The Linux Drama 

17 years of Redhat/Centos and Rocky/AlmaLinux. Hello Debian !!

I agree with everything you said and Jay too. After this whole thing I switched from Fedora, for exactly the reason you listed here, to Linux Mint until I decide where I go. Even Linux Mint being base on Ubuntu makes it not a long term option anymore. Maybe LMDE but I'm thinking of Arch. I'm even unsure about using Gnome because of how much RH has a financial hand in it. So I have to figure this out. But yeah screw RH. They dumped a huge rock on the community...

I have used Gentoo for roughly 20 years. Even when there was a bit of drama in the community when the founder left the stability of the OS never suffered. Arch and Gentoo are absolutely amazing at creating documentation. A lot of it is generic to Linux as a whole, and not just specific. I will admit on the server side if I need something really quick and dirty I will drop Ubuntu server on a virtual machine. But if it's something long term, I have set myself up a build machine where I build binary packages for my servers and it makes for easy deployment. The one good thing I will say about red hat is that they do employ people that contribute to Linux and the community ultimately benefits from that.

Well Fedora gang, it was a nice 5-7 years, wasn't it? We had a pretty nice OS that was relatively stable while also staying pretty close to the leading edge.

I agree with you 100% about the Redhat drama. It's for this reason that I'm looking to eliminate our last couple Fedora servers at work. I don't mind OpenSUSE, I think there's still a lot of value to be had there and System76 and Tuxedo are still only in the news for good things they've been doing for their distros and the hardware they make. I think it is possible for companies to be behind a distro without angering the community, but like what's been going on with Canonical, they need to be watched and scrutinized and especially be on the lookout if they put on a hat, that happens to be red in color, that makes them make questionable decisions.

I agree with you. I'm on Mint now, I'll be moving to LMDE in the near future.

Just installed Debian 12 I am very happy with the decision I made! Good nite Fedora !!

You do make an important point about Fedora users feeding into RHEL

Agreed. I have deleted my Fedora. Down to 10 virtual-machines now, and one of those is Windows....

I couldn't agree more, Very well said Chris, LM is included, That moment they said they are partnering with Mozilla, Google, then Microsoft and many other big Corps, I asked Clem why, His answer "They need the sponsors and you can remove their software", It was something along the lines they allowed those corps to install what they wish? That screams trouble, I went to Debian

im on the same boat, With Debian 12 now being so good. I moved from PopOS to Debian.

This is also why is choose to run gentoo for most of my use cases everything is configurable and comes basically directly from upstream with patches and use flags that you pick. As long as you're willing to build most packages which can then be distributed to your other devices you have very little to worry about

I like CentOS for the 10 year support, package manager, how is configuration done and selinux. Would be nice if community would make a distro, new or existing one, with a 10 year support though. I am still using CentOS 7 for home server. Looking into moving to Debian and so far got it installed and using it.

Bye Fedora. Already deleted it on all of our PCs and Laptops in my company and private. That's it. My 2 servers are running now on Ubuntu and no more Almalinux.

The more exaggerated the claims the more it should generate suspicion as to the real agenda. This is not new.

Agree 100%!! I've been running Fedora for a while, but after this nonsense, and Ubuntu nonsense, I'm switching to Debian for servers and either Debian or NixOS for desktop.

Bravo! As a lifetime Debian user, this makes me happy. Linux is many things to many people, but one crucial thing it does is to keep the one last viable option for the masses to keep control of their computers (software-wise, at least). That mission (which, I’ll admit, our friends from Arch also keep) is a whole of a lot more important than whatever freaking value you can claim Fedora / Ubuntu / OpenSuse give you over Debian / Arch.

New to Linux user here, I totally understand what Chris (and others are saying). And the following statement doesn't discredit their position in any way, but I'm a little sad Fedora is going to be negatively impacted by this. Fedora was a nice beginner distro for me. It was fairly up to date, not lagging behind like Debian, but it wasn't as difficult and prone to breakage like Arch is (as if I'd be able to even use Arch reliably at this point in my Linux journey). Like, it felt like the stability of Debian and the up-to-date-ness of Arch, and I really liked that.

I get it, but i never really cared about pricing and proprietary deals as long as we have access to source code. Hell, never would have left windows if it had just been transparent about what the os is doing.

Man fedora was the middle ground between arch and Debian, it was perfect for me.

Fedora is fine. It is primarily community managed, although they brag on their website that they are sponsored by Red Hat, perhaps to gain more trust in the past. Right now, anything to do with Red Hat is hated.... I'm sticking with Fedora because it's the best for my use case. Have a nice day.

I agree with your point, but fedora is a community project and a lot of passionate people are involved in the fedora boycotting it will be a disservice to the community.

It might take a while, but unless I'm misundertanding how these things work, I can see Mint and Pop_OS dropping Ubuntu and shifting to a direct relationship with Debian since they reeleased 12. Or is there something of real value that Ubuntu does to the Debian base that makes things SO much easier for the Mint and Pop_OS people? Another one here who's been playing with Fedora spins that'll go elsewhere, that's a shame as I've really respected what Fedora have been doing the last couple of years.

If you've been around long enough you know there has definitely been drama in Debian. The decision to make systemd the default init system in Jessie was a very contentions ... and still is for some people.

Over the years I've moved from Red Hat to Fedora to Ubuntu to PCLinuxOS. I started feeling uncomfortable with the corporations several years ago & wanted an up-to-date distro for my desktop. PCLinuxOS was good, but I needed something with a larger community. Then I discovered Arch and haven't looked back.

currently on debian and ubuntu the combination of mesa driver + kernel version makes the system completely unbootable even on live cd, even with safe gfx mode on an rx6800

Already moving / moved my servers to Debian

For me, Red Hat stopped being an option when IBM purchased them.

Debian is the way to go for servers, arch for desktops.

As I have said before in other posts... RHEL are seeing the software as the product, when is the service the product...

Invest in employees--salaries, training, an such, and open source projects and developers not corporate Linux distributions.

Debian 12 with the KDE Plasma desktop is very nice.

Do you think this was entirely Red Hat’s decision, or IBM’s? I heard somewhere that IBM was thinking of EOLing their UNIX OS, AIX. Wonder if that was true and that is where this is coming from. To where IBM will be shipping their server stuff with RHEL instead of AIX, and they want the revenue from it.

I like Alma Linux. Great and stable RHEL spinoff.

I use Pop!_OS on my Nvidia based Lenovo Thinkpad simply because it just works. Other than that, Debian and Linux. (SteamOS on the Steam Deck though)

FreeBSD and OpenBSD is where I live now. I was a long time RedHat/CentOS user but once I heard IBM was buying RedHat I knew CentOS was dead. BSD seems to never disappoint.

Agreed. This is not a problem for me since I’ve always used Debian for servers and Arch for everything else. But I will not recommend Fedora either.

I would love to be able to contribute code to a project and then get something really small like .01% royalties for a year or so 🤔 (as long as that project was making any earning off of subscriptions or something..)

Arch Linux is backed by several companies, as are many other community driven projects. And it’s not just businesses but governments that invest in them. I’m ok with boycotting IBM, never was fond of Red Hat before it was even bought out anyway, but most Open Source projects have to get their money from somewhere. :)

These corporations are like ticking time bombs because at the end of the day corporate interests are not compatible with FOSS.

It just feels like Windows 11 Moment 4 but you also got the leaked source code. You can look at the bright side.

a little bit sad...but I agree TTT

I've had mixed thoughts about this whole issue. I started by thinking that it was wrong, then I kinda felt that they could do so if they have to earn money, but finally I came to the opinion that it is the deficiency of the business models of tech firms that had led to this. Business models need to adapted to allow open source and closed source code to be monetised in different ways and continue to co-exist without cannibalising each other.

I have tied my whole career to the RHEL / Fedora world, and it is very difficult to pivit away. I am sticking with Fedora, but homelab ... not sure yet.

The one nice thing about OpenSuSE is the zypper package manager. It just does thing sanely. Yast is also great when you're trying to talk a non-techie how to do things like set a static IP. The one thing SuSE in general is missing is that 5 year LTS. You'll get about 3-years max before the repos start disappearing and you're truly abandoned.

Well... Micro$oft didn't actually make it all. They stole a ton along the way. Period. But that's another discussion.

See: SCO Linux shenanigans.

I only have one Ubuntu vm that I use for development the rest I switched to Debian in 2022. And I am debating switching that one dev vm too

Nice video commentary! I'm surprised Redhat hasn't taken it and put it behind a paywall yet.

That is one of the reasons why Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) is built on top of Debian.

LMDE might well be the new Fedora, they need to add Weyland support though, sooner as X11 is EOL

I have seen server HARDWARE support people leave customers for our software alone with clear hardware failures, just because OS run on those was not Redhat. They simply can not change Distro.

Dead Hat... IBM can keep it!

man, you have spoken the same thing i said, bit by bit in this video today, on a facebook post i shared yesterday, we are in sync.

What would you say now about Pop os

overall the redhat drama has reassured me that Public companies just aren't to be trusted, I've stayed using ubuntu or ubuntu derivatives like mint for that reason, but with Canonical planning on going public thats probably not going to stay being the case, I foresee Canonical also being acquired like RedHat was, in the dark future I could see that being Microsoft because if they wanted anyway to ensure that Linux desktop maintains not being a threat, buying one of the most popular Linux distros is a good way of doing so I still use Windows but thats because Microsoft doesn't put on the façade of being pro consumer, they say so for PR reasons but the goal of saying so is always PR and people know that, companies like RedHat use the fact they are a part of the FOSS world to build trust that when they say they are "for the consumer" or whatever people believe them, Valve has done the same thing and done a damn good job at convincing people they support Linux "to support the FOSS world" when reality is that Valve supports Linux to get away from Microsoft, Valve wants full control over steam, thats the only reason they support Linux, its the only PC platform they can achieve that goal with, the difference with Valve is that they are private, so they will remain consistent, they don't have shareholders to please, if Valve is working on Linux its for their own goals, and those goals won't include doing things for the sake of money (Valve as a company tends to view themselves as having infinite money since steam makes more money then they could spend, so Valve isn't fully motivated by more money, only partially), not the goals of people who just want more money, and thats the problem I have with public companies, they don't do things based on their on goals, they do things for their shareholders, and shareholders have 1 goal, make more money

Man. I wish Debian had a 10 year life, that's the only reason why Debian doesn't make to the server environment in in a much larger market share than RHEL ans its derivatives

Titus about to go full Stallman soon. Welcome to the bright side. Give Slackware a solid try, it's the oldest and it still has the original spirit of Linux in it.

How often have you actually used that kind of support? Like Apple "You pay extra for the amazing support". But how often have you used it?

Someone should try to do LFS except no RedHat patches or contributions included. I would watch it.

Looks like Redhat has given me the push I need to give NixOS a try

Time to go back to Slacko 5.7.

"Change is bad" Agree 100%

Sorry to tell you but if you're using any Linux Distro it's backed by a corporation, namely Red Hat because they contribute a lot to the Linux Kernel and that's not going to change. Debian has a lot of corporate sponsors as well. We need these corporations because they bring the resources and money to Linux and Open source software for development. So no Red Hat isn't "freeloading", they contribute a lot back. I may not agree with Red Hat's decision, but I do understand it somewhat!

At least Canonical didn't screw us over like Red hat. I think Ubuntu is still a great choice for people who don't like drama

preach. I use debian on my very old hardware and arch on desktop

what about systemd tho?

I have had Fedora installed on my Linux laptop since release v. 37, I thought it was a pretty good OS, but after reading about all this drama caused by Red Hat (i.e. IBM), I'm going to revert to Debian or a Debian-based distro, just out of spite.

I agree with what you said and while it's true that Jeff Geerling did a great job, it's important that you add your voice to the issue. IBM forgets that they already lost this battle long ago when people decided to not use their Unix in favor of Linux, windows and everything else that empowers freedom. And I would add that I'm sure that the poor ignorant idiots who made this decision have most likely made it against the bulk of even their own talent who most likely doesn't agree with this choice.

I run Debian and I love it. I used to run Kubuntu, but the fact that Ubuntu is forcing snaps and lied about each flavor having their own preferences (and made ALL flavors of Ubuntu not come with flatpak by default). I don't trust Canonical. Screw em. Debian forever!

great video man. arch or debian, thats it!

I agree with your points to some extent, not that i am taking sides from Redhat and going against FOSS, but i do think this can come to just boycotting RHEL related distros to actual very important projects they actually contribute "mostly" full on too, like x11, wayland, systemD etc, i don't know the extent of importance to these but i am sure i and most people on linux use. Its a very delicate situation we must also handle as a community, corporates do make weird decisions but without them linux wouldn't be what it is today, so lets just not be rash about it, this(RHEL) is this and that(other stuff) is that. Or else we wind up having nothing at all..

@2:37 Haters are not negative. They exist, so you can tell the difference between haters and lovers. 👍

I finally find a distro I particular like (Fedora) and Red Hat pulls this sort of crap? Not cool Red Hat/IBM Looks like I'll be looking for a new distro very soon.

If you submit patches and Red Hat pulls them into CentOS stream, which is available to anyone, then how is that stealing? Where's the paywall?

What about opensuse thumbleweed?

I feel like 50% of the hate should go towards Distros like Rocky that decided to take the code and compile it into bug for bug compatible distros. Clearly the red hat devs do things, they produce stuff useful to the Linux community as a whole as well as stuff useful for RHEL customers, that someone would take their work rename it and give it away for free seems ridiculous. Typically we require some amount of work, some useful modification before someone can take a thing and and call its theirs.

I can't agree with the take that Red Hat contributes nothing back to the Linux community. Their engineers have brought many core technologies that most of the popular distros use today and they heavily contribute to various projects. My understanding is that all of (or at least most of) the distro contributions that Red Hat makes for RHEL goes into CentOS Stream, which is still public. And, as an individual, if you want to access RHEL's source code, you can do so for free with an account sign up - you just can't effectively clone the OS anymore. There's rumor that some of the clones of RHEL rarely, if ever, contributed back, and some even have have their own service contract businesses to undercut Red Hat. This is a parasitic relationship with Red Hat as the host, not the parasite. Assuming that is true, I think Red Hat is right to restrict access to their source code to their customers only. However, they have definitely not gone about this in the best way, and keep shooting themselves in the foot the more they talk about this.

What would you recommend to a Fedora users who wants the same level of stability and

I don't think you understand that Fedora is a community run distro and is completely open source. Red Hat Linux is not the same as Fedora Linux.

The complete unhinged reactions from Linux users never fail to dissappoint..

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called Linux, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called Linux distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux!

hey Chris, I've been wondering if Void Linux is also an option to move to.

And how dare Zorin charge for their Pro distro =)

do not use IBM stuff cause you will fall into a trap sooner or later you had overlooked, I mean that trap in the footlines of your contract. I use raspbian and forget about any further adventures after a debian nightmare on my laoptop. The Linux partition is still there on that Laptop no longer working since it broke with 2020 update or so.

Ha Ha very funny! Ho Ho it is to laugh !!

Gotta make money is a lame excuse because it is a personal problem. What is worse is that that phrase is often used to justify all kinds of bad corporate behavior when a company makes something less repairable, more privacy invasive, and/or predatory to capture key parts of the industry.

Yes, yes, yes!

6:50 is the exact reason i switched from Fedora to Manjaro once i heard the news. Eff 'em, i love rpm distros over debian but oh well. Sorry you decided to turn into M$

there's always FreeBSD!

Been using Linux long enough to see drama like this come and go. In a couple years there will be another systemd, another Amazon store, another Snap-only distro, another questionable User Interface design, another old tweet from this or that linux personality, another distro financially backed by this or that haram company, etc etc. And as usual, linux users will rague-quit their distro, proclaim that they're never looking back, and distro-hop for a while until new drama will make them forget and get back to whatever they were using before. Stick to the distro that works best for you and makes you happy. Don't get dragged by youtubers and zealots.

Opens Suse is fkn great

arch, debian, pclos, linuxmint/LMDE, mxlinux, FreeBSD, slackware, gentoo, mageia. I love LMDE. it's Ubuntu and/or Debian done right.

But, Arch and Debian are managed by humans, and humans need to have money to live in the current world. So, how do Arch linux and Debian make a financial living?

If there's money involved, things will go to shit eventually. Debian is community based and proved itself through time, go with Debian.

I would use Debian, but they're backed by HP and Google. And probably Micro$soft too.... The only way forward is TempleOS

A never ending drama expects developer to work for FREE and everything to be FREE by a miracle... But who pays the expenses ? What about making a living ? But Zealots say: Who cares ?...

YEEeeeuuupppPPP!

Honestly, I think this is a knee-jerk reaction. Sure Fedora has ties to Redhat. Until you actually investigate and learn more about the working relationship, boycotting means little to nothing and doesn't actually promote meaningful change. RHEL was a bespoke solution for a very long time and is why it was only used in a certain set of contexts. I've known that for years. But to actually come out and attack a community based project without actually asking the people who work for it what the relationship is like with Redhat? That is asking for trouble. Investigate first, before just jumping to conclusions. Else, all this is is cancel culture, a moronic self serving shoot yourself in the foot move. The concern to watch out for is to see if any new contributions shift from the gpl to another license allowing for them to close the source or limit the access to it. So far it just seems like they were trying to limit the ability to outright clone their software bit for bit.

Linux RU-vidrs make me want to use Red Hat