Why CentOS Stream is Important

CentOS Stream is often defined by what it is not, yet in doing so we miss its true purpose. In this video we'll acknowledge the controversy, but then look past it to see why CentOS Stream is really important - whether you use Red Hat, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, Oracle Linux, or any other RHEL derivatives in the Enterprise Linux family.

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Video timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction
0:40 - What is CentOS Stream?
1:31 - CentOS Controversy
2:50 - Is CentOS Stream a Beta?
4:25 - Should You Run CentOS Stream in Production?
5:46 - The Real Purpose of CentOS Linux
7:16 - The Current State of Enterprise Linux
8:27 - Why Upstream is Important

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#CentOS #RedHat #Linux #RockyLinux #AlmaLinux #Oracle

[seansmith]

Excellent vid explaining the importance of CentOS Stream!

[alexycox]

Greetings Andrew!

This video is on the same subject that brought me to you channel over a year ago. I have then been a fan of your videos ever since! You do a great job at explaining tech subjects and providing an understanding on things from as many perspectives as possible. But I feel you and many others in the linux community still have a miss understanding of what really happened behind closed doors between Red Hat and CentOS. And by CentOS, I mean the organization leading the project (the board of directors ), not the operating system.

I agree with almost all of your statements on this video, and I think you really drove the most important points on this whole CentOS/CentOS Stream story starting at the 7:16 timestamp and on.

One thing I strongly disagree is based on your statement at the very beginning of the video: "....Red Hat infamously killed off CentOS...." This statement puts all accountability on Red Hat. A major factor being missed here - and not that I agree this was a good thing - is that at one point in time, CentOS (the organization) became too reliant on Red Hat as a corporate contributor to the project. When Red Hat decided to change course on their contributions, Red Hat presented their new business plan to the board of directors, and perhaps you may say that the CentOS board of directors looked out for their best interest, not for the community's best interest. But then again, could they had been able to continue the CentOS project without Red Hat's contribution? Probably not.

The CentOS project was in fact being supported by the community and some other organizations, but none of them invested as much effort and resources in the CentOS project as Red Hat did.

From an enterprise business perspective, Red Hat needed to align their resources to a development focus project (CentOS Stream), which you did a great job explaining on this video.

Also, the decision to change the EOL on CentOS 8 was not all of Red Hat's decision. Were there any CentOS board members in the Red Hat payroll? Yes, 4 out of 11 board members were actual Red Hat employees, however, the decision was unanimous! And while not much can be shared of what happened behind closed doors in the meetings leading to this decision, Red Hat's intentions were not "kill off CentOS 8", their plan was to just no longer support ($$$) the CentOS project and to now move their resources to the CentOS Stream project, which led to several changes in the Red Hat / CentOS business relationship.

Anyhow, I do not blame the linux community for being mad at Red Hat, I believe there was a lot of lack of communication and misunderstandings between Red Hat, CentOS and the community. But I also do not blame Red Hat for changing their enterprise business objectives. I believe the foundation upon which the CentOS organization was built on, was faulty from the beginning.

This why I have also become a great fan of Rocky Linux and what Greg Kurtzer has done in order to avoid something like this from happening again. I really believe Rocky Linux is going to be a great REAL community based enterprise focused distribution, ... well, , I really hope! :)

Best wishes mate! And thank you for all the hard work on your videos!

[opensauce]

Nice to see a video explaining what Stream's benefits are rather than focusing on purely the downsides or the larger drama

[funfactory]

Very precise and informative :-) Liked and Subscribed. Keep them coming.

[sowmisrini]

Great Andrew 👌🙂

Useful information.. keep rocking

[davidhiguera]

Amazing video! We need an update of this after the RH drama. 😅

[PauloSYSengineering]

I think you are the only person who can show the positives of CentOS Stream, most are still angry at Red Hat's attitude, myself included.

But your point of view makes a lot of sense, so I'll lower my animosity, even in my company we're already migrating to Oracle Linux.

We had many VMs with CentOS and also many with RHEL, now we are going to migrate CentOS to Oracle Linux and I don't know what will happen with RHEL, maybe some can be migrated to Oracle too along with paid support.

[maherkhalil]

So, I think if there is any bug, it will be fixed in centos stream before redhat because rocky and lama linux have to report the bug to centos stream community and be fixed before redhat by centos stream community right?

[zeyadkenawi]

Are you sure that this is the actual path? because centos stream faq says otherwise.


11. Why is $package newer in RHEL than CentOS Stream?
CentOS Stream is a work in progress. At a future milestone, users can expect CentOS Stream content will include content intended for inclusion in the next RHEL minor release. In some cases, however, Red Hat is obligated to release fixes to customers first, after which these fixes can be released into CentOS Stream.

[Jamesaepp]

Well presented video. The only thing it leaves me concerned about is "oh dear, Stream has become a single point of failure / weakness in the development chain, hasn't it?"

[simongrushka]

why not just settle for ubuntu lts? long time support, large company backing. and it can still be used on desktop

[plazmaguyyago]

Tbh ot was kind of weord they allowed centos to exsist in the first place

[GeorgeChristie]

It's not looking so clever now...

[ryzenforce]

Companies that used CentOS for production purpose are not the one who wanted or had the talent to contribute back into RHEL. And those companies are mostly not IT companies, they have their own agenda and business to run, they don't want to contribute back either. They just want a stable OS - a free one that is enterprise level like CentOS was - to run their businesses with the least updates and hickups possible - and that's 80% of the companies who used CentOS. And CentOS Stream is not for those 80% and they are moving away from it.

Again, history will show how IBM did a jerk move that in the end undermined themselves. Whoever still runs stuff on IBM's stack/hardware/storage in 2022 must be crazy or a mazochist.

@9:56 This shows exacly why you must NOT used CentOS Steam AT ALL.