My Thoughts on the CentOS news, and why WE need to change our Mindset

hello again everyone and welcome back to my channel and what i want to do today is talk about centos it's just the unescapable topic right now um it's a very important topic it needs to be covered and i'm going to cover it i'm going to give you guys my opinion because i know you guys are curious how i feel about the news and that's going to be the topic of today's video specifically i'm going to talk about how this news with centos actually um just proves to me that we need a shift in mindset not with the companies yes they do need a shift in mindset let's be honest but um companies are going to do what companies do they're not going to shift anything let's let's just be fair but we you know we need to actually change our mindset us linux administrators linux fans it's our mindset that needs to change and that's what i'm going to talk about and that's the angle that this video is going to be about now i'm not going to go over all of the news because i'm sure a lot of you guys already know but a quick summary for those that don't centos eight is going away in 2021 and sent to us as we know it is going away now for those of you that don't already know centos has long and always been a free alternative to red hat enterprise linux and red hat is actually the distribution that i started with they actually had a desktop distribution a long time ago that later you know fedora replaced and now we have red hat enterprise linux which you do need to pay for if you want to use that you need you actually need to pay for that um you get support which is great and i don't want to um you know throw shade on red hat you know it's a great distribution but for those that either a don't want to pay for it or b want a test server and you know want to spin up a test server they would use centos for that because centos is the free alternative to red hat it's basically a recompile of red hat without the branding because if you take the branding out you don't have to um you know you know you don't have to charge for it you basically can just take something fork it and put it back in the community which you can do with anything and then in 2014 red hat acquired centos and everyone then was like what does this mean what's going to happen to centos well nothing well at least not then and then when ibm acquired red hat the same question came up what's going to happen to centos and also what's going to happen to red hat so basically what's happening is that um centos stream which is a rolling distribution is going to be the only sent to us for for the most part they're still going to be sent to us seven that'll be supported for a long time sent to us eight which was supposed to be you know that was supposed to be supported for a long time it's not going to be so that's going to go away and that's a big problem that we're going to talk about and centos stream is going to be the only thing left at the end of all this we'll have an overlap with centos 7 that'll still have support but sent to us stream is going to be the new thing and centos stream is intended to be a preview for what's coming in red hat a development branch if you will but they're kind of careful to call it that because i guess they want people to use it um so that's basically what's happening is sent to us stream the rolling distribution will be the only sent to us and then sent to us as we know it which is a you know a free alternative or a clone of red hat but but it's free that's that's gonna be gone so if you want red hat for free well no you're not gonna be able to have that well you'll be able to have sent to a seven but you know people generally want something that's a little newer than that okay so what's my opinion on all this i know a lot of you guys are surprised angry feeling betrayed or at least annoyed by this right i don't think anybody is like yes this is the greatest thing ever i don't think anybody's saying that except for maybe the executives um the truth of the matter is i'm not surprised because companies will do what companies do you know i kind of thought that ibm would have done this a long time ago but they didn't when they acquired red hat i thought yeah in a couple months they'll they'll do what they do what companies do they do what they want to do that's how it all that's how it all happens that's basically how it always goes is that companies do what they do and i don't feel that we should always trust big companies because it's not that they're just out to hurt us all they're basically out to make money and if they find that the current thing isn't working they go a different direction and especially in an acquisition acquisitions almost always cause bit you know big change to happen and i think the only thing surprising to me is that this didn't happen sooner i thought it would happen for sure but it didn't until now so while i think that it's not surprising it's still big news because this affects a lot of people a lot of people rely on centos i think the most egregious thing here was that when centos 8 came out um you know everyone that downloaded it was told it's going to have security updates until you know i don't remember what the date was it's not true now they're going back on that i mean that's what's egregious if you tell someone this product that we're putting out there whether it costs money or it's free doesn't matter it's going to be supported until and then you put an end date on it and then later on you say oh no no no we're not going we're just going to stop supporting it um it's done that's that's horrible that is doing a major major disservice to companies all over the world that rely on the software um if you don't think you're going to support it for as long as you say you're going to then don't you know don't say it just just say it'll be supported for a year i don't know um and i'm sure they didn't know about the decision because in a company the executives know what's going to happen they they just talked about it they have board meetings and secret rooms and they hash this stuff out and they the employees don't know that this is going to happen but this does require a shift in mindset like i mentioned earlier and the shift should happen at the companies because the number one rule of business is don't piss off your customers bottom line that's the number one rule of business and companies consistently break it because they know you rely on their software so with you know they'll say we don't care just this is the way you need to go if you want to use our stuff it's not nice it's just the way companies are i don't like it now when i say shift in mindset they're never going to shift their mindset it would take all of their customers leaving in droves and their shares plummet the finances just go down the toilet then yeah they're oh we're so sorry yeah we're not going to do that again that's when change happens so we can push that change by boycotting centos but um i don't think enough people will that's the problem i don't think enough people will boycott red hat i just don't think that's going to happen um it could but i don't see it happening people are going to complain they're going to be angry then they're going to pay we're going to pay for red hat so i think the shift in mindset needs to happen on our end on the linux user side on the linux administrator side we need to be cautious anytime there's a company involved now full disclaimer i use ubuntu on all of my servers and pop os on all my laptops so you could say i'm all in on ubuntu and pop os so you could also say hypothetically that my entire operation depends on canonical the makers of ubuntu because they are the company that created ubuntu and if they make a decision like this and it could happen then um that's going to be bad for me that that's what some people might think but it's not true because there's a reason why all of my ansible configurations support debian ubuntu papa s arch and manjero but i don't use most of those i only use ubuntu and pop os so why would i maintain all these other distributions in my ansible config this is the reason this whole situation right here with um you know with ibm and their decision to change centos if i was reliant on centos then i would need to shift to something else and that's hard to do at a company um you can't just oh yeah i'll just uh shift all of our servers at debian tomorrow no you're not it's a huge thing so this is why i maintain multiple distributions because i really enjoy ubuntu it's my favorite distribution and pop os is my favorite desktop distribution i know some people you know they really like to hate on ubuntu i don't feel like like the criticism is fair i really don't um that's not to say that canonical doesn't make bad decisions sometimes but i don't think anything that they've done is as egregious as people make it out to be the fact is though canonical could make a decision that you know i'm just not on board with it's not okay i don't want to use ubuntu anymore after a decision they make that could happen and for me it's no inconvenience at all whatsoever here's why because i'll just use something else i'll wipe every computer and and if if canonical does something that i don't agree with i will i will wipe every computer and server and shift it to something else i already have the tooling my ansible configs already support all these other distros so whether i have debbie installed on this laptop right here or ubuntu arch mangero doesn't matter the end result is always the same i i've actually just made my ansible configs public so you could check it out yourself the end result's the same for me um it doesn't matter i could just shift to something else and that's the shift we need is to always use cross-platform tooling always have a plan b and i've always said to people don't use platform specific tools an example of that is in aws you know lots of people use that right so opsworks is a configuration management solution in aws but it only supports aws so if you use it then that means if you ever stop using you know aws then you have to learn new tooling you have to build it all from scratch again that's what you have to do and you know amazon could make a boneheaded decision i think that's actually very likely amazon does make bad decisions probably more than a lot of companies but they could do that and if they do and you rely on opsworks their configuration management solution and other of their utilities you're going to have a hard time and it's not a matter of when or it's not a matter of it's not a matter of if it's matter or when and if you use a cross-platform tool like ansible for example that supports many platforms it has minimal impact on you this is why i tell everyone never ever use a tool that is for one platform never use opsworks just ban it get rid of it um i hate to i'm not trying to insult anyone here don't get me wrong um but don't use it it's anything that requires a particular platform if it requires google cloud it to run if it requires azure to run aw has to run get rid of it if you are all in on one distribution you're doing it wrong because if centos and this whole thing isn't affecting you because your company doesn't use centos you're not off the hook because what you use might be next so like i build all of my tooling to support multiple distributions you should do the same have a plan b have a test server and have your configuration management solution hit that test server with a different distro on it just to make sure that you can reproduce the same product even popos isn't all in on ubuntu i mean they are now yes but i've talked to the developers there a lot and they also maintain um i don't know what they maintain but they're always testing things in debian and they even told me if canonical makes a decision that they don't like they'll go to debian or maybe something else maybe that's changed but they'll go to something else so they're not married to canonical they're not like glued to canonical they might be all in on it right now as i am all my servers run it they can move something else and they will if something happens that's the mindset that we need we need to not trust that the distribution that we are using today is always going to be as it is today because they can make a decision even community projects can make a decision debian can make a decision that impacts you that in a negative way and if that happens then you'll need to ship to something else how easy or hard will that be for you the correct answer is it's not hard at all because i'll just shift my things over i mean let's be honest it is a little bit of inconvenience because if i have to redo all my servers i mean you could say that's an inconvenience but all my tooling is already there all i have to do is dump the database import it done honestly that's it i don't have to do much and i think it's fun you know in the back of my mind i'm like man i kind of hope that happens so i have a project to work on because then i'll create a video about it here's how you move from this distribution to another and if centos was my distro of choice i'd be moving to something else right now and i'd be making videos about that since i don't maintain centos servers then i can't do that really but i guarantee you if ubuntu goes in a direction i can't follow i'm going to shift that's the shift we need we need to never be all in on any one distribution we always need to be maintaining a plan b you need to be looking at the future because don't think that whatever distro you are using today whatever your solution is today is going to be here tomorrow it might not be and if you are a company that relies on this then you especially need to take advantage of having something else to um you know potentially base your products on that's very important and i think the worst part about all this is that you know like i mentioned earlier centos 8 was promised with a certain amount of support and companies have built their servers and their infrastructure you know relying on this and now they're told yeah we're not doing that anymore sorry go do something else you know you guys are getting the stuff for free we don't care about you just use sent to us stream or just go somewhere else that's what they're being told for their dedication of using centos on their servers that's what they're being told now now again i don't want to throw shade on developers of centos they're brilliant people i don't think they want this to happen i don't think they want this drama they don't and i think they take passion in what they do everyone does it works on a linux distribution but the reality is if you are all in on one thing this is the kind of thing that can happen i'm not trying to say shame on you guys for being all in i'm just letting you guys know my opinion which is um always have a plan b and always have an alternative and it's not even linux specific i don't even care if you're all windows have something else to fall back on it's a very important thing at all companies to be able to pivot successful companies pivot unsuccessful companies that are all in on one thing they will eventually get bit by karma it's just the way it works so um i know this these opinions might not be popular with everyone but i think at the end of the day if you use cross-platform tools and never use a platform specific tool as much as you can help it so you can take your tooling and point it to any distro any platform that's a superpower and that's what's going to give you resilience in your company resilience and then these types of things won't matter as much to you and i know a lot of you guys out there you're really struck by this if you think about it um it's it's one thing for us i t people to be up all night because there's a launch we knew about a launch we knew about a product we're pushing out and you know we work extra hours for it but i can't i can guarantee you that there's a bunch of it companies out there that right now as i'm recording this video probably hundreds or thousands of companies right now are in a meeting room with their i.t staff who are stressed out we have a pandemic and maybe they're in a virtual meeting room whatever and now they have to shift suddenly and every single it employee is stressed in that company in each of these companies right now it's happening as i talk to you guys and uh maybe some of you guys watching this video just came out of the meeting room okay it's a big deal but i think what we have to understand is um you know as fox mulder would say in the x-files trust no one always assume the best of intentions and kindness and everything but just always have a plan b that's very important so um i know this is long-winded sorry this was unscripted i just wanted to get my opinion out there and now i've done that so thank you so much guys for listening to me you know talk about this i hope it was of value to you guys and if that has inspired you to change if you haven't already done so and go towards um other solutions other tooling you know cross-platform tooling and make changes in your infrastructure or even just your house if you use linux to easily ship to something else should the day come because if sent to us didn't get you something else will and who knows maybe we'll be talking about um canonical next maybe debian will do something that people don't like maybe open sousa will be sold to someone else and they will just close it out i hope that doesn't happen i'm not trying to worry you guys but i kind of bam gotta be ready for the next thing so anyway thanks for watching guys i really appreciate it i have some awesome content coming and i'll see you again real soon you

Channel: LearnLinuxTV

Views: 90,847

Keywords: Linux, Tutorial, Review, Howto, Guide, Distribution, Distro, Learn Linux, operating system, os, open-source, open source, gnu/linux, LearnLinuxTV, LearnLinux.tv, centos, centos 8, centos 7, centos stream, centos news, centos 2020, centos dead, ibm, mindset, shift, redhat, rhel, enterprise, cent os, centos opinion, centos thoughts, vlog, shutting down, backlash, centos backlash

Id: 6w6foLPWVGY

Length: 18min 31sec (1111 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020