Centos fallout continues
Red Hat’s decision to drop Centos has annoyed a lot of people. Will making RHEL free fix resolve the situation?
Last issue we reported on Red Hat’s decision to discontinue Centos 8, its popular distro for enthusiasts and small businesses, and the fallout from that decision is still rumbling on. Originally meant to be supported until 2029, Red Hat’s announcement that it was being discontinued early meant that many users who were expecting the full 10 years of long-term support were suddenly left feeling abandoned.
The fact that Red Hat claimed that Centos Stream was designed to replace Centos didn’t help matters – mainly because Red Hat has been vague about the actual role of the new distro. However, as Arstechnica reports (http://bit.ly/LXF274ArsCent), Red Hat has tried to clarify, by stating that, “We’re making Centos Stream the collaboration hub for RHEL,” and that Fedora will be “the place for major new operating system innovations, thoughts, and ideas.”
The company also revealed that this will be where features coming to future versions of RHEL appear first. Centos Stream will be “the continuously delivered platform that becomes the next minor version of RHEL,” while RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) will remain the OS for businesses and production workloads.
In a bid to further appease its users, Red Hat also announced that it’ll be making RHEL free for ‘small-production workloads’ of 16 systems or fewer. Companies can sign up for free with the Red Hat Developer Subscription programme, and the company promises there are no strings attached – so there won’t be pressure from sales people to upgrade to a paid subscription.
Teams and individuals will also be able to subscribe to the programme, and it’s clear that Red Hat is hoping that this move could rectify some of the bad press it’s been receiving recently. Whether or not that will be successful has yet to be seen…