jail + COW filesystem with service level controls.
Sadly, however, the Solaris admins where I worked were never trained to take advantage of those features, so eventially Solaris got booted in favor of lots of Linux and Windows boxes.
Re:Maybe by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 05:02 · Score: 1

Solaris does have three cool things going for it, and as it happens they are all three letter acronyms
FMA
SMF
ZFS
So in Linux land this translates into:
FMA - No equivalent
SMF - init scripts/systemd/upstart depending on your flavour of linux but none of which has the same functionality.
ZFS - BTRFS which is still in "beta" and doesn't support more advanced raid types?
So while the bulk of my house is LINUX based (even my kids PC's run it) our main media system is solaris.
Re:Maybe by bobbied · 2014-02-11 05:25 · Score: 1

Full disclosure... I've been a Solaris Admin, off and on for years who has only been briefly involved with using zones
The zones idea is roughly equivalent to chroot (or schroot in some use cases) on Linux. So if you like zones, you can do almost the same thing on a Linux box.
Don't get me wrong, I liked Solaris as an OS. The reality is that Solaris is going to die and go the way of SCO Unix. The sooner it dies, the better at this point.

--
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Re:Maybe by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 05:37 · Score: 0

Nah. Oracle would rather kill Solaris than let that happen.
Good riddance... Solaris is nothing special or unique, at least these days.
ZFS (though it is available on other platforms) and zones (which LXC is not replacement for, though jails are close), are special and unique. So are boot environments. ABI stability between Solaris releases is nice for many third-party software vendors, as is the stable kernel driver API (both of which FreeBSD is pretty good at, but Linux not-so-much). Then there's the 10+ year support cycle on OS updates.
But a combination of those features isn't available on m/any other systems. AIX is probably closest (having a zone-type system, but lacking ZFS or equivalent (i.e., checksumming)).
I'm in IT, and I've run FreeBSD 4+, Linux 2.2+ (RHEL, CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu), and Solaris 8-10 (x86 and SPARC). Solaris 10 on SPARC would probably be my favourite base OS--only lacking FreeBSD's Ports (though pkgsrc isn't too bad).
Re:Maybe by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 05:50 · Score: 1

ZFS is the one thing that keeps Solaris on the map, as a modern enterprise filesystem/LVM is the one thing Linux sorely lacks. Even Windows offers Storage Spaces and ReFS, which can detect bit rot.
Then there is production level deduplication. ZFS does this actively, Windows does it with a background task that finds duplicated blocks. Linux has a few deduplication items, but none that would be considered production quality.
Re:Maybe by 0racle · 2014-02-11 05:56 · Score: 2

Replacing systemd with smf and btrfs with zfs would be fantastic. Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris did so many things just right and Linux so wrong.

--
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Re:Maybe by saleenS281 · 2014-02-11 06:25 · Score: 3, Interesting

Nothing except ZFS, DTrace, crossbow, a fully featured SCSI target stack, and on solaris an extremely robust partitioning infrastructure. Here we are 9 years later and Linux still doesn't have a good answer.
Re:Maybe by X0563511 · 2014-02-11 06:33 · Score: 1

Because Linux requires systemd and btrfs... yep.

--
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Re:Maybe by bobbied · 2014-02-11 06:57 · Score: 1

(Sarcasm on) So YOU don't like LVM? Shudder shudder..

--
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Re:Maybe by squiggleslash · 2014-02-11 07:45 · Score: 1

I believe zones are closer to Linux's LXC system than chroot. chroot is just a filesystem thing, zones/LXC is an entire wrapper around a tree of processes that covers everything - the file system, the network, and so on.

--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Re:Maybe by bobbied · 2014-02-11 08:39 · Score: 1

Chroot is really a process thing that changes how that process sees the file system. It doesn't do anything to the file system. But, pretty much everything is file system based in Linux so everything under the parent process lives in the chroot jail. If you are careful and you use schroot, you can actually run two different distributions (with common kernel) in different processes. I've seen systems running multiple incompatible versions of libC from multiple distributions including multiple IP addresses and X servers. It's been awhile, but I'm sure what you describe is possible.
Zones, where pretty much limited to running the same Solaris version in each zone. You could run different software loads as I recall, but you where stuck on the same kernel in each zone.

--
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Re:Maybe by squiggleslash · 2014-02-11 08:47 · Score: 2

Well, the example I gave was the network. Yes, chroot does help seperate groups processes (although it's important to understand the seperation is insecure by design, that is any root process can easily escape a chroot environment and have access to the main file system, which means you're limited in what types of process you can run if you want a chroot'd environment to be "secure"), but there do exist operating system functions that are not and never have been accessable via the filesystem.
The example I gave, networking, is part of the reason for LXC. LXC in turn is inspired by (and developed by the same developers as) an independent project called OpenVZ, which is used by many hosting providers to provide a kinda poor-man's VPS service. Each LXC domain has its own virtual network device, with its own IP address. Each LXC domain has a secured filesystem, with no risk of a "break out".
As I said, my understanding is that zones is similar in concept to LXC, not chroot. chroot only covers a small part of what zones does. As an aside, chroot is actually a feature of every version of Unix since version 7 (late seventies/early eighties), if zones and chroot were equivalent, it'd be a redundant feature.

--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Re:Maybe by fnj · 2014-02-11 10:28 · Score: 1

Get a clue. The "extremely robust partitioning infrastructure" referred to has nothing to do with disk drive partitioning. I am confident GP is talking about Zones.
As for file systems, there is ZFS, and there are all the toy filesystems linux has. ZFS is actually much more than just a filesystem. LVM is an attempt to add on certain functionality missing from linux filesystems, but does not come close to providing everything ZFS has.
Yeah, adaptations of Solaris' breakthrough features have made their way to linux, and I applaud that. LXC is at least a partial emulation of Zones. ZFS and Dtrace "foreign" kernel modules exist, which cannot be legally distributed with the linux kernel, but are legal for the user to add on. They are commendable additions, though not yet fully up to the capabilities of the originals.
Re:Maybe by bobbied · 2014-02-11 10:50 · Score: 1

Solaris was leading the pack, until Sun died, which was right about the time they went with the X86 port and shot themselves in the foot. Oracle buying them hasn't helped their prospects. Solaris is dying a slow and painful death.
Time to shoot the horse and stop beating it..

--
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Re:Maybe by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 12:31 · Score: 0

Good riddance... Solaris is nothing special or unique, at least these days.
I don't agree with your assessment.
If this is an acceptable argument against Solaris, what is the excuse for using Linux?
Re:Maybe by unixisc · 2014-02-12 08:17 · Score: 1

But after a point, even Linux was available on SPARC, and that too not just Red Hat but pre-SCO Caldera, Debian and a few other distros. So if Solaris had nothing over Linux, then the latter should/would have replaced it everywhere that it was a better alternative. Like workstations in particular.
In reality, the selling point that Solaris has over Linux is that being proprietary, Oracle can charge anything for it, which wasn't how Sun did it. Incidentally, does Oracle provide Linux to anybody wanting to buy SPARC iron?
Re:Maybe by unixisc · 2014-02-12 08:21 · Score: 1

ZFS is there in FreeBSD as well. Dunno about the other 2
Re:Maybe by unixisc · 2014-02-12 08:23 · Score: 1

One could use FreeBSD, then, unless there are any SVIDisms that can only be provided by Solaris
Re:Maybe by bobbied · 2014-02-12 10:05 · Score: 1

I suppose they would sell you that if you insisted. But I ask, why would you want to buy SPARC hardware then run Linux on it? Oracle sells X86 iron for their Linux customers. I'm just guessing, but I'll bet there is more profit margin in X86 systems than SPARC hardware (even if there is a significant premium for SPARC iron). Oracle is obviously still selling SPARC stuff, but I'm guessing they don't see enough profit to pay for the NRE to keep advancing the SPARC platform performance and it's pretty much a dead horse. Same for Solaris.
But also remember that Oracle can change anything it likes in Linux. The source is available. As long as it abides by the license terms Oracle can do what it wants to Linux and deliver it to their customers. Might not be wise to cut across the grain of a open source project, but you can if you want.
The real problem for both SPARC and Solaris is that they are not selling in enough numbers to pay for the engineering costs to keep them viable in the market. They are dying. I know there are legacy customers with old applications that can only go Sparc Solaris and will have to pay Oracle what ever it costs for now, but eventually it's going to be less expensive to just move to Linux. After all, for most applications running on Sparc hardware, the porting to Linux is more about the infrastructure side (starting/stopping and monitoring the application) than the actual application, which is usually just a porting exercise to go from Sun's compilers to GNU compilers. It's a bit of effort at times, but it's NOTHING like porting to/from Windows.

--
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101

Desktop Linux by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 03:20 · Score: 0

I don't see the point of Red Hat spending the time and money on a community version of Enterprise Linux. I'd like to see them start a real effort to come out with a competitive version of desktop Linux. Fedora is good, but it's more of a side project for them, with no major focus and effort put into it.

Eventually someone like Google will throw some significant weight behind a consumer Linux and leave Ubuntu and Fedora in the dust.

Re:Desktop Linux by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 03:26 · Score: 0

Because giving it away for free to small shops which could grow into paying support customers makes sense.
Re:Desktop Linux by oodaloop · 2014-02-11 03:29 · Score: 2

I've wondered why Google hasn't put out their own Linux distro for the mainstream audience. They could have eaten Microsoft's lunch if they put that out when they went to Vista. It would have cost Google next to nothing to fork a common distro like Ubuntu and slap their name on it, and by incorporating Google search and Chrome (or Chromium) into it, they could have increased their ad revenue. I guess ChromeOS is sort of like that, but I was imagining a full desktop OS.

--
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Re:Desktop Linux by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 03:42 · Score: 0

Google did develop their own linux distro and they use it internally. It's called goobuntu (it's why Ubuntu Gnome couldn't call themselves Gubuntu, because of the sound alike name). However, why expend the resources to compete directly against Microsoft. Android seems to be doing very well, and while not directly a linux distribution, it borrows heavily from it.
Re:Desktop Linux by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-02-11 03:47 · Score: 4, Interesting

Given that Redhat is now officially cooperating, I'm not entirely sure why CentOS is still relevant(rather than 'Redhat, RTFM Edition, upgradeable at any time to Redhat, Comes with Support Edition if you buy support'); but I assume that Redhat is focused on the enterprise for a few reasons:

1. Enterprise is where MS, and any other remaining competitors, really turn the screws on pricing. MS doesn't give away Windows Home editions; but only the OEMs know how much those costs, and most buyers aren't considering DIY or buying a 'bare' PC, so the effective cost (among the options they have) is zero. Enterprises, Not. So. Much. MS charges considerably more for 'Pro', and more again for anything server.

2. Enterprises have volume and techies. A home user has, maybe, the nerd kid down the street or something for tech support. They also have a small number of computers. Even a relatively high price, per computer, makes total sense if it avoids any support headaches, and allows those that do come up to be handled by the most common tech support people. Enterprises, though, have enough computers that buying techs rather than 'solutions' starts to become cost effective(plus, their requirements tend to be complex enough that 'solutions' still require techs)

3. 'Desktop'(in the sense of 'consumer') is where a lot of the really nasty hardware churn is. 'Enterprise desktop', 'workstation', and 'server' are all areas where (even if running Windows) IT departments Do. Not. Want. lots of driver/hardware churn, don't want to spend lots of time re-validating configurations, don't want shitty beta drivers, and so on. They are also often satisfied with a smaller variety of hardware, and from vendors who are more likely to build drivers with server and workstation customers in mind. Consumer OS that doesn't support a shitty inkjet released two years after the OS was? Pissed off consumer. Enterprise? Well, we've got some printers that all support Postscript or PCL, a bunch of servers that need NIC and SAS HBA support, and maybe some workstations with fancy graphics cards.

(As for Google and consumer Linux, it's a matter of taste whether you say that they already have, or that they never will: Android and ChromeOS are both Linux-based, neither have more than the slightest relationship to traditional linux/unix userlands. Is Google throwing its weight behind consumer Linux, or using embedded Linux as a cheap and easy way to boot a Google userland?)
Re:Desktop Linux by oodaloop · 2014-02-11 03:50 · Score: 1

I've heard that and hoped they would release it for a general audience and/or make a desktop version of Android somehow.

--
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Re:Desktop Linux by tomhath · 2014-02-11 04:12 · Score: 1

I'd like to see them start a real effort to come out with a competitive version of desktop Linux.
Red Hat's business model is giving away the server software and selling support. They seem to be doing pretty well with that. Fedora seems like a way to keep the door open if enough paying customers want to migrate their desktops to Linux but not a market they are pursuing today.
Re:Desktop Linux by Kjella · 2014-02-11 04:24 · Score: 3, Interesting

Really, you think Google could have just slapped their name on it and all the reason Linux hasn't taken off on the desktop would go away? The other part is that Google isn't very interested in giving you a local solution, that doesn't give them any data nor a hook to google services. And the third reason is that it would be too easy for third parties to strip off the Google bits, despite Android being open source they have very strong incentives to keep OEMs from shipping "bare" phones without all the Google services, the Play store and so on which they wouldn't have for a Linux distro.

--
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Re:Desktop Linux by HoldmyCauls · 2014-02-11 04:29 · Score: 1

It's called Windows XP. Don't want viruses? Install Chrome, they hear from their friends, and continue plugging away on what Microsoft won't support, but which runs fine for them. Plus it doesn't have to be associated with that 'Linux' that nobody ever heard of or be installed in what is usually a destructive way even when you know what an operating system is and to be careful.

--
Emacs: for people who just never know when to :q!
Re:Desktop Linux by oodaloop · 2014-02-11 04:33 · Score: 2

Really, you think Google could have just slapped their name on it and all the reason Linux hasn't taken off on the desktop would go away?
Not quite what I said. But if Google put their weight behind marketing a Linux OS at a time when people were unhappy with Microsoft's Vista and/or recently with Windows 8, yes I think Linux on the desktop could have taken off more so than it is now.

The other part is that Google isn't very interested in giving you a local solution, that doesn't give them any data nor a hook to google services.
You mean like ChromeOS, with Google search built in with Google apps throughout? Why not do the same with a full desktop OS?

And the third reason is that it would be too easy for third parties to strip off the Google bits
Android is open source, but not all of it. Google could easily market a Linux distro with some proprietary software integrated in, that most users would be able to/want to remove. You can get a Google-free version of Android, but you have to unlock the bootloader, load recovery, root, and install a new ROM; not something most users are going to do. Why not do something similiar with a full desktop Linux-based OS?

--
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Re:Desktop Linux by oodaloop · 2014-02-11 04:37 · Score: 2

It's called Windows XP.
Support ends in 2 months, so good luck using after that. And it doesn't and hasn't helped when people are shopping for a new machine.

--
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Re:Desktop Linux by udippel · 2014-02-11 04:39 · Score: 1

Huuh!?
Of course there is a great potential in making CentOS RedHat. Before, even for the not-so-large and not-so-small enterprise; it was - from the perspective of a non-slashdotter - something done by 'hackers'; by geeks and nerds, with a dubious licence, without funding (so it could collapse anytime).
Once your RedHat Linux Enterprise comes from RedHat, for free, though under a different name and with limitations, it makes much more sense as an entry system; something to start with, try it out, and be safe on the legal side as well as the continuity.
What was your concern, again?
Re:Desktop Linux by gl4ss · 2014-02-11 05:15 · Score: 1

desktop linux isn't what made them a billion dollar company.
enterprise was, so .. yeah, I don't see the point in them making another ubuntu.

--
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Re: Desktop Linux by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 06:34 · Score: 0

Do you really want a distro with spyware? Ubuntu is bad enough...
Re:Desktop Linux by X0563511 · 2014-02-11 06:35 · Score: 1

I'm pretty sure that internal names of unreleased things can't be used as trademarks.

--
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Re:Desktop Linux by X0563511 · 2014-02-11 06:42 · Score: 1

Fedora is the test-bed. Users get Fedora for free, and RedHat gets a large audience trying the ideas/software out. I wouldn't certainly call it beta, but it's not "stable" like RHEL is considered to be.

--
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Re:Desktop Linux by nurb432 · 2014-02-11 08:47 · Score: 1

Given that Redhat is now officially cooperating, I'm not entirely sure why CentOS is still relevant
At first glance, it wont be relevant real soon, and i bet wont exist must longer either.

--
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Re:Desktop Linux by Kjella · 2014-02-11 09:07 · Score: 1

4. The enterprise are the people who actually want things fixed through service and support, while consumers tend to ditch hardware and software that's broken. My PC is one of a kind anyway, I don't care one bit about replacing any component with what is best and cheapest right now. If you did that in a company you'd quickly end up with hundreds of franken-PCs and a maintenance nightmare. Likewise, broken software is often an excuse to get around to upgrading or switching tools that you were kind of planning to but never got a kick in the ass before now.
At the office we need continuity, we have schedules and deadlines to keep and the #1, #2 and #3 priority of any failure in production is to restore it to working order and last working configuration. Changes need testing and rollback plans, we'd never jump the gun because shit breaks. Yet that's been fairly common for me personally, I didn't really want to give it the time and effort but if shit is broken and I have to deal with it anyway then I might as well really do something about it.

--
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Re:Desktop Linux by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 10:12 · Score: 0

Given that Redhat is now officially cooperating, I'm not entirely sure why CentOS is still relevant(rather than 'Redhat, RTFM Edition, upgradeable at any time to Redhat, Comes with Support Edition if you buy support');

That's very simple. There are two prices for support; one is called "professional services" and costs e.g. $100 per hour and works on anything anywhere. The other is called support and costs e.g. $1000 per year per system The difference is that support only works on systems that you have paid for in advance.
The trick is that most of the time you don't get any support because you don't need it; however, a few times a year your system you paid $1000 for gets $30,000 worth of support which you have no need to prepare for in your budget. The economics of this only work if most of the systems you pay for support (e.g. at least 31 out of 32 in the example we gave above) don't need it.
With the RedHat RTFM version you would just wait for a problem to happen; pay for support and immediately call after you get the support. In other words fraud. With the CentOS version, you have to do a complete reinstall to RHEL to get to a supported system and 95% of the time your problem will go away so there will be no support ticket anyway. The next time the problem occurs it's likely on another machine where you again will not have bought support. By the time you decide to reinstall all your systems with RedHat, they've won anyway, even if you do register a case.
Re:Desktop Linux by iggymanz · 2014-02-11 11:31 · Score: 1

wrong, those of us who used the Linux desktop in the late 90s brought it into the enterprise and worked to get it accepted.
RedHat very much became a success because of their desktop linux. Creating Federo, to be different from the Enterprise linux (which has restricted access) was a stab in the back to the userbase
Re:Desktop Linux by BradMajors · 2014-02-11 11:53 · Score: 1

They have, it is called Android.
Re:Desktop Linux by armanox · 2014-02-11 18:47 · Score: 1

Doesn't run well for a lot of people. Need 64-bit features? You're out of luck (and Windows XP x64 was horrible). Need to run new versions of Microsoft Office? You're out of luck. Windows Update? Hope you have hours for it to finish. Windows XP is old, and is showing its age. Similar argument can be applied to my G5 Power Mac running OS X 10.5 (Quad G5, 12GB RAM), my SGI Octane running IRIX 6.5, and my SunBlade 1500 running Solaris 10. For the PPC and Sparc, install Firefox (or Aurora on Mac, since PPC isn't officially supported still), update Flash, and BAM! Just as useful as Windows XP to most people.

--
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Re:Desktop Linux by unixisc · 2014-02-12 08:26 · Score: 1

Instead of CentOS, why couldn't Red Hat get hold of Scientific Linux, and use it to try regaining the unixstation market, even if based on i7/Xeon?

Hope this is what it seems by HighOrbit · 2014-02-11 03:24 · Score: 2

and not embrace and extinguish. Kudos to Redhat and CentOS.

Re:Hope this is what it seems by greenfruitsalad · 2014-02-11 03:53 · Score: 1

am i oblivious to something other people can see or is RedHat Inc a genuinely sympathetic company? i am simply unable to find anyting this company has done that would be even remotely evil, unfair or greedy.
Re:Hope this is what it seems by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 04:06 · Score: 0

How about: Red Hat is trying to lock out other distributions.
More and more, Red Hat rejects patches designed for compatability. Red Hat has moved toward complexity and away from simplicity. This has resulted in brokenness, a decrease in security, and a move away from an OS that an experienced user can fix and customize: HAL, ConsoleKit, PulseAudio, systemd ...

If you can't beat them... by bobbied · 2014-02-11 03:28 · Score: 2

Buy them! Or hire them like in this case..

I've always wondered what RH could do about CentOS. It was obvious that RH wasn't all that happy with CentOS, at least at first. With CentOS having to refer to "the up-line vender" and removing all the RH references and graphics it has always seemed to be the Red Headed step child.

So, does this mean RH has embraced the concept of CentOS, where "free is free" to download?

--
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101

Re:If you can't beat them... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 03:47 · Score: 0

Perhaps a related question to this is: Why don't the orbiting electrons of the atoms radiate all their energy away and the electrons "fall" into the nucleus and the atom self destructs? When an electron from an accelerator is subject to acceleration by deflecting it by a magnetic or electric field from a non-linear path, it radiates energy called Cerenkov radiation. This does not happen when the electrons travel nonlinearly around a nucleus. It is not known how electrons "know" they are traveling in a curved path as required by the electric fields of an atoms vs when they are deflected by a magnetic or electric field in a vacuum. Some theories posit that this energy loss does happen, but that the energy the electrons lose this way is made up by an exactly equal energy input from the "zero point energy" of space itself. Zero point energy is the energy left in space that has been cooled to absolute zero temperature.
Re:If you can't beat them... by Peter+H.S. · 2014-02-11 03:56 · Score: 4, Interesting

That CentOS must remove all traces of Red Hat branding is due to trademarks and what not. Not really a problem to do for any serious distro anyway. Red Hat has apparently been quite happy with CentOS for quite a while, since it generates new costumers and people knowing RHEL-like environments and developers too.
The corporate motive for getting directly involved in CentOS isn't trying to control a free edition of RHEL (there are many others besides CentOS), but is much more likely to be directed against Oracle who allegedly uses CentOS as Upstream for their Linux distro. Oracle haven't been smart enough to actually employ CentOS developers en masse, but with this move Red Hat can keep Oracle out of a controlling position in CentOS.
Red Hats direct involvement in CentOS has many benefits for its users; The steering and participation in CentOS have been opened up (it was a small, rather closed group before). The concept of "variants" seems most promising, since it allows people to work on CentOS variants without the need to actually fork away and become their own little distro island. So Sci-Linux are contemplating becoming a CentOS Variant so they can work on the software they care about, instead of all the extra work there is in maintaining your own distro.
Re:If you can't beat them... by LordByronStyrofoam · 2014-02-11 03:57 · Score: 1

RedHat has always embraced CentOS, as proof that they really mean it when they say they're not selling Linux, they're selling support. Use CentOS when your boss's butt isn't on the line, support contract-wise. Use RedHat Enterprise where you need to be able to pay someone to help with your problems.

--
Slashdot's name? When my compiler sees /. it generates a warning about a badly formed comment.
Re:If you can't beat them... by hubie · 2014-02-11 08:16 · Score: 1

If you're going to post off-topic, at least get your physics correct. Radiation from charged particles accelerating in a magnetic/electric field is cyclotron radiation. When it happens as the result of the field from an atom, it is bremsstrahlung. Cherenkov radiation is when a charged particle is moving through a medium faster than the speed of light in that medium and has nothing to do with what you are saying.

With key developers gone... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 03:34 · Score: 0

...will it take even longer to have a CentOS version of RHEL ?

Who seriously believes that Red Hat spends money so their product can be used for free by new and existing customer?

Re:With key developers gone... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 03:47 · Score: 0

Maybe they got tired of the CentOS assholes not distribution timely security updates.

Because it's good business. by taikedz · 2014-02-11 03:48 · Score: 4, Insightful

CentOS is the freebie that anyone can use - but that nobody is under any obligation to provide support or patches for. This means that small companies who are waiting to grow before buying proper RHEL, can still use the software, though they can't file bugs or get a support hotline. But it also means that CentOS can be used for anyone training in skills for "Enterprise grade" Linux can get their feet wet on a system that is already in use in industry. When the time comes to work with Linux in a real business environment, they've a head start on those who chose systems closed to non-customers.

Why does this matter to RedHat? The more people whose yardstick and gold standard is RedHat-related technology, the better; and ensuring all you can do on the derivative can be done exactly the same way on the commercial (down to the version of a command, the dot in a package name and the quirks of the brand) goes a long way to provide this promise.

How does this benefit RedHat if CentOS is given away for free? CentOS is RedHat's technology already in the hands of the client. But having the software is one thing - having access to support, formal enterprise training offerings, consultancy services and a dedicated rapid response for business-critical bugs is vital in business. Once the small company who could not afford RHEL becomes big, suddenly they are aware that they are on systems that RedHat knows perfectly, and migrating from CentOS to RHEL is painless - being systems different only at branding level. Migrating to anything else, even to SUSE Linux for Enterprise or Oracle's Linux (the latter being a part-clone of RHEL), becomes more involved. CentOS really now is RHEL.

Indeed, the good karma from being seen helping the community is peanuts compared to the advantage the offering of an easy transition and self-trained fans and already-committed users brings.

--
-- "Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability." --Dijkstra

Re:Because it's good business. by Alain+Williams · 2014-02-11 04:11 · Score: 1

though they can't file bugs
Yes they can. RedHat will deal with the bugs in their own time, ie prioritise paying customers over anyone else.
Re:Because it's good business. by satch89450 · 2014-02-11 04:29 · Score: 1

... though they can't file bugs or get a support hotline.

But they can file bugs with CentOS, which can then be upstreamed to the original authors so the bug gets taken care of. Yes, there is no formal support from the CentOS team, but I've been quite happy with the community support I've received the few times I've run into trouble.
My main use of CentOS has been for my mail server. It's still running CentOS 4; I'm working to build a new server with CentOS 6 when I have some spare cycles. That will upgrade both the OS and the hardware, the hardware getting a little long in the tooth.
Re:Because it's good business. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 04:54 · Score: 0

Don't state as fact what you assume.
In other words, stop talking out of your beta! *ducks*

Re:USING BETA by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 03:52 · Score: 0

The shit hawks are coming....

Fork CentOS by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 03:56 · Score: 0

This is a move to slowly remove features from RedHats largest competitor. RedHat took a look in the mirror and thought they were Oracle.

Stop back porting to 2.6 by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 04:00 · Score: 0

If RedHat wanted to do something good for the community they'd develop an upgrade path that didn't require patch backports to an ancient kernel. Everyone chided M$ for their 'updates', time for redhat to deliver.

Re:Stop back porting to 2.6 by armanox · 2014-02-11 18:52 · Score: 1

And it's lost on you why they can't update the kernel mid-release. For long term stability they have to keep the same kernel version. Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, SGI, IBM, and plenty others have realized that too. When RHEL 7 comes out it will have a 3.x kernel. But RHEL 6 MUST keep the same kernel to avoid breakage.

--
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.

Not all is lost... by laing · 2014-02-11 04:14 · Score: 1

We still have Scientific Linux.

Re:Not all is lost... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 05:17 · Score: 0

Luckily, Scientific Linux devs are considering right now to become a CentOS variant:
http://scientificlinuxforum.org/index.php?showtopic=2622
captcha: propound

they can log bugs? by taikedz · 2014-02-11 04:17 · Score: 1

Huh. Didn't know that. Well, the points still remain the same with that edit :-)

I wonder if beta could allow for adding errata #justkidding #donthurtme

--
-- "Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability." --Dijkstra

Re:they can log bugs? by X0563511 · 2014-02-11 06:39 · Score: 1

TBH I've had a good amount of my bug reports die off as the reported-against OS release hits EOL... but you are still able to report them and sometimes you get fixes / attention.

--
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...

Dance, puppets, dance! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 04:24 · Score: 0

Ha! The only reason RedHat would spend money here is to make the devs comply to their bidding...

Oh, and I LOVE BETA!

Genious. Absolute genious. by satan666 · 2014-02-11 04:35 · Score: 5, Insightful

Let me take a second to applaud Red Hat for doing this.
This is why they own the Enterprise Linux market.

Their thinking, in a nutshell, is this:
Give the software (CentOS) to small companies.
Get kids right out of college using it to build their home servers.
Get everyone comfortable with CentOS/RHEL.
When it is time to buy, they will buy RH. Simple.

Here in NYC, Linux jobs are 99.99% RH/CentOS.
Because CentOS is free, anyone can download it and test
it. No disabled features, nothing. You want a job in Wall St?
Download CentOS, sit down and learn the thing and then
you WILL get a job! I guarantee it!

Microsoft, Oracle, Apple take note: This is how you own
a market. Not by squeezing every penny out of your
customers.

That's why Apple will never break into the Enterprise
market. This is why Microsoft has lost the Enterprise
market and this is how Oracle will fuck off and die soon
(hopefully).

Personally, I was a Slackware guy, for my home machines,
but CentOS has won me over. Now, it is the only thing I use.

One more thing: I work in Wall St. and I use RH/CentOS
every single day.

Red Hat, you guys rule. I salute you! Rock on!

Re:Genious. Absolute genious. by snookiex · 2014-02-11 05:03 · Score: 1

Was it a poem? :D Well, on a serious note, it's kind of what Microsoft did back in the day (and still does somehow), or even Borland. It's a good strategy. In my company, we use CentOS for testing purposes, but in actual deployments we recommend our customers to get RHEL and buy support from the original developers of all the other open source components we use, if it applies.

--
Open Source Network Inventory for the masses! Kuwaiba
Re:Genious. Absolute genious. by Bill_the_Engineer · 2014-02-11 05:34 · Score: 2

More accurate:
We really messed up by ditching the RedHat free edition and creating the bleeding edge Fedora distribution expecting it to satisfy everyone's needs.
We need to support the efforts of CentOS to keep the spirit of RedHat free edition alive.

--
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Re:Genious. Absolute genious. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 09:25 · Score: 0

This is why they own the Enterprise Linux market.
Or, it could be because all the commercial software vendors for linux only support their software if installed on redhat (not even centos or oracle linux). And, then Redhat charges a boatload of money per machine, per year, just to get access to patches.
We are a Debian shop, but we have an ERP system that has acted as a Trojan horse for RedHat. We now have a bunch of RH hosts we would rather not have (can't upgrade RH without clean install, very poor package selection, not very well thought out management bits, like for managing initrds etc., can't run a local repository mirror, etc. etc.)
We would dump Redhat in an instant, if it weren't for being forced to use it by these other vendors.
Re:Genious. Absolute genious. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 10:12 · Score: 0

That's why Apple will never break into the Enterprise market.
Yeah, uh, hate to break up your self-righteous EVERYTHING GOTTA BE FREE-AS-IN-BEER OR I DONT CARE rant but anyone paying the slightest bit of attention knows that Apple is not even trying to do this.
Re:Genious. Absolute genious. by satan666 · 2014-02-12 04:27 · Score: 1

Whaaaat? Are you for real?
Apple is "not even trying" because they can't. They have:
No standard release dates.
No patch system worth a shit, everything runs from that stupid "System Update".
No enterprise level system tools (individual patch details), on and on...
They are worse that Windows. Much worse.
And as far as being "self-righteous", well, I can be that because I am right.

Re:I by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 05:11 · Score: 0

no.... don't.... stay........

slashdot = stagnated

you're all ignorant hypocrites.

Transparent, Really? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 05:38 · Score: 0

Seems to be a difference of opinion on what Red Hat is up to: http://nerdvittles.com/?p=8888

I know I'm being cynical... by Bill_the_Engineer · 2014-02-11 05:41 · Score: 1

I wouldn't be surprised if RedHat did this to not only keep a community based RHEL afloat, but to also have direct access to the users in order to sale them the paid RHEL edition.

I wish continued success of CentOS but I've been burned by RedHat's "you need to pay for continued support to get updates or suffer through our brand new, very unstable (bleeding edge), and free Fedora distribution" tactic. I hope they aren't planning a similar fate for CentOS.

--
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...

Solaris zones by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 05:44 · Score: 3, Informative

Full disclosure... I've been a Solaris Admin, off and on for years who has only been briefly involved with using zones

Your comments show this.

The zones idea is roughly equivalent to chroot (or schroot in some use cases) on Linux. So if you like zones, you can do almost the same thing on a Linux box.

No, it's not. Chroot is a (mostly) completely useless mechanism for security and isolation.

With zones, you can set up the zone with a completely different IP, with different firewall rules and even routing tables, and give some access to the root account on that zone, and not have to worry about them breaking out of the zone or affecting the hosting system (because you can put memory and CPU restrictions on the zone so it doesn't eat up system-wide resources). You can have dozens of zones on one hosting machine and the overhead of this "virtualization" is (IIRC) less than 3%.

FreeBSD's jails is the closest equivalant (having inspired zones). With jails you can also give out the root account and not worry, and even have set-UID binaries.

Put a set-UID binary in a chroot space (or even a Linux container) and all security is gone.

Zones/jails are nothing like chroot: the former can actually be used securely (where do you think the first VPS system came from? FreeBSD jails), while the latter is a nice speed bump before being broken out of.

CONGRATS by hackus · 2014-02-11 05:55 · Score: 1

to the CentOS team.

You deserve a vacation for your hard work...

Good. Did you enjoy it?

Now get back to work. :-)

--
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.

Both Red Hat and CentOS benefit by fnj · 2014-02-11 10:44 · Score: 1

[With key developers gone]...will it take even longer to have a CentOS version of RHEL ?

Maybe they got tired of the CentOS assholes not distribution timely security updates.

Both of our hit and run ACs are completely fantasizing.

1) There aren't any CentOS "developers". CentOS is not "developed". It is just lifted verbatim (and entirely legally) from the Red Hat source code. The source code is edited where necessary strictly to remove Red Hat's corporate branding, and then just recompiled.

2) Kharanbir Singh and the others will not be "gone" from CentOS. On the contrary, they will be paid good money by Red Hat to be even more effective with CentOS. They are specifically not being "taken off of" CentOS.

3) CentOS security updates are quite timely on the whole. There have in the past been periods of time coinciding with minor version upgrades when they lagged, and I imagine this will be ameliorated by this new change.

Repeat by AdamWill · 2014-02-11 15:18 · Score: 1

Note: this is basically the same story as http://linux.slashdot.org/stor... . The source is datelined February 10, 2014 , but starts "On Jan. 7, Karanbir Singh, project lead on CentOS, announced to his community that he and a handful of other core CentOS developers would now be employed full-time by Red Hat." (emphasis mine). The hiring isn't a new thing, it was announced at the time of the whole CentOS announcement (and actually happened, er, considerably earlier, AIUI).

Great news and support from Red Hat by apexwm · 2014-02-12 01:17 · Score: 1

It's great to know a good company like Red Hat is behind CentOS. CentOS is already great stuff now, and will hopefully be even better with the corporate backing. It should be a winning situation for all parties, including the end user.

OpenStack and OpenDaylight by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-14 09:45 · Score: 0

If Redhat wants to remain relaveant they have to be the platform that OpenStack and things like OpenDaylight are being developed on. Developers that are coding on OpenStack didn't start on Redhat because of the costs in licensing. As Redhat became involved the first thing they had to do was make everything disto agnostic. Then they released RDO. After that, what are they needed was a stable platform to develop on for the community.

Options:

1) fedora - not stable enough for openstack. The constant kernel changes caused havoc early on and devs and dev shops want a stable platform for developement for application and virtualization frameworks.

2) give away RHEL? Not. Ever. Going. To. Happen.

CentOS was the only way forward that would work other than creating their own CentOSish distro.

Slashdot Mirror

Red Hat Hires CentOS Developers

91 comments