On Fri, Apr 30, 2021 at 1:35 PM Konstantin Olchanski <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Any news or updates on the status of CERN Linux?

Many sysadmins are... unhappy about CentOS 8 Stream. The idea that
CentOS is no longer a clone but instead the beta testing playground
for RHEL has profoundly upset them. RHEL is making lightweight and
"free for education" licenses more available, but it's been awkward.
RHEL 8 introduced some profoundly unwelcome features, such as
"Modularity", the multiple overlapping and unnecessary yum channels,
the deliberate exclusion of devel packages built with the other RPMs
and used internally for compilation such as "quota-devel", and the lag
in the primary python 3 release which python 3.8 and is now 5 years
old, there doesn't seem a lot of benefit to using CentOS 8 Stream. I
don't consider RHEL 8 to be Red Hat's best work.

The risks of always being the beta tester with unpredictable updates
to core components, and the insistence that we all "drink the stream"
rather than publishing point releases was unannounced. If we want
stable point releases, we have to make them ourselves now for internal
use. I publish tools you're quite welcome to use for that, at
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__github.com_nkadel_nkadel-2Drsync-2Dscripts&d=DwIBaQ&c=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA&r=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A&m=FrA4u_F4qNzRloEH_QYdcE599Vq4gX8CHEH7PWbN-fY&s=Ohu4K9C8jRTEZfUI2gciYivzXp9NkCzwDFjkxTCtUKQ&e=  .