Rocky Linux has clearly taken the place as new the LTS distribution of the “Fedora family”. In the past, we had daily distribution Fedora Linux, LTS distribution CentOS and LTS distribution with support RHEL. Now we have daily distribution Fedora Linux, CentOS (tbh useless for non-developers), LTS distribution Rocky Linux and LTS distribution with support RHEL.
Yeah, here is also Alma Linux and more, but by far the most used and advanced is Rocky Linux.
I think we should work especially with them, as we did and do with the CentOS Project. At first, we should create own sub for the Rocky Project to this forum.
I recategorized this post to Site Help & Feedback since it is about this Discourse forum itself.
Collaboration with our downstreams is generally a good idea, but it looks like Rocky already has an established community forum (also on Discourse). I’m wondering what a Rocky Linux tag would look like for this forum if it existed. I’d be hesitant to create something without involving the Rocky Linux community first, because it could be perceived as rude for us to make a tag and fragment their community.
I agree with @jflory7. There is a well-established Rocky forum, and, if I saw a Rocky Linux question here, my reflex would be to point the asker to the Rocky forums, which are, by now, pretty well-established. Not that it’s a horrible idea, just that it seems, at least right now, unnecessary.
I’m open to having Rocky or Alma sections here, if they are wanted. That might help bring users from those communities into being active participants in Fedora as an upstream.
But I am not convinced of the basic premise. First, I don’t think CentOS Stream is “useless for non-developers”. But, that aside, I don’t think that Rocky is clearly dominant. Here’s my latest stats for EPEL.[1][2]
You can see that for 8, “classic” CentOS Linux actually still dominates, but that RHEL is the next most popular — that of course includes both paid and no-cost options. CentOS Stream is the next, and AlmaLinux isn’t really far behind.
RHEL growth is more conservative, and both Rocky and CentOS Stream look to be shooting upwards quickly.[3] And AlmaLinux, again, not really far behind.
It does seem like Rocky has an edge here, but I don’t think that’s surprising — people who more cautious and choose RHEL are also probably not yet ready for 9. And, at this point, 9 usage overall is tiny compared to 8:[4]
Via DNF Countme. Now, of course, EPEL isn’t everything, but my basic theory is that people deploying free-as-in-beer rebuilds are probably more likely to enable EPEL — and at least not less — so the relative numbers are useful. ↩︎
This view is “persistent” systems — I’m excluding “ephemeral” machines that only show up once. Test machines, CI, short-lived cloud instances, etc. I can provide that if you’re really interested. It basically shows the same thing, but messier. ↩︎
I wouldn’t read too much into the latest month or so of the curve — maybe Stream is tapering off, but we’ll see. ↩︎
and although the Countme numbers don’t go back to 7, in fact 7 is still by far the most popular! ↩︎
