SUSE announces new distro for those who miss the old CentOS: Liberty Linux
- Reference: 1642666866
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/01/20/suse_liberty_linux/
- Source link:
Since Red Hat [1]killed off CentOS Linux and [2]replaced it with CentOS Stream , there's been renewed activity in the world of drop-in RHEL replacements. Now a new entrant has joined [3]AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux , as SUSE enters the fray with its own rebuild of Red Hat's freely-available source code.
As it has only appeared on SUSE's website [4]over night , we don't have a demo version at time of writing, so here is what we know so far.
[5]
At launch, Liberty Linux should be equivalent to the current Red Hat release – RHEL 8.5 – and compatible with packages from Red Hat's own [6]EPEL repos.
[7]
[8]
SUSE is building the distro using its own [9]Open Build Service tooling. All of the userland of the new distro will be built from Red Hat's official Source RPMs (SRPMs), with the exception of the kernel. That comes from [10]SUSE's own SLE enterprise distribution , currently on version 15 SP3, but compiled using a Red Hat-compatible configuration.
Since these days openSUSE's stable distro, Leap, [11]is binary compatible with SLE , that suggests that Liberty Linux will ship with kernel [12]5.3.18 . That's a lot newer than RHEL 8.5's kernel [13]4.18 , so RHEL device drivers and kernel modules almost certainly won't work – but SLE ones should.
[14]
You can also only expect support for Red Hat's choice of filesystems, meaning XFS rather than SUSE's preferred Btrfs, which [15]Red Hat doesn't support . The new distro is also x86-64 only, with no support for POWER or Arm boxes.
[16]Technology can sometimes go from east to west: Ubuntu DDE 21.10 remix ships in 22.01
[17]CentOS Stream 9: Understanding the new Red Hat OS release for non-Red-Hat-type people
[18]NixOS and the changing face of Linux operating systems
[19]Ubuntu desktop team teases 'proof of concept' systemd on Windows Subsystem for Linux
The new distro will be supported by the [20]company's fleet management tool, SUSE Manager – because that already supports RHEL, as well as Ubuntu. Future updates should follow Red Hat's release cycle, rather than SUSE's.
The most important thing for SUSE's bottom line is that customers will be able to buy SUSE's commercial support for the new distro, right alongside its traditional offerings. The plan is for there to be a free download as well, but nothing is visible yet.
The idea is that, now that the End-of-Life for CentOS Linux 8 has passed, users have a new path forward, rather than switching distros – realistically, which includes to CentOS Stream. Previously, the options were to move to one of the relatively new community-supported distros – or to pay Red Hat, if your fingers weren't feeling too burned to reach into your wallet.
If you didn't want to deal with the IBM subsidiary, you could [21]jump ship to Oracle Linux , if that didn't sound even less appealing. Now there's another way: a paid-for, fully-supported, RHEL-compatible enterprise distro, but from a long-established, Linux-centric vendor. ®
Get our [22]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/09/centos_red_hat/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/10/centos_stream_9/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/16/alma_and_rocky_linux_release/
[4] https://www.suse.com/c/suse-liberty-linux/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YelA1wuI@QOhcZmibesBGAAAANY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/whats-epel-and-how-do-i-use-it
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YelA1wuI@QOhcZmibesBGAAAANY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YelA1wuI@QOhcZmibesBGAAAANY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://openbuildservice.org/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2018/06/25/suse_linux_enterprise_15/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/04/opensuse_leaps_to_153_now/
[12] https://en.opensuse.org/Features_15.3#Linux_kernel
[13] https://access.redhat.com/articles/3078#RHEL8
[14] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YelA1wuI@QOhcZmibesBGAAAANY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2017/08/16/red_hat_banishes_btrfs_from_rhel/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/07/ubuntu_dde_2110/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/10/centos_stream_9/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/03/nixos_linux_os_design/
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/17/ubuntu_team_systemd_windows_wsl2/
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2011/03/03/novell_suse_manager/
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2006/10/25/oracle_red_hat_support/
[22] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
For Centos 8 yes, for all those in the 'don't care as long as it's supported' mindset sitting on Centos 7 (EOL june 2024) this is a viable option.
It's not quite that simple. Certification and audit trails linked to whole-system design is often easier to maintain for "stable" systems. An "enterprise" distro with formal support contracts has advantages for many commercial customers which SUSE are jumping on.
Can you see a "hobbyist" obscure distro fulfilling that same role? The contracted service provision from a largely reputable outfit is definitely an advantage in the right installation. And I for one am very happy to have an alternative to IBM RHEL available.
Some device driver modules for obscure hardware are tailored around specific releases of RHEL. For all of their server linked applications, things like LTO libraries and drives are difficult to deploy on Linux. Quantum do offer up the source for LTFS (if you ask) and a few pre-built modules; but I've not had much success using them on anything other than RHEL and Centos 7. A more capable linux nerd might be able to get it going. The AUR package in Arch wasn't working for me at last attempt. But LTO drives aren't exactly the sort of thing "everyone" buys or needs so not many people to test.
Amazon Linux
AWS Is probably the main winner in all this
A rebuild isn't really a rebuild if it doesn't include the same kernel as the original. Are they also doing what OEL do and providing the original RHEL distro kernel as an optinon as well?
It's not reasonable to say that "RHEL device drivers and kernel modules almost certainly won't work" and yet claim it's a "RHEL-compatible enterprise distro".
If it's not shipping a precise analog of the RHEL kernel, it's not RHEL compatible.
The idea is that, now that the End-of-Life for CentOS Linux 8 has passed, users have a new path forward, rather than switching distros
Surely most organisations that cared about being on an updated OS would have already moved to something else and the ones still on CentOS 8 don't care. This would have been timed much better if it had happened before CentOS8 EOL. Other than that it's a good idea