Until 2020, CentOS used to be our main choice for Delft-FEWS installations on Linux. The CentOS Linux distribution provided a free and open-source community-supported computing platform, functionally compatible with its upstream source, Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It has proven to be very stable and reliable.
In 2014 Redhat took hold of CentOS and in 2020 RedHat announced their decision that CentOS is going to be phased out: CentOS 8 EOL in 2021 and CentOS 7 EOL in 2024. RedHat will stop producing CentOS, but instead puts efforts CentOS Stream. CentOS Stream is not based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux but on Fedora. There are no technical reasons why our Delft-FEWS RPMs should not be able to run on CentOS Stream. But since Fedora is mainstream development, in practice this means that CentOS Stream receives new features sooner. It can also lead to more instability. Redhat says CentOS Stream is "not a replacement", but serves as pre-phase to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We conclude for this reason CentOS Stream might be well-suited for Delft-FEWS test servers but we cannot recommend it as the best choice for production servers.
There are two well-know mainstream CentOS alternatives: AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux. They are functionally compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and offer the same stability / benefits as CentOS used to provide. Both have successfully been granted secure boot validation by Microsoft since version 8.4.
Because AlmaLinux is well-established, Deltares ICT and Delft-FEWS developers have chosen to support Alma Linux for Delft-FEWS. AlmaLinux is a RHEL® fork since in 2009 and is not owned by Redhat / IBM but provided by CloudLinux OS.
We test our Delft-FEWS RPMs on Alma linux so that we know they will run well on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
