Purpose of the XFS list -- was: A short digression on FOSS (Re: understanding speculative preallocation)

[Jay Ashworth]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Stan Hoeppner" <stan at hardwarefreak.com>

> CentOS is a direct clone of RHEL. It uses the RHEL kernel. Thus XFS in
> the CentOS kernel is not generally supported on this mailing list.
> CentOS (and RHEL) userland XFS tools yes, kernel no. If there were some
> other custom distro kernel out there that was non mainline, it wouldn't
> get support here either.

Like, um, SuSE.  Which hasn't used "mainline kernels" in years, if ever.

What, exactly, Stan, *is* a mainline kernel?  kernel.org kernels?

No distribution worth its oats is using those; it isn't just CentOS.

> The reason "we" (and I'm not a Red Hat employee, nor a RHEL user)
> suggest to CentOS users that they become paying RHEL customers is
> obvious: they already use the software and are familiar and presumably
> comfortable with it and prefer it. If they pay they get Red Hat support
> for XFS in the kernel, along with anything else kernel related. If they
> want to continue to use a "no cost" OS and get support on this mailing
> list, they must have a distro with a mainline kernel. So the other
> obvious option is move to a distro that uses a mainline kernel. They
> may also be able to install a mainline kernel on CentOS, as someone
> suggested previously.

Or, they could use any other distro that isn't RHEL.

Or, well, SuSE, if your assertion is actually accurate, which I think it's
not, clearly.

> Nobody here is aiming guns at CentOS users heads. They have plenty of
> support options. It just so happens that using the stock CentOS (RHEL)
> kernel isn't one of them.

Ok.  Got it.  Then, since CentOS is the only realistic non-$1200/server/yr
distro available, I won't be using XFS anymore.

Note that you are pretty wildly violating the spirit of FOSS here.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
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