RHEL 8.2 with free developer subscription... Any good?
 

Hello All

I recently came up with this website and registered for a free developer subscription at developers.redhat.com. I got a 1-year no-cost Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription with self-support.

According to source, I can install Red Hat Enterprise Linux on 1 physical system and an unlimited number of guests VMs. Only condition no commercial use.

If I want to use RHEL 8.2 for learning purposes, is there anything special I can do in RHEL8.2 that I cannot do in CentOS 8.1?

And what do they mean by self-support? Will I have to figure out solutions for problems myself?

Thanks

Nope; as said here many, MANY times over the years, CentOS is virtually identical to RHEL. A better question would be WHY you want to use CentOS or RHEL. While you can use them for desktop use, you may run into problems with 'consumer' hardware support, such as for bluetooth/sound/graphics/etc....things that are typically not on servers, which is the main thrust for CentOS/SLES/RHEL. No reason you can't use ANY flavor of Linux for a desktop/personal installation, and you won't give up anything either.
"Self Support" means you support yourself (emphasis added). If you want THEIR support, you need to pay for it...otherwise as stated, you can use ANY flavor of Linux and you'll be in the same spot.

@OP. Can you now see the full text of all solutions in the Red Hat Knowledgebase, e.g. this one? Then I'd say this alone justifies creating an account.

Yes, all the new things introduced IN RHEL 8.2 aren't there yet in CentOS 8.1.1911, so until the corresponding 8.2 (.2004) comes out you're essentiall one POINT update behind (about 6 months) in CentOS.

And note that the "developer" version is mostly geared to developers who want to port and/or test their software on the RHEL platform, it isn't especially geared to desktop users, they should get a paid-for subscription.

PS: in effect CentOS is a self-maintained distribution too, there are some wiki's and so, but mostly they rely on the RHEL patches and updates, do not offer any substantial support themselves.

As 'TB0ne' stated, you can use other Linux flavors for your desktop. I have tried multiple times to use CentOS as my main OS; however, I ran into issues playing multimedia, flash content on websites and connecting bluetooth devices.

I used Debian which has better multimedia support. I have been using Fedora since July 2019 and I am pretty happy with it.

Yes, I can see the full page.

What I read was the version that I can download and use and the one for commercial use is exactly the same. By checksum, they are the same. I can also have all the features that a commercial use has with a full subscription. The only restriction - no production use. Other than that all is same-to-same. For desktops, one can install the Workstation module.

Except for the length of the support (= access to the repo's with patched/fixed packages) and you don't have the right to engage RH support for problems you may have (that's what "self-support" means).
so not 10 years like the paid-for one.
Although I admit that not even they can support desktop environments THAT long (that would mean they still would have to support KDE 4, for instance, which is essentially dead).

Hmmm, I typed this command and I got these results. I guess I can learn any of these available features. I'm now planning to learn Ansible and load balancing.