[GTALUG] From BTRFS to what?

[Christopher Browne]

On 4 September 2017 at 20:03, Scott Sullivan via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
> On 03/09/17 02:12 PM, William Park via talk wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Sep 03, 2017 at 05:52:12PM +0000, Dhaval Giani wrote:
>>>
>>> On Sun, Sep 3, 2017 at 1:41 PM William Park via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Now, I read (it's an old news, though) that BTRFS is being "deprecated"
>>>> by Redhat, and presumably others will follow.
>>>
>>>
>>> Where have you read this news? As far as I know btrfs is actively being
>>> developed and no one is stopping development.
>>
>>
>> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/16/red_hat_banishes_btrfs_from_rhel/
>>
>>
>> https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/7.4_Release_Notes/chap-Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-7.4_Release_Notes-Deprecated_Functionality.html
>>
>>
>> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Red-Hat-Deprecates-Btrfs-Again
>>
>
> This really should be read as 'if you call us to exercise your support
> contract, this piece isn't covered'.
>
> You'll get the same response for openldap(*), as they want you to use their
> IDM product. It doesn't make openldap any less in quality or utility.
>
> * Based on recent real-world experience.
> --
> Scott Sullivan

Some years ago (I'd guess 2005-ish, so it has been a while), I recall
Red Hat support declining to respond to issues relating to OpenSSL
because we had (I forget the exact term) 'unsupported software' in
that we were using the JFS kernel modules and RPM packages that,
despite being included, were apparently "not supported."

They were fairly keen not to respond to *anything* because we had JFS
(that they chose to include, but not support).  That seemed really
weaselly to me at the time.  It would be one thing had we had a custom
compiled kernel with our own wacky stuff, but everything *was* stock;
the JFS builds were *provided by Red Hat*.

Ever since, I have not been highly enthralled by the merits of "Red
Hat support."

It *is* troublesome to me that many people (and I have seen that
mentioned on this thread) consider "supported by Red Hat" to be
somehow essential to "usable on Linux."  It puts Red Hat on a pedestal
which is harmful in multiple ways.

- It gives them power that they shouldn't have;

- It enacts "facts" like those that were the point of the original
question...  Is BTRFS any good?  Should you use it?  Or is it needful
to migrate to something else?   The answers that seem to arrive have
the shape "Well, RHAT doesn't want to support it, so everyone should
consider it obsolete and unsupportable."

- I seem to recall RHAT developing ext4; unless things have further
changed, that ought to mean that the only thing they are keen to
support is ext4.  XFS, NILFS2, BTRFS, JFS, everything else, need not
apply.

That's all pretty harmful to my mind.
-- 
When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"