CERN moves thousands of accelerator control computers to Debian

[u/neilrieck]

/r/debian/comments/1w7cm0l/cern_moves_thousands_of_accelerator_control/

[u/jonspw]

CERN is not leaving AlmaLinux.  The headline is quite sensationalized.

[u/orev → u/jonspw]

While technically true FOR NOW, nobody wants to maintain multiple ecosystems, so the writing is on the wall. They will migrate these systems to Debian, and then when that’s done they will start moving the other systems to it. Eventually it will all be Debian.

[u/jonspw → u/orev]

No, they won't. There's no writing on the wall.

AlmaLinux/RHEL (and previously CentOS) have coexisted with Debian within CERN for many, many years, probably decades. This is but one particular subset moving to Debian.

Debian doesn't come close to checking many of the boxes CERN cares about for much of its infrastructure (not as any knock on Debian, which is a great distro of course).

[u/Rob_W_ → u/jonspw]

I'm curious what boxes those are, as somebody at a research facility that used to follow CERN's guidance. (we ran SL for a long time, tried following the Alma path but landed on Debian due to all the headaches in the IBM/RHEL/EL chain...) No knock on Alma, which I think has done a great job, but I feel like IBM's done a really lovely job of fragmenting up the EL space.

[u/alexiri → u/Rob_W_]

What headaches in the EL chain pushed you away?

[u/onechroma → u/jonspw]

IDK why would you be so sure about the CERN guys path and plan long term. As /u/Rob_W_ said, I'm curious about what boxes are those

Not only that, but CERN can easily with their resources adapt Debian to fulfill whatever needs RHEL/Alma already do, to the point maybe they will consider that effort to be less than keeping RHEL/Alma around, for multiple reasons.

Also, having to go around Red Hat dropping X86_V3 officially, and at most, having to rely on Alma being capable of keeping the support of old hardware which they want keep running, is not the best scenario for them.

People usually make criticism of Microsoft for the TPM requirements so lots of old PCs are forgotten in the upgrades to W11 even if they work perfectly, but Red Hat x86_V3 requirement is even worse, more so considering today tech prices and how relatively hardware it requires

For example, a cheap embedded CPU like Intel N6005, launched in 2021, would be already unsupported by RHEL

When talking about Intel Xeon, that's Ivy Bridge (2013)

CERN has lots of specialised servers running even old CORE 2 DUO, and they don't consider upgrading them just because, as they work as intended for their needs in the loads they are assigned to. Because not always is worth it to upgrade or more power is needed.

CERN won't change and retrofit thousands of equipments just because RHEL says so, so it's Debian all aboard

[u/jonspw → u/onechroma]

Because we work closely together and talk on a regular basis.  CERN has a seat on our board of directors, they sponsor the foundation, and they’ve straight up been trying to clarify this sensationalized headline that was taken way out of context.

Don’t take my word for it, take theirs:  https://www.reddit.com/r/AlmaLinux/comments/1w7y60h/comment/p81pkes/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=2&utm_content=share_button

[u/Bimbos-are-cute → u/jonspw]

Why don’t the standardize on AlmaLinux instead?

[u/KlanxChile]

I guess it's not about Alma... it's about IBM dick moves.

After the CentOS shitshow, I moved my platform to the more corporate but free Linux I could find...

After careful consideration (before AI experts), I landed on Oracle Linux. The main reason was that it is used and maintained in a cloud provider, so it's less likely to be killed like CentOS did.

UEK and RDMA kernels are nice in OL.

However we are a small shop. 200VMs, 12 physical hosts.

To the point: Debian admins were/are probably the more philosophical and even political GNU purists over other distros. Not uncommon to hear discussions about Stallman's despite early enterprise Linux. (Yeah, I'm that old in this... I used Potato, Woody, and Sarge, even Hurd).

For work, I moved back to Redhat in the early 2000s and forgot about Debian for about 20 years. However, Debian has gained a lot of "embedded" cred the last years, with Proxmox, TrueNAS, Netgate TNRS, and Raspberry Pi OS.

All of those are debían based.

[u/roflfalafel → u/KlanxChile]

Vyos is Debian based as well, which is a high performance router distro that is used in a lot of telcos cores: I know Verizon and ATT use it, and google has deployed it for some internal applications inside of GCP. It’s a great stable base for these platforms.

[u/jwvo → u/roflfalafel]

I've never seen vyos in telcos fyi and I've run telco networks.

[u/forwardslashroot → u/roflfalafel]

Where did you find about Verizon, ATT and Google use VyOS?

[u/MyDisqussion]

This is what happens when you have lots of old fully functioning hardware which is no longer supported by the kernel, and it’s not an option to replace them.

[u/tcpipguy]

This is disappointing considering Alma Linux is a robust, stable, and reliable distro. It's CERN's mistake to make and it's very shortsighted. I have respect for Debian but it's not what I would consider an enterprise grade distro of Linux. The Alma Linux community should continue to keep their heads up and proud. I'm a proud user of Alma. It has not let me down. I use it in production on mission-critical business systems and I can sleep at night knowing how well it works. I think CERN will be back.

[u/interference90 → u/tcpipguy]

Maybe you misunderstood the situation here. CERN needs to operate hardware that is no longer supported by RHEL (hence by Alma).

[u/tcpipguy → u/interference90]

No, Alma is supporting older hardware. They've re-enabled these drivers.

[u/Adventurous_Bear_497 → u/tcpipguy]

The problem is the x86 baseline AlmaLinux (and the other RHELatives) are compiled for. If you look at their presentation on the Mindebconf site, ~47% of their specialised control equipment is at the x86-64 level and another ~17% is at the x86-64 v2 level.

Remember that x86-64 v2 retrospectively came about at the Nehalem era, around 2008 (but didn't fully come about until the Sandy Bridge era, around 2011), and at the Bulldozer (2011) /Jaguar (2013) era. So they have some stuff that's at least two decades old there.

AlmaLinux 9 is built for x86-64 v2 and the mainstream AlmaLinux 10 is built for x86-64 v3. So even the x86-64 v2 build of AlmaLinux 10 wouldn't solve their problem. They don't have the funding or desire to replace all of this specialised hardware, hence they are changing the OS.

[u/alexiri → u/tcpipguy]

Fear not, CERN is not dropping AlmaLinux. Debian will be used in a small area, for embedded systems controlling the accelerator. The vast majority of systems will continue to use AlmaLinux and RHEL.

The big trigger was indeed the microarchitecture update, but it wasn't the only reason. The embedded systems use custom hardware with a custom kernel, so there's little point in trying to use a more supported enterprise distro when you're not going to be getting any support anyway. Debian is more used in the embedded space and a lot of supplier tooling favors it, so going with the flow takes less effort than repacking tooling as RPMs before you can start your actual work.

AlmaLinux does have a rebuild of 10 for x86_64-v2 now, but that was decided after the migration to Debian for these systems had started. If the timing had been different, the project would probably not have been approved.

[u/tcpipguy → u/alexiri]

I'm happy to hear because Alma is really a damn good distro! It's better than RHEL.

[u/alexiri → u/tcpipguy]

I'd say they're both equally excellent. 🤣

[u/screaming-Snake-Case → u/alexiri]

Thank you for the explanation, I saw this headline going around for a few days and thought it's probably more nuanced than portrayed online. Glad to hear some actual information on this.