[GTALUG] Rocky Linux (CentOS's replacement) goes GA

[Scott Sullivan]

Yesterday, Rocky Linux made their rebuild of RHEL 8.4 Generally 
Available.

https://rockylinux.org/news/rocky-linux-8-4-ga-release/

This was following a round of RCs for 8.3 and 8.4.

My colleagues and I have been testing it out on both our personal and 
company work loads. And it's working as expected.

For those whom need a quick reminder on the situation. The chain used to 
look like this.

Upstream Sources => Fedora (Cherry picked and Forked ever few years) => 
CentOS Stream => RHEL => CentOS

At the start of the Year, RedHat announced that all effort on CentOS (as 
a downstream rebuild of RHEL) would cease at the end of 2021. Half a 
decade earlier then the community was expecting. And that there would be 
no CentOS to go with RHEL 9 when it eventually comes. This left a huge 
community of users and developer, whom were never going to become RHEL 
customers, without their long term stable distro.

Moving to CentOS Stream is effectively becoming beta testers for what 
will become RHEL.

Some of original founders of the CentOS project, established Rocky Linux 
to fill the position CentOS used too, just slightly trailing RHEL.
This returns the community to where it was before RedHat stepped in to 
support the CentOS project. Support that was eventually betrayed, having 
effectively abandoned the CentOS position in the ecosystem and walked 
away with the trademarks. This position in the ecosystem is always going 
to exist, RedHat abdicating it is ultimately unfortunate for RedHat.

-- 
Scott Sullivan