I’m so annoyed with this. We were using CentOS, which was effectively killed, then I did a lot of research and spent time moving everything over the AlmaLinux.
Having to now do it all again another time is so frustrating; the only pragmatic long-term option is to bite the bullet and get things working on Debian.
Look in to Rocky Linux. It was started by the original developer of CentOS the day Red Hat announced that CentOS would be moving upstream of RHEL. They've already put out an announcement saying that it's essentially going to be business as usual for them.
From what I understand, Rocky and Alma are essentially the same and so I found it difficult to decide between the two when moving from CentOS. Whatever happens now, will apply to both.
The writing is on the wall and it’s similar to Twitter and Reddit: they wanted to kill CentOS as it was, weren’t expecting the community to come back with Rocky and Alma, so now they’re trying to kill those too. The above video posits a scenario where Oracle’s legal team help the little guys by going to battle with IBM, but I don’t see it.
At this point, I don’t think it’s smart to go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for this all to blow over, but then again I’d be very happy to see the little guys succeed.
I'd just finished migrating around 70 Centos 6 machines to Centos 8, a month ahead of them killing the distro that was supposed to last until 2028. We went with Rocky, but the problem is the same as Alma's.
Fortunately both companies seem to have pretty well developed plans for coping with this, and no doubt Oracle and Amazon distros will too, so no need to jump ship yet.
That said, we're also considering a debian shaped future, at least in part. There's absolutely no way we'll sign up for Rhel accounts. Not because they're expensive, but because decisions like this undermine our trust in them as a business partner.
Yea, we're just starting a EL7 to Alma 9 migration. Kind of not looking forward to having to throw out all that work and try and migrate somewhere else if the rebuilds become impossible to make in the next few months or even few years. And if this doesn't work, I don't see why they don't try something else in 2 years again, so I'm far less sanguine than I was back with them ending CENTOS.
It is a worry, isn't it? I built two more Rocky 9 servers today and it certainly would be a major faff if Rocky went away. However, I have a lot of faith in them, and I also respect Alma. Both are strong, well run organisations with a lot of clever people working together for the benefit of the community. I think we'll be fine, even if the details have to change a little bit.
We certainly won't be trusting Redhat in any way though, but we're not big enough to be useful to them. They've proved they have complete disdain for the foss community they depend upon, and showing ones colours like that is not going to help their bottom line. It's a shame.
I've created a todo item for myself at work; "See how easily we can switch new builds to debian in our automation and management systems". Doesn't hurt to be flexible.