What operating system will replace CentOS 8

[Cassius_Clay]

As most people know, CentOS 8 as we know it will end in December 2021, has there been any talk around which operating system will be its successor? The two that I have heard of that seem to show the most promise are AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux. Both have recently been fully released as version 8.3 and seem to be a solid replacement for CentOS. Is there a leader or a preference to either one at this time?

Thanks,
Cassuis

[ehelms]

In the project we tend to think of operating systems in two ways:

1. What we support installation of Foreman on
2. What can be provisioned and managed by Foreman

Is your question a general question or targeting one of the above specifically?

[Cassius_Clay]

Sorry, I should have been more specific. My question is more of which OS will support the installation of Foreman/Katello in the future?

[ehelms]

To date we have discussed this in a few of our Infrastructure SIG meetings and have only discussed CentOS 8 stream (and implemented) and started CentOS 9 stream as OSes that would be tested and documented. We can add this as a topic for future meetings.

[Cassius_Clay]

Thanks for the reply and information.

[Cassius_Clay]

Just an FYI.

I was able to successfully install a simple default Katello 4.0.1 deployment on AlmaLinux 8.3 without any issues while following the CentOS 8 documentation.

[ikonia]

is the intention to use stream as a supported install target then ?

[ekohl]

Today we have nightly and 2.5 pipelines to verify installation passes on CentOS Stream. I did manual testing of 2.4 on Stream. So yes, Stream will be a supported install target. Once it shows up, I hope we can soon add Stream 9 as well.

[lzap]

Building on top of CentOS Stream should generally ensure that other CentOS forks (or RHEL forks) should work too.

I would like to encourage users of other RHEL clones to join us testing Foreman RC releases every three months to ensure it works:

Foreman 2.4 test week

Foreman 2.4 RC2 has been announced and it’s the time to put our effort into making sure that all most important features are not broken hard. We need your help! It’s easy to get your hands dirty and help us with testing: Install Foreman RC version (the most up to date one) Pick a scenario from this post or add your own scenario If you find an issue, file it in the RedMine and make a comment in this thread linking the issue Mark the scenario as checked in this OP (this is an editable wiki post)…

[ekohl]

@lzap

Building on top of CentOS Stream should generally ensure that other CentOS forks (or RHEL forks) should work too.

To be clear, we are not building on CentOS Stream 8. Currently all builds run on CentOS Linux 8. There is still discussion about which build platform to use once it goes EOL. Building on Stream means we will become incompatible with RHEL (and its clones) at times. This is still an open debate, but compatibility with RHEL is important.

[gertw]

Same for Rocky LInux 8.3 RC1