CentOS 7 holdouts thrown a support lifeline by SUSE
- Reference: 1718714110
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/06/18/centos_7_suse_support/
- Source link:
According to the veteran Linux vendor, "SUSE Liberty Linux Lite for CentOS 7 is a frictionless solution that provides customers with updates and security patches for their existing CentOS system, with no migration whatsoever."
SUSE, however, charges a fee. The service, starting at $25 per server/instance per year with a minimum spend of $2,500, includes long-life updates that will [1]continue until June 30, 2028 .
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The deal is the latest aimed at extending CentOS 7 support. CIQ, which offers the CentOS rebuild Rocky Linux, has its own take on support extension in the form of [3]CIQ Bridge , which will keep critical security updates coming for up to another three years.
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Despite IBM subsidiary Red Hat's efforts to [6]phase out the operating system, there remain [7]many CentOS Linux 7 installations . A recent Lansweeper report, based on a survey of over 200,000 Linux devices, reckoned that as many as 26 percent were running CentOS. By the end of this month, support will end for those devices that have not migrated.
[8]Lansweeper finds a lot of CentOS Linux out there
[9]Red Hat Enterprise Linux and AlmaLinux 8.10 released as end of the RHEL 8 line looms
[10]RHEL stays fresh with 9.4 while CentOS 7 gets a Rocky retirement plan
[11]Top five reasons to move from CentOS to RHEL (according to Red Hat)
CentOS 7 users have a few options if they wish to migrate to something that won't result in a RHEL-shaped bruise in their finances. CIQ's Rocky Linux is an option, as is AlmaLinux. However, getting a few more years of support for CentOS 7 will cost.
At the North American Kubecon event in late 2023, SUSE chief technology and product officer Thomas Di Giacomo [12]told us that plans to keep CentOS 7 support running for a few more years were afoot, but would come at a price. "Tomorrow," he said, "they cannot get what they were getting for free."
Rick Spencer, GM of Business Critical Linux, SUSE, said: "Ensuring CentOS 7 users have a secure, enterprise ready, future-proof Linux solution is important to SUSE, and we are delighted to be in a position to support CentOS 7 users as they face this uncertain and risky situation."
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As long as you can spare a minimum investment of $2,500. ®
Get our [14]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.suse.com/products/suse-liberty-linux/
[2] 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=2ZnGvJoy6-U8o14XHm6x08gAAAQs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/03/rhel_94_centos_7/
[4] 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=44ZnGvJoy6-U8o14XHm6x08gAAAQs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] 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=33ZnGvJoy6-U8o14XHm6x08gAAAQs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/26/killing_centos/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/06/lansweeper_centos/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/06/lansweeper_centos/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/rhel_and_alma_8_10/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/03/rhel_94_centos_7/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/20/red_hat_rhel_reasons/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/14/suse_cto_talks_openela/
[13] 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=44ZnGvJoy6-U8o14XHm6x08gAAAQs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: W the actual F?
It's not brilliant value if you just have a single server, and certainly won't work for hobbyists, but for Enterprise IT (and even SMB IT), $2500 for 4 years of security updates and associated support is certainly not *bad* value and worth considering: I've sold some Dell servers where a 1 year hardware warranty extension cost half as much as that which SMB Clients were happy to pay for, as it's cheap compared to the hardware/license/support/downtime costs of replacing that system rather than eking a bit more life out of it.
Better than the quote I got from CIQ which worked out at $500 per server per year.
Still cheaper if you've got less than 5 servers and buys time to make the move o the land of .deb.
Why? There's a free solution.
https://wiki.almalinux.org/elevate/ELevating-CentOS7-to-AlmaLinux-9.html
Re: Why? There's a free solution.
This is good but unfortunately there's a lot of old code written for CentOS 7 which won't work without major changes on later Linux distros. One of the things about CentOS was the backporting of bug fixes for things like PHP. CentOS 7 uses PHP 5.4 which is different enough to later versions to break a lot of things and that's just one component. It's why many people can't just move things to Ubuntu/Debian etc without significant work or in some cases a complete re-write.
Of course this is a much bigger issue of backwards compatibility, not directly related to Linux and the distros themselves, but this backporting was Redhat/CentOS's most significant feature. With new projects that's less of an issue as other distros now have 10+ year support and no sane person would now use anything connected to Redhat. Also while things like the PHP issue still exist, the issues are better understood. However what was a selling point has ended up being a major trap for anyone stuck using Redhat/CentOS.
W the actual F?
$25 per server would probably be fine, most people probably only have a few left due to old apps that are non-critical or legacy but they don't want to lose.
$2500 if you just have a single server, well they know where they can stick that as it's litteral "f**k off" pricing.