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Documentation for the Foreman Project and its ecosystem
https://docs.theforeman.org
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Definition for "Enterprise Linux" #2679

Closed Lennonka closed 7 months ago

Lennonka commented 7 months ago

We want to include the definition of this term into the glossary, however, I'm not certain about what the term actually includes.

Does it stand for:

We should be careful how we define this. Is it even the same for Foreman and clients?

From the Foreman perspective, we want to say that Foreman can be installed on EL, however, in the Quickstart guide we explicitly mention only RHEL and CentOS.

From the perspective of clients, I guess there's more. Based on what I see in the Installation Media:

So, can be Foreman installed on all those listed OSs?

cc @maximiliankolb @ekohl

maximiliankolb commented 7 months ago

In the past, "EL" stood for CentOS Linux 7, RHEL, and Oracle Linux. Now, it stands for AlmaLinux, Oracle Linux, RHEL, and Rocky Linux. I would define EL as "Red Hat Enterprise Linux and its derivatives".

Fedora and CentOS are upstream to RHEL (and therefore EL), but not considered EL.

The other question is: What's the official target OS for Foreman Server/Smart Proxy Server?

Regarding attributes: It makes sense for us to differenitate between "EL" and "RHEL" because some procedures such as Virt-Who only affect RHEL but not EL. Also content from RH CDN etc.

ekohl commented 7 months ago

Overall I'd say I disagree with the definition by SuSE (https://www.suse.com/suse-defines/definition/enterprise-linux/) since I don't consider Ubuntu Enterprise Linux (not saying it's not fit for Enterprise, but not for the definition we use).

My definition is that anything where you can say $OS version X is roughly equivalent to RHEL version Y. For me that's now:

Special case is Scientific Linux which still maintains version 7, but put their efforts in CentOS after that. AFAIK that will also go EOL after CentOS Linux is. So less relevant for our discussion.

Amazon Linux 2 is another special case, that is close to RHEL 7, but not quite. They've replaced some non-trivial parts that make it largely incompatible. They've since moved to be based on Fedora and have their own life cycle. Also less relevant to our discussion.

CentOS Linux (including Stream)

CentOS Linux will be gone soon. 8 already went EOL and 7 will go EOL on June 30th. There will only be CentOS Stream after that.

  • Fedora

Fedora is not considered Enterprise Linux because its selection of packages is quite different. Typically much larger. It also has its own release cycle.

In the past, "EL" stood for CentOS Linux 7, RHEL, and Oracle Linux. Now, it stands for AlmaLinux, Oracle Linux, RHEL, and Rocky Linux. I would define EL as "Red Hat Enterprise Linux and its derivatives".

I'm not sure I'd go with derivatives anymore because they're not pure derivatives anymore. I'd say what will largely be equivalent to RHEL. So Amazon Linux 2 could be considered EL because it's fairly close to RHEL 7, but Amazon Linux 2022 (and newer) not because they're following their own life cycles. They're derived from Fedora, like RHEL itself.

Fedora and CentOS are upstream to RHEL (and therefore EL), but not considered EL.

I'd consider CentOS Stream close enough to RHEL that I'd say it's Enterprise Linux.

Foreman/Katello: unsure what it's currently tested against. Maybe EL8 plus CentOS 8 Stream? Do you have a link Ewoud where it's defined in code?

We test our pipelines against AlmaLinux & CentOS Stream. We chose AlmaLinux to be a representative of RHEL. Nowadays that may be less of a guarantee.

Lennonka commented 7 months ago

Thank you for your contributions. I'm concluding that the following OS are EL:

ekohl commented 7 months ago

CentOS Linux -- I'd keep this for now, because of Convert2RHEL

Makes sense. Just because something is end of life, doesn't mean it's gone. And we can apply the EL definition to provisioning host too.