yes, intelligent choice for IBM ($$$) not for the community. I migrated my CentOS 7 servers to CentOS 8 this past summer. After completing the migration, I was relived that I will not have to migrate again until 2028-2029....!

I am currently testing Debian stable to replace my CentOS boxes.

After reading a little bit about it I also found out that the move had been planned for a long time and it so happens that it has nothing to do with IBM. This is what Red Hat wanted to do. After reading a little bit more about it, I've toned it down a little bit and realised that the only thing that you could really accuse them of is that they've cut short the support, which is... pathetic, really. It makes them less trusthworthy.
The fact itself that they don't want to freely support an identical clone of their commercial system, without the community actually contributing to RHEL... that I can understand more easily. Centos Stream would allow for the contribution of the community to the RHEL, actually. I just don't know exactly what the community gets back. Obviously something of lesser quality than the traditional Centos, I assume? I'm not sure how convincing Centos Stream is in production. Some say they'll give it a go and that it could turn out pretty well.

It is the same here, though we went from 6 to 8 in the Mid of 2020. Target is now CentOS/RHEL 7 and Debian 10 until End of 2021 and later no CentOS or RHEL anymore. I think they want to force people to the choice between RHEL and Stream, which is like "Get a beta-version of our next-release or pay"

Centos was never really fully RH. Much of the enterprise level stuff was not open source.

Centos was/is free. Anyone could take what is left and continue it.

There are excellent alternatives available.

yes, business wise makes total sense. I bet IBM's idea is for companies to switch to RHEL thus, increase their revenue.

I just replaced a CentOS 8 server with Debian 10. No issues so far. Also, I switch my laptops O/S from Fedora to Debian 10 as well. No issues either.

Fortunately I stayed CentOS 7 and did not migrated to 8.

I am currently thinking to go Ubuntu LTS. Could you share why did you opted to go to Debian?

Thanks.

@Virneto. Here are my thoughts on this. Between Ubuntu LTS and Debian stable, I'd also choose the latter.

Appreciate. That's something I'm looking into... Where to go now.
Although it might be easier, I'm pretty sure I'm not staying on CentOS or going Oracle just for personal conviction..

• Ubuntu LTS uses Debian-LTS when the corresponding Debian-Release goes EOL
• Ubuntu is basically a downstream-distro of Debian
• Ubuntu consists of nonfree/proprietary software right from the start and you can not decide what of this you want inside
• Ubuntu is maintained by a private UK-company owned by a south-african Investor
• Debian was, is and will always be community-driven, it is very unlikely that something like "CentOS-Stream kills CentOS8 in 2021" will happen
• Ubuntu has a history of putting unwanted "phone home" default-features like sending user-behavior to Amazon
• Debian has a non-bloat minimal approach with a high performance and a very strict philosophy on privacy and security
• Ubuntu has a lot of overhead and preconfiguration unwanted on production servers, so that you basically configure stuff away until you have the level of pure Debian, that is also their philosophy of an "out of the box experience" for newbies
• Debian has a focus on stability and a lot of testing before making a point release
• Ubuntu uses testing-(pre-)releases of Debian to make their point-releases
• Ubuntu uses package-manager extensions/replacements like "snap" and by that get almost untested stuff into their core-distro (works for me style)

Basically it is unfair to compare Debian and Ubuntu because the approach is different.

Ubuntu wants to get actual stuff in fast and accepts that there is less testing to get features in quickly. Plus it uses unfree, contrib and paid software and proprietary drivers, codecs and extensions right from the start. Their philosophy is: Get everything running asap, the user accepts what we do implicitly because he wants the easiest user-experience. We want new features and driver-updates asap.

Debian endorses completely free software and you have the choice what to put in there. Of course you will most likely put in the proprietary driver of your 40G-network-card or exotic HW-Raid-Controller, but you have to do that actively and in the end you just have exactly the things on your system that you need.

By the way: "Ubuntu LTS" means that it is supported a longer time than other releases and "Server LTS" means that a smaller amount of packages are supported a longer time. Ubuntu Server is simply Ubuntu without X and a text-mode installer. Debian inplace-upgrades work very good and it also has a LTS-line and there are companies providing extended LTS after that.

For the same reasons that you won't use Fedora or CentOS-Stream for your production-server you won't want to use Ubuntu. It is also absurd in my eyes, coming from RHEL/CentOS, to use a downstream-distro of Debian that is created by a company like "Canonical Ltd.". I understand the goals of Redhat and when I pay them all is fine. Canonical and their boss/benefactor seems to be even more unpredictable than Redhat to me.

1) As Auge mentioned, it does not make sense to go from CentOS to a downstream version of Debian (Ubuntu LTS)
2) I look for stability and security which Debian offers.
3) I run Ubuntu Server LTS at home. Upgrading from 18 to 20 crashed my system. I had to do a clean install. I upgraded a Debian 8 box to 9 without issues.
4) Ubuntu receives several updates and some of them require you to reboot the system. For a home server, that is okay; however, for enterprise it is not.

@auge & @ceantuco,

I appreciate the in-debth view...

I've used Ubuntu before. Not Debian.

I'll start to try Debian allong with Ubuntu server for testing now..
The fact that Debian is a Rolling Release left me inclined to Ubuntu from the start. Although I'm aware it belongs to Canonical

Best regards

Debian is not a rolling release. I'm not sure where you got that from.

Good luck Virneto. In the next couple of weeks, I will be testing services I currently run on CentOS, on Debian 10. I will not be migrating those services until Debian 11 is released. I would like to get the 5 year under EOL LTS.

 

Well said Auge, particularly this part:

Switching from CentOS to Ubuntu is absurd - it would be safer to go with CentOS Stream than to do that!

My inclination to Ubuntu came from the fact that I've already used it and it seems to be very popular as a web server. Not sure if Debian offers any challenging learning curve.

Sorry. I was convinced it was.

Thank you for your inputs.
I guess, i'll start by trying Debian stable.

I'll really miss CentOS stability and 10years EOL..