If we take stability as a parameter, is it safe to match them like this?
- Fedora --> Ubuntu
- CentOS Stream --> Ubuntu LTS
- RHEL --> Debian
I know that CentOS stream is more kind of a rolling release but… feels like an LTS distro in practice… or it is just me?
Edit: adding some context. I am planning to setup a dev machine that I will connect to remotely and would like to babysit very little while having stable and fresh packages. In the Ubuntu world we would go to an LTS release but on the RPM/Dnf world is there any other distro apart from CentOS Stream? And also is CentOS Stream comparable to an LTS release at all considering that they do not have release number?
RHEL --> Debian in the sense that RHEL is a root distro from which the others spring. But there the similarities very much end.
Not really, Fedora is upstream of CentOS Stream, which itself is upstream of RHEL. So it’s kind of the other way around: RHEL is based on Fedora, while Ubuntu is based on Debian (although not on Debian stable).
- RHEL is more akin to Ubuntu LTS with a Canonical support contract.
- CentOS Stream is more like openSUSE Tumbleweed. I’m not aware of any mainstream apt-based distros that have that kind of rolling release cycle.
- Fedora is like Ubuntu.
But it’s not really a 1:1 comparison, since they all have different ideologies when it comes to package management and update cycles.
Opensure Tumbleweed is more like Fedora Rawhide, they get the absolute bleeding Edge. CentOS stream is downstream of Fedora, so you get less newer packages
I disagree, since both Stream and Tumbleweed are rolling releases with solid bases. openSUSE rigorously tests packages before deploying to the stable branch.
Ultimately, there’s not going to be a perfect analog between all of them, because like I said, they all have different ideologies and packaging goals.
IIRC, within RHEL it goes fedora (next major) -> centos stream (next minor) -> RHEL (current major.minor).
With Debian and its derivatives (e.g Ubuntu) this means that Debian-unstable corresponds to fedora, Debian-testing corresponds to CentOS stream and Debian-stable corresponds to RHEL. (Roughly of course).
Ubuntu is based off of some flavor of Debian and is therefore downstream of it: Debian (unstable I think) -> Ubuntu -> Ubuntu LTS.
But as far as which version has the newest packages then sure, your list is correct.
Ubuntu LTS is not newer than Debian.
CentOS Stream is also very old for some reason, they are CI/CD and get more updates, but it is just a step before RHEL.
Fedora really has no middleground which I find unperfect.
Also dont forget OpenSUSE, the free Enterprise distros, OpenEuler, Mandriva and more.
What’s your goal? Is it safe to match is a very open ended question.
Take RHEL, it’s meant to be a paid distro for enterprise, something Debian isn’t. But you could draw similarities too.
What’s are you trying to learn?
It is to match them based on how cutting edge and stable they are
Based on your new context in your edits, you should look at Aurora or Bluefin, which is both stable and has access to whatever is in DNF.
Thanks, I’ll look into that!
Beware that it’s immutable-ish, so you may have to retrain your brain to think in containers/layers. It’s one of my favorite ways to do Linux, though, and I don’t think I can ever go back.
If it doesn’t fit, you could look into how you can roll your own based on an upstream image and booting from a distrobox or podman container.
In the Ubuntu world we would go to an LTS release but on the RPM/Dnf world is there any other distro apart from CentOS Stream?
CentOS Stream is not a distro, it’s the carcass of the distro that Red Hat killed, CentOS. Stream is a beta testing program for RHEL, no more, no less. CentOS wasn’t even a Red Hat project originally, but Red Hat hired the maintainers of CentOS and gained control over it.
When Red Hat killed CentOS, going revising CentOS 8’s previous end of life from the end of May 2029 to the end of December 2021, one of the original founders of CentOS, Gregory Kurtzer, started Rocky Linux as a replacement for what CentOS was supposed to be, an open source, binary-compatible version of RHEL. Rocky Linux works well for this purpose. I’ve heard that Alma Linux does, as well, but I have never tried it.
I know that CentOS stream is more kind of a rolling release but… feels like an LTS distro in practice… or it is just me?
CentOS Stream should not be used for anything beyond hobby projects. It is, by nature, buggier than Rocky Linux or RHEL, and it was never intended to be stable. And there’s no reason to use it: If you want more stable versions than Fedora, Rocky Linux works just fine.
I have asked the same question on Reddit and a Fedora maintainer has provided some additional info that goes against what you, me and the general public thinks in terms of Stream being a “rolling release”
CentOS Stream definitely has releases. Stream is a build of the major-release branch of RHEL. Every RHEL minor release is just a snapshot of Stream that gets continued maintenance.
The confusion around this came from some early descriptions of Stream from Red Hat staff, who called it a “rolling release.” And one of the reasons I made those diagrams that compare RHEL to other releases is that from the point of view of someone who works on RHEL – which is a set of feature-stable releases – the idea that Stream is rolling relative to RHEL makes sense. But that terminology is very confusing, because from the point of view of people who work anywhere else in the Free Software ecosystem, Stream is just a normal stable release, because most of the Free Software community isn’t building feature-stable release series like Red Hat is.
I’ve seen a number of Red Hat engineers call the use of that term a mistake, and they don’t use it any more
Whatever terms they want to use for CentOS Stream is fine with me. The main thing I was trying to communicate is that it’s not worth using, and nothing in the linked post contradicts that
Sir, either you troll, or have the wrong idea why the distros mentioned are different things with different goals.
In case it was intended seriously, I’ll probably descend into madness because of the ubu lts = centos stream assessment.
Isn’t CentOS Stream equivalent to Ubuntu LTS in terms of stability? They both tend to use packages that have been somewhat tested alas not to the point of Debian/RHEL
If we define stable as unchanging for release cycle, yes. Just really hard to come up with equivalence with these two otherwise.
Edit: adding some context. I am planning to setup a dev machine that I will connect to remotely and would like to babysit very little while having stable and fresh packages. In the Ubuntu world we would go to an LTS release but on the RPM/Dnf world is there any other distro apart from CentOS Stream? And also is CentOS Stream comparable to an LTS release at all considering that they do not have release number?
Wanting both stable and fresh packages is unfortunately somewhat difficult in my experience. I think the primary choice within the Fedora ecosystem is if you want to have fresh packages (Fedora) or if you prefer a slower update cycle and more stable packages (RHEL/Alma/Rocky). In the second case you can also choose if you wish to pay Red Hat for support (RHEL) or not (Alma or Rocky).
One thing that’s quite different in RHEL vs Ubuntu/Debian ist that it gets minor releases that include substantial new features. For example you’ll get new compilers, python versions, drivers, … CentOS Stream gets those slightly ahead of RHEL/Alma/Rocky (a cynical person might say that CentOS Stream is a rolling beta for RHEL). But, IMHO that’s not really a strong reason to use CentOS Stream.
If you’d go with an Ubuntu LTS release, then I’d look into RHEL/Alma/Rocky.
