> On 31. Jan 2020, at 03:25, Konstantin Olchanski <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Jan 30, 2020 at 05:57:24PM -0800, Yasha Karant wrote:
>> 
>> At this point in terms of application support for EL 7 (including SL
>> 7) from external entities (such as Calibre -- there are others), I
>> am going soon to be forced to go to another Linux. ...
>> 
>> Any advice would be appreciated.
>> 
> 
> We are looking at Ubuntu -

While I'm not opposed to Ubuntu in any way:

> - direction is very stable, each next release is "the same as the previous release",
>  no surprises, no strange changes, no confusion.

Mir -> Wayland, Upstart -> systemd, Unity -> Gnome Shell... sure were surprises to me, direction rather seems "not that stable" etc.

> - trivial upgrade path from version N to version N+1. (works as well as MacOS).

Nice, but not all that important in a professionally managed environment. And available on EL recently too (not sure how trivial, but it does exist).

> - easy to google problems and solutions

Agreed, but I tend to find solutions for EL issues just as easily.

> - works well on laptops (Red Hat was always behind on Wifi and other important drivers)
> - commonality with Raspberry Pi and other SoC systems (everything is Debian or Ubuntu based, nothing is Red Hat based).

Good points.

> - many hardware vendors now supply Ubuntu and Debian centric drivers and support

Which vendors support upgrading the Firmware on servers (I'm not talking about desktops or laptops) from a running Ubuntu system? (That's a genuine question - this is the main reason keeping me from considering generally running the latest Ubuntu LTS on all our bare metal and doe all the rest in VMs or containers).

> Now that both Ubuntu and Red Hat use systemd, NetworkManager & co management
> of both has become very similar.

Well, yes, but then Ubuntu invented "netplan"...

> Only big remaining difference is the package manager - apt vs rpm/yum, but even
> here Red Hat have muddied the waters by switching to dnf and a new package format
> (new checksum algorythms).

dnf is a replacement for yum, not rpm (which corresponds to dpkg, not apt), and supposed to be backward compatible. RPM package checksums have evolved in the past, without serious issues, with backward compatibility and options to create packages usable on older systems on newer ones. I haven't tried EL8 in this respect, but I doubt this has all changed.

See below for why this is not the "only remaining big difference".

> Since building rpm packages was always a major pain, I am not sure I want to figure
> it all out again with CentOS/EL-8 just to find out that I cannot (or I can?) build
> RPM packages that work on all three - el6, el7 and el8. Might as well cut out
> the middleman and use "git pull; make install" to install and manage the 2-3-4 scripts
> that I manage with RPM packages right now.

If it's all about 2-3-4 scripts I simply don't get what this fuzz is about. I won't comment on "make install" vs. proper software management on production systems with packages.

> I have been saying the above to everybody for the last 6 months and not a single
> person so far had answered with "let's stick with Red Hat" or "let's stick with Red Hat
> because of important reason X".

Well we had a couple of folks speaking up here already. There are a few more major differences (and the different package managing systems are rather peanuts compared to those):

* Support life time. EL: 10 years (admittedly, with limitations during the last 3). Ubuntu: 5 years (but limited to 3 years for a great many packages - especially quite a few important on desktops/laptops).

* Stable kernel ABI. EL: stable over the whole lifetime for whitelisted interfaces, stable within minor releases for others. Ubuntu: no such thing. Actually, may backport ABI-changing changes from the lates mainline kernel anytime.

* Hardware enablement: EL: at least 5-7 years, with a single kernel flavour (with the above advantages regarding ABI stability). Ubuntu: May require "HWE" kernels (different base version) rather early. Actually will upgrade you automatically to those unless you're using a server installation.


Again, I like Ubuntu. Nor do I want to start a big argument. Just felt compelled to add a few minor pieces of information to your statements.