Talk:Red Hat Enterprise Linux derivatives

More changes to motivations section
Red Hat does (and has for quite some time) made available isos of their full OS available for free download. It even comes with thirty days access to their repositories for updates. But there is nothing to stop one from continuing to use the software past the thirty days, nor to connect to other repos (CentOS?) for updates.

In addition, sometime in mid 2016 they dropped the price of their developer license from $99 to free. So, by simply asking for one, anyone can get a free 1 year subscription to the repos. I do not think it includes support but I'm not certain of that.

I have not implemented any of these changes in the motivations section. May do so later on - but I want to add references as well. If someone beats me to it, please go ahead.

Article name
Previous discussion of the article's old name has been rendered moot by the current name. (Thus, removing text from here, get it from the "history" of this page if necessary) JimD 20:51, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

New section: Technical Challenges?
I think we should add a section to the article which discussion the technical challenges associated with building these clones (such as CentOS). However, I want to hash it out here before migrating it into the main article.

I know that one cannot simply take the whole collection of .src.rpm files (source packages) and simpy run a command like: for i in /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/*.spec; do rpmbuild -ba $i; done One problem with that approach is that many of these build processes run GNU autoconf and thus will find and link against various libraries on the system. However, many packages are built by Red Hat Inc. in an environment containing only a specific subset of the total available libraries (mostly using chroot jails). There are, potentially, other options and environment settings which could affect how the packages are built from source into binaries.

Also when creating CD images ... generate index files, etc. there are a number of utilities which are included in the sources ... and which Red Hat uses to build their CDs ... but which are largely undocumented. (The specific calling conventions for each of the utilities is not included in the sources nor in any available documentation.

(One can argue that these, admittedly minor, details constitute Red Hat's "secret sauce" for cooking up their final product. However, that's no truly relevant to the proposed section of this article).

I'd love for some of the contributors and participants of CentOS, White Box, et al. to flesh this out with some more examples ... or provide a link to any good online discussion of the topic.

JimD 20:51, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Changes to motivations section
The article previously suggested that Red Hat is required to make RHEL's source code available for download. This is not true. Under the GPL, if Red Hat gives or sells binaries to anyone, those binaries must be accompanied by source code. The transferee can then redistribute the source code or compiled binaries (provided he complies with the GPL.) Nothing in the GPL says that Red Hat has to set up an FTP server, pay for bandwidth, etc.

Clones or derivatives?
Should these not be called derivatives instead of clones ? -- Ernst de Haan 15:38 17 October 2006 (GMT+1)

I second that. I think cloning more strongly implies exact replication. The derivatives, work-alikes, or similar notions each add (or possibly subtract) from the base RHEL distro. Joe 22:09, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
 * If you don't mind, I'll go out and be bold and move the article to Red Hate Enterprise Linux derivatives—some articles may need editing so they don't point to a redirect though; I think I'll nag the RHEL and CentOS pages myself. --Mike (talk) 06:16, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

accuracy of Fedora release cycle (history)
Actually, the release cycle is stated as a month after final release of the second following release. or about 13 months. See http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LifeCycle. However, I am not sure of the previous policy; I seem to recall from before it was 18 months, but I may be remembering some other distro, perhaps RHL9 or 8.0. Joe 22:09, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Distro popularity
Red Hat Enterprise Linux derivatives lists distros by their popularity on Distrowatch. Having just found out about ClearOS across the Linux-aware tech press and not finding any mention of it here, it warrants mention. However, I'm very uncomfortable with listing it above a more mature and well-known distro such as Scientific Linux -- it's brand new, and it's anyone's guess whether it will continue to be the darling in the media's eye. We need a better basis for listing something here. I did so "blindly" to highlight this need.--Rfsmit (talk) 20:35, 26 July 2010 (UTC)


 * DistroWatch ranking is unreliable and poorly correlated with distribution popularity. There is very little use in ordering 3 distributions. I recommend dropping the DistroWatch ranking and just going with alphabetical order. --Chealer (talk) 20:45, 26 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Good call. How does it read now?--Rfsmit (talk) 21:40, 26 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Top hundred on distrowatch == 12 CentOS, 26 ROSA (has moved up since 2010), 36 Red Hat, 51 Scientific, 58 ClearOS, 93 Oracle. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 17:54, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Top 250 on distrowatch == 145 Yellow (has fallen since 2010), 161 springdale, 186 rocks, 231 Fermi, 235 sme.
 * Not listed at all on distrowatch == caos cern gentos startcom bull&xbas ascendos google pie lineox tao x/os white cisco vmware amazon&ami
 * But what about new offshoots? Is there a way to query distrowatch about ancestry, to find which ones are RHEL spin-offs?  And although I agree distrowatch search-popularity does not correspond well with server-distro-deployment (biased heavily for desktop-use), what is the alternative?  Honest question; methinks e.g. netcraft surveys of webservers cannot distinguish between distros (as opposed to between apache versions), and would exclude desktop-usage.  Alexa and comscore don't do this sort of thing either.  Anyways, although distrowatch is a flawed source, it does roughly correlate with distro popularity based on my original research aka actual experience:  centos at the top, rhel second, sci/fermi/cern third.  I've never heard of ROSA, on the other hand, and ClearOS only rings a vague bell.  74.192.84.101 (talk) 17:54, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Derivative diagram
The diagram is seriously out of date (10 years), particularly with the ending of CentOS and the subsequent rise of a new crop of RHEL derivatives. I woukld suggest that it should be deleted pending a more up to date diagram. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:49, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

This whole article is out of date as of Red Hat's 2023 efforts to further impede these derivatives
IBM / Red Hat posted this in June 2023: Red Hat’s commitment to open source: A response to the git.centos.org changes with this controversial claim: > Simply rebuilding code, without adding value or changing it in any way, represents a real threat to open source companies everywhere. This is a real threat to open source, and one that has the potential to revert open source back into a hobbyist- and hackers-only activity.

See news:


 * Red Hat's Source Code Lockout Spells Disaster for CentOS Alternatives: Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux in Trouble?
 * Linux Is The Next Platform, But Who Pays To Maintain It? - The Next Platform
 * Red Hat ends the RHEL clones’ free lunch | InfoWorld
 * Red Hat Now Limiting RHEL Sources To CentOS Stream - Phoronix

★NealMcB★ (talk) 20:32, 5 August 2023 (UTC)