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Hi,

I just read some stuff on TechRepublic by Jack Wallen that outlines the changes IBM/Redhat are making to CentOS which I believe is what ClearOS is based on. It sounds like going forward the new CentOS Stream will be a rolling release which sounds a bit dangerous for a server operating system.

Will this affect ClearOS going forward, are you perhaps considering forking the latest CentOS release and developing ClearOS as a separate fork?

Any comments from Nick or anyone at ClearOS would be appreciated.

Graham Sivill
Thursday, December 10 2020, 05:05 PM
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  • Accepted Answer

    Saturday, February 06 2021, 12:36 PM - #Permalink
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    I think the best option is total control and not be dependent from other sources. Your opinion?

    This option is this something we can research?
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    Saturday, February 06 2021, 12:29 PM - #Permalink
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    I've no idea what ClearOS did to EL6 when they made ClearOS6. De-branding would have been part of it. Remember a lot of RHEL code is open source so anyone (like the old Centos or Oracle) could fork it.
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  • Accepted Answer

    Saturday, February 06 2021, 11:38 AM - #Permalink
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    Nick I see you mention EL6 (Enterprise Linux 6). Is this free available or is this a un-branded RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) version? Did ClearCenter removed the branding from RHEL 6?
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  • Accepted Answer

    Wednesday, February 03 2021, 09:53 PM - #Permalink
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    Nick,

    Well thanks for all you do as without you helping us here, ClearOS would be a non-starter. I appreciate they do, do paid versions but for some of us this is a non-starter.
    Hopefully the powers that be will figure out which is the best distro to follow and give us some form of roadmap as to where they are heading.

    Siv
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  • Accepted Answer

    Wednesday, February 03 2021, 04:22 PM - #Permalink
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    I am nowhere in the hierarchy when it comes to deciding the way forward with 8.x and any thoughts about the direction are purely my own and do not represent Clearcenter policies or decisions.

    I am part of the organisation, primarily on the support side and I do minor updates, fixes and releases, but originally I was just an ordinary forum poster until I signed on the dotted line about 4 years ago. This is why I still post so much to the community.
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  • Accepted Answer

    Wednesday, February 03 2021, 02:25 PM - #Permalink
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    Nick,

    It does seem they are putting substantial funds behind it so I am hopeful that they are serious. At least the ClearOS distro does at least have some options going forward, I will leave it to the wiser heads than mine to pick the right one. I am not clear where you are in the hierarchy at ClearOS, are you part of the ClearOS organisation or do you just give your time providing us noobs with your Sage advice? My reason for asking was whether you have any say in which way the distribution goes and if so what way you were leaning?

    Siv
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  • Accepted Answer

    Wednesday, February 03 2021, 02:04 PM - #Permalink
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    Yes, and its parent has heritage and has provided funding. the problem for me would be that it has no heritage apart from its parent. No word yet from the Scientific Linux community.
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    Wednesday, February 03 2021, 10:07 AM - #Permalink
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    Sam
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    Tuesday, January 26 2021, 09:47 PM - #Permalink
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    Ken Hawkins wrote:

    If back in the 90's, I had built my servers on Debian, all I would have done over the years is apt-get dist-upgrade......:(


    Long-term Debian and Ubuntu stalwart here...

    OTOH, pls be aware that you'll have all kinds of fun finding and building drivers for whatever hardware you've got.

    1/2 my time bringing up new platforms is wasted finding and/or building my own drivers... That's one of the sacrifices for a system like the Deb streams.
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  • Accepted Answer

    Friday, December 18 2020, 07:46 PM - #Permalink
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    Nick Howitt wrote:

    Oh for a crystal ball.....


    I know; hindsight is always 20/20, but if we don't learn from the past, we repeat it, right?;)
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  • Accepted Answer

    Friday, December 18 2020, 07:23 PM - #Permalink
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    Oh for a crystal ball.....
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  • Accepted Answer

    Friday, December 18 2020, 05:34 PM - #Permalink
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    I have been happy with our email server being "set & forget" as I am a general IT support person, not a specialist. I would still make the recommendation to migrate to a new ClearBox appliance, except for the fact that I went through this EXACT scenario with Mac server OS. It was a nicely integrated server distro with excellent features, and while I argued -against- it at the time, I was over-ruled by the argument "Apple is a huge company with a solid track record; WTF is linux?" only to get burned bad when Apple dropped the server version. They also moved their best & brightest over to iOS, so the desktop OSX suffered a bit as well.

    With Clear now getting distracted with mobile devices and other services, I am left wondering about the long-term commitment. They have to earn dollars just like all their predecessors who bailed on selling software and instead using a subscription model, with no opt-out of changes or updates.

    I am seriously looking at a move to a Debian base and building a basic email server; that all I need at present.

    I have played this game for DECADES now with so many folks quoting the same bullshit:

    "Can't go wrong buying IBM"; then they quit the PC and OS business.
    "Can't go wrong buying an Apple server"; then they bailed on server distro
    "Can't go wrong buying Microsoft"; they are now pushing for subscription model and you won't be able to lock updates which can brick some custom software or older devices.
    "Can't go wrong buying RHEL"; yeah until IBM bought them...

    I am suspecting a pattern here...

    If back in the 90's, I had built my servers on Debian, all I would have done over the years is apt-get dist-upgrade......:(
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  • Accepted Answer

    Friday, December 18 2020, 02:44 PM - #Permalink
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    Nick,

    I liked the sound of Rocky Linux because it is headed up by Gregory Kurtzer who was the founding father of CentOS as I understand it so he ought to know what he's doing. I agree though as yet they are just a start up and may never come to anything. If I was a gambling man though, I would bet that huge numbers of people will go for that distro if it does appear, as since I posted here the internet and YouTube is awash with people screaming about IBM/Red Hat's decision for CentOS.

    At the end of the day, as long as you guys at ClearOS have a roadmap going forward of how to keep ClearOS alive I am happy as I like ClearOS better than CentOS.

    Graham Sivill
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  • Accepted Answer

    Friday, December 18 2020, 02:11 PM - #Permalink
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    In the back of my mind, I would like to see Scientific Linux team up with one of the other players as they used to have really good heritage but abandoned their development, just accepting Centos 8.
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  • Accepted Answer

    Friday, December 18 2020, 12:11 PM - #Permalink
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    Nick,

    Thanks for getting back on this.

    I agree the V7 being supported until 2024 is good and gives people plenty of time to work out what they are going to do.
    I am not bothered as long as ClearOS continues to function into the future. It just concerned me that the OS that it's based on was going from a more stable release to a potentially very much less stable release and perhaps more importantly if this had a bearing on the future of ClearOS as I rely on it heavily.

    I would certainly steer clear of anything Oracle has a hand in!

    Graham Sivill
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  • Accepted Answer

    Friday, December 18 2020, 11:46 AM - #Permalink
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    Post warning - This is only my view and I am not working for Clearcenter this month so I don't know their thoughts.

    There is also another post mentioning Springdale and Project Linix (from CloudLinux). Not mentioned as well is Oracle Linux but would you go with these? Also not mentioned is Scientific Linux and their announcement.

    So, Centos should have been a safe bet. Rocky Linux so far is vapourware and clearly has no heritage. Would you bet a company's development on it? The word seems to be keep clear of Oracle Linux as Oracle can't be trusted to remain FOSS. I don't know the exact link between CloudLinix and Project Linix, but CloudLinux has some heritage, as does Springdale.

    Also I'd like to point out that since Centos were having problems at the time, ClearOS 6.x is built directly on top of EL6 and not Centos6, so that is another possibility.

    In terms of ClearOS, the ClearPHONE launch was very delayed and, until this starts generating reasonable revenue, I don't see anything happening on ClearOS. Not even 7.9. For 8.0, to make a decision any time soon would be a huge gamble. Note the EoL date for Centos7 is 30th June 2024. That is still 3 1/2 years away.
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  • Accepted Answer

    Friday, December 18 2020, 10:07 AM - #Permalink
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    It appears the original developer of CentOS Gregory Kurtzer is behind a new distribution called Rocky Linux which will step in and be a community driven downstream distribution based on RHEL so that it occupies the place where CentOS used to be in the development chain. It appears they are aiming to have a version out by the time CentOS 8 goes out of support in December 2021. If this is the case and it is ready then, I would have thought that ClearOS could shift to basing itself on Rocky Linux?

    Link to the Rocky Linux Site:
    https://rockylinux.org/

    Wiki:
    https://wiki.rockylinux.org/

    Graham Sivill
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  • Accepted Answer

    Thursday, December 17 2020, 06:02 PM - #Permalink
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    Ken,

    Thanks for your update, I will be very interested to hear what they have to say if and when they get back to you. There seems to be a lot of reaction to the news on the web and people are justifiably getting very worried as to the direction this is going. I really do think ClearOS need to start speaking about what they are going to do in response, as I am worried that this is a play by IBM to force everyone who uses CentOS onto Enterprise Server and some sort of subscription model.

    I just hope that ClearOS can fork it or someone else will and they can downstream from that.

    Graham Sivill
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  • Accepted Answer

    Thursday, December 17 2020, 05:47 PM - #Permalink
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    Kinda like the MS philosophy; embrace, extend, extinguish.

    I have used Clear since back in the clarkconnect 3.x days. I have found ClearOS to be very robust and the support team very responsive when we had the subscription. I was looking at alternatives as well, and a number of those are also CentOS based.

    We purchased a Clearbox appliance over 10 years ago, and it has been dead-solid reliable.

    That being said, I was disappointed by the lack of easy upgrade from 5.2 to 6 to 7; they just wanted to point me to a 3rd party consultant to migrate my users/messages. There are many other little things that peeve me about ClearOS (huge departure from the CentOS/RH base in regarding to config files and file structure, so when troubleshooting an issue, the ONLY source is the ClearOS forums)I felt that was a poor way to keep customers. Now this silence on the issue means I will be delaying an upgrade yet again.

    I am in contact with sales personnel, and if they provide ant feedback, I will post here.

    regards
    Ken
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  • Accepted Answer

    Thursday, December 17 2020, 05:26 PM - #Permalink
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    @Ken Hawkins, there has been a distinct lack of any response from anyone at ClearOS which does make me wonder if they are discussing their options before replying? I was afraid red Hat being taken over by IBM might lead to crap like this.

    Graham Sivill
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  • Accepted Answer

    Thursday, December 17 2020, 05:05 PM - #Permalink
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    I would also like some feedback on this subject; we are about to pull the trigger on a new email appliance and ClearOS was at top of list, but this presents great concern as we had a miserable time migrating from MacOS server edition when they pulled the plug on that.

    anyone?

    cheers
    Ken
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