As you should recall, CentOS 8 came out on Tuesday, September 24, 2019.  On that date they also announced CentOS 8 Stream.  I've had the opportunity to play with it some, do a few installs, see what's there as well as checking the state of the two most popular third-party repos (EPEL and rpmfusion).

What's New?
... a much newer kernel to start with.  EL7 has 3.10.x and EL8 has 4.18.x.  As you may recall, EL8 is loosely based on Fedora 28.  One good thing about having a much newer kernel is that things like username spaces work better and that trickles down into things like podman and rootless / unprivledged containers actually working... whereas they were basically broken in EL7.  A much newer kernel also brings its share of hardware enablement and a bit of legacy hardware being dropped.  Have an older server with a RAID card?  Better check those release notes to ensure it is still supported.  If not, there's a good chance that the third-party ELrepo  repository has you covered.

One oddity at time-of-writing is that cockpit in EL7.7 is newer (version 195) that what is in EL8 (version 185).  I'm guessing cockpit will receive in an update in EL8 in the not-too-distant future putting it in parity or surpassing what is in EL7.

While yum is still there, it's really a symlink to dnf.  I'm guessing most all Fedora users would agree that dnf is more of a pleasure to use than yum.  Speaking of package managers, EL8 now has streams which obviously came from Fedora where it they are called modules from their Modularity project.  Unfamiliar with modularity?  It is a way of providing multiple versions of packages although you can only have one version installed at a time.  Need something older or need something newer?  You decide.  It allows EL8 to still provide the slower changing personality we've come to expect in Enterprise Linux while at the same time accommodating those who might want / need something newer.

I could go on and on enumerating package updates but I'll leave it to those fine release notes.  One last thing to mention is that KDE Plasma is no longer available from the stock CentOS repositories.

Anything missing?
Yes.  At least this early in the release.  There are only two install .iso files to pick from... one being a half-GB netinstall and the other being a 6.6GB DVD image.  There currently isn't a min CD image.  There currently isn't any LiveDesktop media (they only offer GNOME now) .  I believe some of their cloud KVM, vagrant, Amazon AMI, and container images are still in the works as are all of the updates.  While that's quite a bit of stuff, they are working on it and I expect we'll see those things start to appear shortly.  You have to remember that they basically have two full blown flavors now, regular and Stream.

There isn't a livecd-tools package in the CentOS Extras repository anymore and that kind of bums me out because I really preferred to use livecd-creator (historically provided by the livecd-tools package) over livemedia-creator (provided by the lorax package).  I've been trying my best to build a few personal EL8 remixes with livemedia-creator and I have yet to get it to work.  One has to wonder if that is part of the reason CentOS doesn't have any LiveMedia available yet.

What exactly is CentOS 8 Stream?
The gist of Stream is that it is a rolling release.  Wait, weren't minor version upgrades painless and basically rolling in nature... meaning no clean install required, just use your package manager to upgrade?  Yes.  Is CentOS 8 Stream different?  Yes.  Basically rather than waiting for a new .x+1 point release to come out where you have a large number of packages to update all at once, Stream will offer updates to things more frequently, over time during the normal lifecycle of your release.  I'm not sure if Stream will have point releases or not.

Will there be a CentOS 9 Stream release before RHEL 9 comes out?  Will CentOS 8 Stream be easily upgradable to CentOS 9 Stream in true rolling release fashion?  Maybe... probably... but the 8-Ball says the future is currently unclear.  Since we are so early in the lifecycle, there currently isn't much different between CentOS 8 and CentOS 8 Stream.  Obviously there are a number of use cases for Stream and I'm sure the plan for it will be modified over time as needs dictate.  I do have to wonder why much of their goals couldn't have be accomplished with  package streams.  As previously mentioned, with package streams,  newer stuff can be easily and non-disruptively offered.  I'm guessing they have much broader plans for Stream that haven't been articulated yet... or maybe Stream is going to be more disruptive than they want to be with streams.  Oh, and why did they have to use the same word with 1 letter difference?

Third-Party Repositories
I am fairly confident that a significant number of EL users use Fedora's Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) and while EPEL8 is available, compared to the vast numbers of packages in EPEL7, EPEL8 still has a ways to go.  You should recall that KDE Plasma isn't in CentOS proper anymore, but rest assured that it is in EPEL8 Playground.  I believe one thing currently slowing down the appearance of a lot of stuff is the fact that the EPEL automated build system is still being worked on so that it may produce package streams as some EPEL packagers have mentioned that they would prefer to release their stuff via package streams.  We'll have to wait and see how that pans out.  I'm currently waiting on XFCE and MATE to appear in EPEL8 / EPEL8 Playground.  It should also be noted that RPM Fusion has come out with a repository for EL8 where you can find most of the same stuff they offer Fedora users.

In Conclusion
There is just so much to be excited about in CentOS 8 and the addition of CentOS 8 Stream will surely offer a lot of possibilities we haven't even thought of yet.  One additional thing worth noting is that the Red Hat documentation for RHEL 8 (which CentOS mostly points users to rather than trying to also produce rebranded documentation) has undergone massive changes.  Rather than offering the various guides we have grown accustomed to in the past (like the System Administrators Guide, the Network Guide, the Security Guide, etc), the RHEL 8 documentation is task oriented rather than reference oriented.  For example, they have a Configuring basic system settings guide and a Deploying different types of servers guide.  I'm guessing that there is probably quite a bit over of overlap in the material between the two styles of documentation but the newer one will take a little getting used to.  Those who are completely new to the documentation may prefer the new style.

In any event, I really look forward to using CentOS 8 more and putting it through its paces, seeing how Stream evolves, and enjoying all of the new features a new major release offers.  Thanks for all of the hard work Red Hat and CentOS!

UPDATE: CentOS announced on their twitter account that CentOS 8 will be released on Sept. 24th.

IBM's Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 (and I'm not sure if Red Hat likes me putting IBM in front of it or not) was released on May 7th, 2019.  I write this on Sept. 11th, 2019 and CentOS 8 still isn't out.  RHEL 7.7 came out on August 6, 2019.  In an effort to be transparent, CentOS does have wiki pages for both Building_8 and Building_7 where they enumerate the various steps they have to go through to get the final product out the door.

Up until early August they were making good progress on CentOS 8.  In fact they had made it to the last step which was titled, "Release work" which had a Started date of "YYYY-MM-DD", an Ended date of "YYYY-MM-DD", and a Status  "NOT STARTED YET".  That was fine for a while and then almost a month had passed with the NOT STARTED YET status.  If you are like me, when they completed every step but the very last, you are thinking that the GA release will be available Real-Soon-Now but after waiting a month, not so much.

It was also obvious that CentOS had started work on the 7.7 update and the status indicators for that have progressed nicely but they still have a ways to go.  Of course one of the hold ups is that they have quite a few arches to support (more than Red Hat themselves) even though their most used platform (x86_64) had its Continuous Release (CR) repository populated and released on August 30th, 2019.  There is still a ways to go on 7.7 but they are generally much quicker with the point update releases.

Users started complaining on the CentOS Devel mailing list harkening back to an earlier time in CentOS' history where they lagged way behind.  There were lots of responses to that thread, many thanking the CentOS developers for all of their hard work, some name calling, and a lot of back and forth with plenty of repetition.  Everyone understands that it takes a while for a major new release to come out and it'll be done when it is good and ready... however... the main complaint was that the development team (which long-time CentOS developer Johnny Hughes Jr. said numbered 3 people) wasn't being transparent enough given the fact that the wiki pages hadn't been updated in some time.  Johnny Hughes finally explained the reason 8 has stalled:

WRT CentOS 8 .. it has taken a back seat to 7.7.1908.  Millions of users already use CentOS Linux 7.  Those people needs updates.

That totally makes sense, doesn't it?  Everyone was happy with that answer... and I updated the Building_8 wiki page to reflect that by changing the status to, "Deferred for 7.7 work" and adding a note that said, "2019-09-10 According to this thread, work was stopped on CentOS 8 after upstream released 7.7. Since so many more users have CentOS 7.x in production, and no one has 8 yet, priority has been given to the 7.7 update... and once it is done, work will continue on 8."

Someone asked JH Jr. if they could use some help and he said that building the packages was easy enough and there wasn't really a way to speed it up... but testing all of the packages, especially all of the various arches, was a way the greater community could help.  That was a poor summary so if interested I encourage you to read the full thread.

While I'm definitely looking forward to the release of CentOS 8, I understand the 7.7 release takes priority and I now better know what to expect.  As has been said so many times, thanks for all of the hard work devs, it is appreciated.

I watched this fairly cheesy hitman / action movie today and there was a scene in it where a police detective was looking at a list of phone numbers.  When I saw it I had to freeze the screen... and look at all of the fine names that were on the list.  I'm guessing that none of the phone numbers attributed to the individuals are real, or ARE they?



Most of them I recognized but a few I didn't.  When I looked up the few I didn't recognize, I learned that they still fell into the same pattern.  How many do you recognize?  And just in case you were wondering, this movie has absolutely nothing to do with computers... so someone snuck in a good list.

Thanks again Red Hat!

Thanks Red Hat.

Jon "maddog" Hall talked about something he has personal experience in, 50 years of UNIX.  Enjoy!

Trying to wrap one's head around the paradigm changes happening in the industry can be difficult.  Everything is just moving way too fast.  Daniel Riek has been giving a talk for a while now entitled, "A Greybeard's Worst Nightmare."  Here is a fairly recent iteration of his talk where he does an excellent job of providing both a historical context and a bridge to understanding the revolution and evolution that is happening.  Unfortunately a lot of the progress has been coming from black box services provided by proprietary companies who don't see lock-in as a problem.  Daniel explains how the benefits that have been gained by adopting free and open source software don't have to be abandoned in an effort to keep up with industry methodology shifts providing the most innovation and value.  We can and are keeping up... but there is a LOT to learn.

Looking over the fine list of presentations  and events for LinuxFest Northwest 2019, here are my preliminary picks for which ones I want to attend.  Since there are several at any given time slot, there are quite a few more I'd like to see but... conflicts.  I hope they record the presentations and post them in a timely fashion.

Saturday:
    9:30  - CC-208 - UEFI Boot for Mere Mortals
    10:45 - CC-115 - Linux Container Primitives
    1:00  - CC-200 - The Current State of Free and Open Source Software in Public Education
    2:15  - CC-115 - A DevOps State of Mind: Continous Security with Kubernetes
    3:30  - CC-115 - A DevOps State of Mind: Managing Microserves and Databases with Kubernetes

Sunday:
    9:30  - CC-236 - The Fight for a Secure Linux BIOS... Past, Present and Future
   10:45  - G-103  - Sex, Secret and God: A Brief History of Bad Passwords
   12:30  - CC-200 - Deep Dive into firecracker-containerd
    1:45  - G-103  - "Just don't buy it"
    3:00  - G-103  - Q&A: Past, Present & Future

Unfortunately, what sometimes happens is that at the last minute things get shuffled around some and then you have to adjust.  We'll see how it works out this year.

Folks going this year include: Gary Bummer, Rob Potter, Warren Sanders and myself.  Anyone else interested in attending?  We probably have room for one more.