Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Centos Linux support ends early

News for AC board members who mentioned using Centos for virtualzation:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/12/centos-linux-is-gone-but-its-refugees-have-alternatives/

One of the reasons why I stay away from a lot of open source software. It's nice to get free stuff, but support can end in a heartbeat and leave you stranded.

A good example is when TrueCrypt suddenly went belly up. All of those people who used TrueCrypt for encryption suddenly found themselves without support.

MS and Dell may not be free, but they've never left me hanging, either.

JamesNT

I agree that support can end more abruptly with open source than with Microsoft.

But judging by the lack of complaints (or even interest) in this forum about the Centos move-to-Red-Hat news that I posted . . .

Support may not really be much of an issue for offices who simply run Centos to host AC as a virtual machine.

While Microsoft may not exactly have left customers hanging, offices still had to pay to upgrade from Server 2008 to 2012 to 2016 and now to 2020.

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In any case, Microsoft upgrade installations are far from a trivial process in themselves.

In contrast to installing any version of Microsoft Server, Indy once wrote:

"I can (and have) talked a client on the phone through a CentOS install in less than 30 minutes, they can take ANY computer with the minimal specs, install CentOS, and then launch their VM, or a copy without having to depend on AC to be available to activate the database so they can get into their own data."

https://acusersforum.com/ub/ubbthreads.php/topics/71705/re-ac-amazing-backup-service#Post71705

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That was about ten years ago, but I haven't seen anything about Centos installs just for running virtual machines getting harder.

And Centos users who want support can move to another Linux (such as the Red Hat that's replacing it), just as Microsoft Server 2008 users end up moving to later versions.

Update on Centos disappearing with RedHat 16-user replacement:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...ow-free-for-up-to-16-production-servers/

Indy and I did some good work together. I still remember that time he called me up asking me for help with a Microsoft Exchange migration that was going bad for him at 11:30pm my time. I think I got to bed around 4am. Good times.

Anyway, we also disagreed a great deal and all of that disagreement centered around Microsoft versus Open Source - mostly CentOS (pick your preferred distro but I'll use CentOS as my example here).

If you can support CentOS and want to you use, it's your network so go for it. But there are two major problems I have with Open Source software such as CentOS.

First is using CentOS to virtualize Windows. In my opinion, doing this gains you nothing. Regardless of your hypervisor, you still have to pay for the Windows license. For example, if you use CentOS to host 4 copies of Windows Server on a single physical machine, you still need to have TWO copies of Windows Server 2016/2019 Standard to properly license that server. The only thing CentOS has done for you is add one more thing to support and now you have to find a way to back up those virtual machines that works with CentOS. Using Windows as the hypervisor keeps everything fully supported by MS and you can find far more people available that can help you as I can promise there aren't that many IT people in your area that know CentOS. All of them know Windows.

Secondly, and I touched on this in the first point, a lot of IT people who do know CentOS don't install it as a way to help the customer, they install CentOS because they know most other IT firms in the area can't support it. In other words, it's a form of lock in. And I think that's unfair to the customer.

JamesNT

AlmaLinux is touted as replacement for CentOS;

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...s-commercial-support-options/?comments=1

Comments are encouraging.