RHEL9, Can Rocky Keep up?

[dos2unix]

It seems that RockyLinux was a few weeks behind AlmaLinux in releasing 8.5.
RockyLinux was about week behind AlmaLinux in releasing 8.6
Redhat EL9 has been out a while now. AlmaLinux has released their "9" version last week.
No Rocky 9 yet.

Now you might think that a week or two won't really make a lot of difference in the long run.
But some people/companies are anxious to get upgrades a new features. Entire product
lines are waiting for these upgrades. Sometimes which distro I use is determined by who
"gets it out there" quicker.

 

[SlowCoder]

I disagree with your assessment.
- I would think any company isn't just going to upgrade as soon as possible, unless there's a critical reason to, like security. They want to vet new software to ensure compatibility, stability and security.
- A company will tend to stick with a product line, because it's proven and most familiar to them.
- Time has shown again and again, that first out isn't necessarily the best, because product may have been rushed out without final testing. Think XBox vs Playstation at Christmas.

 

[TheProf]

I agree with @SlowCoder, every company I ever worked at, would never implement the latest features in production, this is mainly to avoid the risk of potential bugs that impact production. So having the Rocky Linux distro a few weeks or even months behind, to me does not sound like a big deal.

Now I am sure, there are use cases where some new feature address the issue the customer might be having in production, but regardless, even if it were the case, you still need to do all the testing and verification to make sure that the new features don't have severe bugs that could negatively impact the environment.

In either case, you never want to update to the latest features without letting some time pass, so that the bugs can be fixed, as well as, being aware of what the bugs are in the first place before installing.

 

[f33dm3bits]

I don't think it's a problem because most people don't use a version x.0 of anything but wait till a x.1 is released. Also if one Rhel clone were to disappear, it's easy enough to switch from one Rhel clone to the other without having to reinstall. Anyways I'm sticking with Rocky Linux!!

 

[dos2unix]

- I would think any company isn't just going to upgrade as soon as possible, unless there's a critical reason to, like security

I didn't say all, I said some. Certainly some do. Including the company I'm working for now.
We already have Alma9 and Fedora36 out in the field, and in the cloud.

Not just for security for often new functionality.

 

[SlowCoder]

I didn't say all, I said some. Certainly some do. Including the company I'm working for now.
We already have Alma9 and Fedora36 out in the field, and in the cloud.

Not just for security for often new functionality.

What kind of functionality did your company rush out? Do you think it was worth the potential for issues? I ask this constructively, not critically.