Lansweeper finds a lot of CentOS Linux out there
- Reference: 1717695083
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/06/06/lansweeper_centos/
- Source link:
The latest [1]survey shows that there is rather more use of CentOS Linux 7 than one might reasonably expect. Although we'd definitely dispute Lansweeper's conclusions, it seems that CentOS Linux achieved pretty good market penetration – and penetration is exactly what all those machines will be open to, starting next month.
Belgian corporate network scanner vendor Lansweeper periodically collates some of the statistics collected by its users and publishes the results. The Register has reported on these numbers more than once. Last year, [2]Lansweeper exposed Windows 11's 8 percent adoption following the previous year's report that [3]four out of ten PCs couldn't run Windows 11 .
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This year's report says that while a third of its users' Linux machines run Ubuntu, second place goes to CentOS Linux. Back in 2020, Red Hat [5]brought CentOS Linux 8's end of life forward from 2029 to the end of 2021. CentOS Linux 9 was canceled, CentOS Linux 8 is dead and gone, leaving only CentOS Linux 7. As we [6]reported in May , CentOS 7's end of life is very close now – the end of June. After this month, no more updates.
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Of course, Red Hat will be happy to [9]help you migrate to RHEL . It offers a free tool to switch boxes' package source, but RHEL 7 hits what [10]Red Hat terms "the end of its maintenance support 2 phase" on the same day. RHEL 7 isn't EOL, but you'll need to pay extra for "Extended Lifecycle Support (ELS)" to keep security fixes coming.
Lansweeper seems confident this will happen:
Assuming most of the CentOS devices will migrate over to RHEL, we can expect RHEL to comfortably take over first place from Ubuntu soon.
The numbers are a little surprising. After CentOS comes RHEL, with a hair over 20 percent, and trailing far behind, Oracle Linux with under 4 percent and Rocky Linux with less than 1.5 per cent. Lansweeper's assumption is that CentOS Linux users will just pay to switch to RHEL, which would give the IBM subsidiary nearly half the market. That seems like a big leap of faith to us, as we said to the company. It replied:
Migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) offers several advantages. Given that CentOS Linux is based on RHEL, organizations can leverage many of the same tools and methodologies, which helps to reduce the learning curve. Additionally, RHEL provides comprehensive support and a reliable environment, ensuring that systems remain secure and operate efficiently.
These are all fair points, but then again, it did also mention:
The alternatives mentioned were merely examples provided by the publisher of CentOS.
[11]Red Hat Enterprise Linux and AlmaLinux 8.10 released as end of the RHEL 8 line looms
[12]RHEL stays fresh with 9.4 while CentOS 7 gets a Rocky retirement plan
[13]Linux kernel 4.14 gets a life extension, thanks to OpenELA
[14]Top five reasons to move from CentOS to RHEL (according to Red Hat)
Which is legitimate, and that will indeed be what some finance directors will do. Never underestimate the influence of simple ignorance – for instance, of alternatives – in shaping the market: "We are using this free product, but it's been discontinued, so we will move to the paid version instead."
The ending of CentOS Linux was a calculated gamble for Red Hat. As we said [15]when CentOS Steam 9 came out , The Reg FOSS desk feels that Red Hat made a mistake in 2014 when it [16]brought CentOS in house . Both before and after, it has made [17]repeated efforts to kill off the rebuilds .
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As this vulture said on [19]the FOSDEM panel about the move , the wording of the GPL only obliges Red Hat to provide its source code to its users, which for RHEL means paying customers and signed-up developers – not to the whole world for free.
It will take concerted action to move those CentOS 7 boxes to RHEL 7, including paying for licenses for them all – then you'll either need to pay more for RHEL 7 ESL support, or promptly upgrade again to RHEL 8. Saying that, [20]RHEL 8.10, the last point release, just came out and with that, RHEL 8 is about to go into "maintenance support." So ideally, you'd want to proceed to RHEL 9 sharpish. That's three migrations for the price of, er, three.
Facing all that work and cost, we suspect that the freeloaders running CentOS Linux might well migrate to one of the RHELatives instead. CIQ publishes [21]guidance on how to migrate to Rocky Linux, and will help if you buy its CIQ Bridge service. AlmaLinux has more than that with its [22]ELevate tool to perform in-place version upgrades, as we [23]described back in 2022 .
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Or, of course, you could just reinstall with Debian, and run anything you can't immediately reprovision in a free [25]RHEL container image . ®
Get our [26]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.lansweeper.com/blog/eol/centos-linux-end-of-life/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/05/win_11_penetration_still_low/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/10/windows_11_adoption/
[4] 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=2ZmIxf3qCXA7nJD2VbyHaTgAAAIc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/09/centos_red_hat/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/03/rhel_94_centos_7/
[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=44ZmIxf3qCXA7nJD2VbyHaTgAAAIc&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=33ZmIxf3qCXA7nJD2VbyHaTgAAAIc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/06/rhel_insights_conversion_tool/
[10] https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/linux-platforms/enterprise-linux/rhel-7-end-of-maintenance
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/rhel_and_alma_8_10/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/03/rhel_94_centos_7/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/19/kernel_414_life_extension/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/20/red_hat_rhel_reasons/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/10/centos_stream_9/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2014/01/08/red_hat_to_team_up_with_communitybased_rhel_lookalike_centos/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/23/red_hat_centos_move/
[18] 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=44ZmIxf3qCXA7nJD2VbyHaTgAAAIc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[19] https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3113-rhel-and-centos-and-the-growth-of-openwashing-in-foss/
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/rhel_and_alma_8_10/
[21] https://docs.rockylinux.org/guides/migrate2rocky/
[22] https://almalinux.org/elevate/
[23] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/28/almalinux_85_powerpc/
[24] 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=33ZmIxf3qCXA7nJD2VbyHaTgAAAIc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[25] https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2020/03/24/red-hat-universal-base-images-for-docker-users
[26] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
[Author here]
> Ubuntu really doesn't have an equivalent.
Well, it does: Landscape. But it's not free and it's not FOSS.
But…
…if Linux is free and open source and customisable, what is the lock in and concern? Genuine question here. Can’t you just upgrade the Kernel and other parts and carry on regardless? Asides the enterprise level support, why would you suddenly pay for RHEL?
Re: But…
[Author here]
I can't tell if this is trolling or ignorance or both.
No, you can't.
If you have any 21st century Linux distro, it draws its components from repositories: online libraries of components. To upgrade, you get newer versions from the repositories of a newer version.
There is no newer version here. The next version, CentOS Linux 8, was killed off 2 years ago. It's gone.
Are you proposing they make their own? Conservatively that would take hundreds of people years of work, and they have 3 weeks. No. Not possible. A foolish idea.
There is CentOS Stream, but it's a different distro with different goals.
CentOS Linux was the free version of RHEL. CentOS Stream is more like a free ever-changing beta of the next point release of RHEL. Either Stream or RHEL, they would still have to switch distros, but in the case of RHEL to one that you must pay for every machine, and in the case of Stream to something faster-moving, faster-changing and not equivalent.
They could switch to one of the free rebuilds, such as Rocky Linux, Alma Linux, Oracle Linux, or EuroLinux... but RH stopped sharing its source code so they are all just slightly different. It's going to be quite a lot of work. Stuff will break. Stuff will need reconfiguring.
And the successor distros, the version 8.x ones, are all nearing EOL anyway. Really they are now going into security-patch-only mode. You're faced with a tonne of work to move to something nearly dead already.
The v9.x family are a big jump ahead and frankly _most_ things will break.
You may as well dump your established fleet of machines and start over... and if you do that, why stay in the family of the distro vendor who shafted you by killing off their free product line? The downstreams are all looking uncertain now and RH may yet find a way to really kill them all.
Re: But…
It certainly wasn’t trolling. Ignorance is perhaps a bit harsh of a word, but I’m used to that kind of response from “The Linux Community”… ;)
Thanks for the detailed explanation. Asides from the abrupt first line, it was helpful, though a little surprising, to be honest, that a distro can theoretically be broken just as easily as when Microsoft decides a product is end of life. Feels a little … un-Linux to me.
Re: But…
> "Feels a little … un-Linux to me."
Yes, it feels that way to many of us. Red Hat is in the doghouse with a huge portion of the FOSS community. That said, even with distros which align with the true spirit of open source, such as Debian, upgrading from one major version to the next can be a huge undertaking for organizations with a large number of servers and/or workstations. Custom applications, services, and configurations will quite possibly break in some way.
Re: But…
In theory, you can take over and upgrade, maintain, and support all the open source bits of the end-of-life distribution yourself. In reality, you're just screwed.
Re: But…
You absolutely can.
You could even grab the latest Rocky, Alma (or any other) kernel and dump that directly onto the install.
If you need to run more recent software than the CentOS 7 userland allows, then a chroot with a more recent distro is always available.
It won't be "supported" but generally CentOS was chosen with self-support in mind anyway. Linux is a mess; and one of the *advantages* to this is that "maintenance" of this nature is always an option.
I'm not sure why other commenters suggested otherwise...
The anchor of proprietary software
My previous orkplace supplied a salutary lesson that shitty proprietary software ruins everything, even on Linux. We ran an obscure data warehouse package which only ran on Oracle and had a reporting interface which required not only Internet Exploder but ActiveX. Those of us in IT had begged and pleaded TPTB to upgrade, but doing so was considered too big a risk and expense, which meant that we continued to accrue technical debt at an alarming rate since the package depended on increasingly-ancient versions of Oracle and RHEL, which became unsupported and starting showing up in increasingly dire ways on our security reports.
Ironically, migrating the Windows server-side components to later versions of Windows proved relatively straightforward. Go figure.
Just use Oracle Linux
Can't believe I'm saying this but Oracle Linux is basically doing what CentOS did: repackaging RHEL. Sure they have a paid option to compete with IBM, but it's not compulsory. If you can't migrate to Ubuntu and you're stuck in RPM land, Oracle Linux is probably your best bet right now.
"What happens next?"
Pat Mustard: "4 months before the EOL the bomb will be armed. But then you go 4 months over the EOL, then it'll be BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCHHHHHHH"
Internet: "Sorry what did you say there the line was bad?"
Pat Mustard: "IT'LL GO OFF!"
Internet: "Jesus! DOUGAL!"
An OS should be more solid than this.
As long as the anti virus and firewall is up to date, barring a major exploit of a flaw in a component part, EOL should not mean EOL, just end of official support.
Given the often questionable, manipulative and even abusive nature of some OS providers and some software providers, this sort of thing should make people consider how much exposure to the toxic elements of the tech industry they should allow their business to have. Is there a case to go back to paper for entire chunks of your office work? And for the things you will still need (e-mail etc), how resilient is your usage? For example, how easily can you change e-mail provision? Is your e-mail backed up in a generic format that will survive moving to a different product? Vendors are not reliable and really don't care about their customers. Can they flush your business with a click of their mouse? You need a Plan B for a loss of service or a malware attack. Could your Plan B be cheaper, easier and more resilient, and better suited to your daily operations? Is it time to consider tech as a bonus or luxury for some aspects of your business, rather than something that your staff cannot function without? Yes, I am questioning the digital transition and suggesting more paper-and-pen-based activity instead, on a tech website.
Re: An OS should be more solid than this.
> "barring a major exploit of a flaw in a component part..."
And there is the issue. These happen, regularly. Yes, anti-virus and firewall will help, but that doesn't mean you should feel ok about getting online with Debian 7, any more than you should with Windows 7.
Re: An OS should be more solid than this.
Not necessarily, but if Lansweeper ID'd your CentOS 7 installation, it means you have your web server configured incorrectly.
https://www.suse.com/products/suse-liberty-linux/
"CentOS 7 updates until 30th June, 2028"
All good.
Not sure who Lansweeper's customer base is, but if Ubuntu and CentOS are it's top two, I don't think it's major enterprise locations.
From the folk I've talked to on CentOS, Rocky Linux seems to be the path forwards.
We've been migrating all our CentOS 7 systems to Ubuntu. We moved a few things to Springdale Linux 8 but the future of all the RedHat repacks is looking pretty shaky.
The one thing I miss is having visibility into all of the systems' update status via Spacewalk Server. Ubuntu really doesn't have an equivalent.