CentOS Linux 6.8 Released (softpedia.com)
An anonymous reader writes: CentOS team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of CentOS Linux 6.8 and install media for i386 and x86_64 Architectures. Release Notes for 6.8 are available here. Softpedia writes: "CentOS Linux 6.8 arrives today with major changes, among which we can mention the latest Linux 2.6.32 kernel release from upstream with support for storing up to 300TB of data on XFS filesystems. The VPN endpoint solution implemented in the NetworkManager network connection manager utility is now provided on the libreswan library instead of the Openswan IPsec implementation used in previous release of the OS, and it looks like the SSLv2 protocol has been disabled by default for the SSSD (System Security Services Daemon), which also comes with support for smart cards now." In addition, the new release comes with updated applications, including the LibreOffice 4.3.7 office suite and Squid 3.4 caching and forwarding web proxy, many of which are supporting the Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2 protocol, including Git, YUM, Postfix, OpenLDAP, stunnel, and vsftpd. The dmidecode open-source tool now supports SMBIOS 3.0.0, you can now pull kickstart files from HTTPS (Secure HTTP) sources, the NTDp (Network Time Protocol daemon) package has an alternative solution as chrony, SSLv3 has been disabled by default, and there's improved support for Hyper-V.
Wow, what a recent kernel.
Why don't they ship with the hello everybody out there kernel, idiots.
Wow, that's really shooting for stability there - isn't it?
Wasn't the Linux kernel already beyond the windows 3.11 kernel version level? Or is that the main reason for this OS, to be legacy.
CentOS/RedHat motto has always been "stability and security". Nowadays however , I don't think there is much difference with Debian, for instance, in terms of stability/security. Furthermore, for those using the desktop release, RH and CentOS are really behind (eg compared to Ubuntu) in terms of ergonomics, utilities and other applications.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
2.6.32 differs so much from modern kernels that trying to cherry-pick fixes leads to anything but stability. I wouldn't touch such a kernel with a 0.015 furlong pole.
rhel kernels are the most heavily tested kernels available, really you would trust a new kernel with your company's data?
otherwise you'll come across like an ignoramus. Read the release notes and then comment how ancient/primitive the kernel is.
Haven't been here in a while, but what is going on with the slashdot community?
otherwise you'll come across like an ignoramus. Read the release notes and then comment how ancient/primitive the kernel is.
Haven't been here in a while, but what is going on with the slashdot community?
The problem is that you are trying to lump everyone here into one community. There is no community.
Hosts have 3 weeks to roll it out:
(Yes, that's right, NSS, not OpenSSL.)
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/6.8_Release_Notes/new_features_security.html
https://www.paypal-knowledge.com/infocenter/index?page=content&id=FAQ1914
Oh wait, I see Paypal backed off on it, they have moved it ahead to June 30th 2017. Previously it was next month, June 17, 2016. Enough people must have complained. This change was going to break tens of thousands of eCommerce websites, if not more.
So hosts have more time now; a whole year. At least CentOS has addressed it now. I expect hosts are going to keep servers provisioned on 6.x on 6.x for as long as possible.
"CentOS 6 is really behind" means that it does not have a bunch of significant recent changes. Which is the definition of stable.
Has CentOS 6 kept up with recent changes? If so, it's not "really behind". If not, it's stable. Pick one.
I would say they've done as advertised, they kept it pretty stable. That happens to be what I want right now. If I wanted cutting-edge, I might use Fedora.
The major.minor kernel number for Red Hat 6.0 was chosen based on what was stable when it was released in 2010. Kernel updates since then are reflected in the revision number. Updates after initial release don't change the API, the ABI, or the major.minor parts of the version number. They change the revision number.
2.6? 2.6?!?!?! LOL! Jesus fuck, that shit came out in 2009! I knew they were working with outdated packages, but god damn...
I am please to see it does not have systemd.
for 50centos (get rich text or die trying). ;-)
> there is a huge difference between modern Ubuntu like releases and CentOS. Even Ubuntu 14.04 (2 years old) is way ahead
I don't necesarily disagree. Let's assume that's right, that Ubuntu has had a lot of updates (changes) and CentOS hasn't. That's what you said, right?
Of course all that new stuff has new APIs and especially new ABIs. The APIs and ABIs of RHEL 6 haven't changed for six years, so it doesn't have all the new shinies. What do you call it when something doesn't change a lot over time, when it pretty much remains the same? For APIs and ABIs, we call that "stable".
Notice the word is neither "good" nor "bad", it's "stable", aka unchanging, remaining the same, reliable.
> but at least show a bit of fairness.
I can't think of anything more fair than stating a plain, objective fact. RHEL doesn't change the interfaces. They are stable. Love it or hate it, it's a fact. What would be UNFAIR would be to lie and say RHEL doesn't provide a stable environment. That's simply untrue as a factual matter, for the sense of the word "stable" that matters for software maintainence.
I had to install it this morning by typing ''yum update'', it told me that it was going to install 855 MB and prompted me ''Is this ok [y/N]'' -- notice a default answer of no.
This is yet more evidence that RedHat/CentOS is behind the time and not following recent industry practice of bamboozling their users into installing the latest version of the OS whether they want to or not. Should I downgrade to Microsoft Windows so that I can become as exasperated as some of my friends ?
Isn't RHEL/CentOS just about that. NOT having "major changes"?
What gives?
Freeswan?
NetworkManager?
SSSD?
chrony?
I'll keep my server a server thank you, and not some systemd/FreeDesktop/Pottering abomination.
So, is Wayland dead? I would have expected X to be dead and buried by now. What about Mir?
Just no reason for CentOS anymore. The kernel on the 6.x distros is old. The 7.x use that horrid systemd crap. It really sucks. CentOS 6.5 was a great distro.
Calculate Linux is based on Gentoo, but Calculate installs easily. I use the MATE based distro, everything works, and is easy.
I think Slackware 14.3 is out. That might be worth a look.
I used FreeBSD for a while, but FreeBSD has no Dropbox client, and I could not install my VPN on FreeBSD. Sad, because FreeBSD is very solid UNIX implementation.
Red Hat is shameless.
> Unreasonable hatred is not something we wish to encourage or foster.
So why do you Red Hat shills so unreasonably hate POSIX, and the UNIX philosophy?
Well, my big file server just paniced after a 6.7->6.8 upgrade. The ONLY reason to stick with CentOS6 was stability and long lifetime. Since that is now out the window, switching to Ubuntu 16.04 (with the huge advantage of having ZFS precompiled) is back on my burner.
The good news is it doesn't look like I lost any of my 24 TB of ZFS data, despite panics, reset switches, and power buttons.
You misunderstand badly, in fact very badly, and it's not even about whether systemd is any good or not.
Workstation software development, especially the commercial closed source kind, is very slow.
A major change in how things work such as systemd means that it will be several years before the devlopers of that sort of software even consider getting their software to work in the new environment instead of just telling users to use the old one. See also how many commercial packages still recommend turning SElinux off because they haven't got around to working out how their software can operate in that environment.
So until a lot of vendors dust off their rc scripts and work out what they have to change to run on a host with systemd there are plenty of their clients who will not be upgrading due to systemd itself.