Can I keep an active CentOS Linode running without interruption without an active Cpanel subscription?

I don't see why not… CPanel is an add-on app. Just because you don't want to pay for the add-on app anymore shouldn't affect how the underlying distro. You need to check with CPanel to make sure there's not some meat hooks that CPanel has in the distro that would make the distro non-functional (looking at you systemd…).

I hope what you mean by "CentOS" is CentOS Stream… The other variant, CentOS Linux, is EOL.

-- sw

(looking at you systemd…).

Hey, we could start a sysvinit vs systemd war here!! That could be fun!!! :-)

(For those who have no idea what I'm talking about… see https://betterprogramming.pub/why-most-linux-users-hate-systemd-c591eef3d034 )

That could be fun!!! :-)

Nahh… systemd is SO MUCH worse that's it's already a lost cause.

-- sw

systemd is SO MUCH worse

Systemd works fine for me. Yes it has bloat and yes it departs from the Linux/Unix philosophy but at the end of the day I don't see any of the major, most popular distros going back to Upstart or sysvinit.

Systemd works fine for me.

Wait until you have to waste multiple days trying to figure out why an update of your openspf milter broke the systemd service for opendmarc (even though the two are unrelated and share no code). opendmarc was so broken that the only way I could fix it was to build/install it from source!

I don't see any of the major, most popular distros going back to Upstart or sysvinit.

You’re right. This is the 2nd biggest reason my Linode runs FreeBSD!

— sw

my Linode runs FreeBSD

I've always liked FreeBSD. I had an expensive dedicated (managed) server at Pair Networks for fifteen years and all of their 5,000 servers in two data centers ran FreeBSD. I never had problems with it.

About two years ago they decided to switch all of them to Ubuntu Linux saying that package updates from FreeBSD as well as security patches were "slow in coming" and that FreeBSD was basically dying a slow painful death by neglect. The war was fought, the battles raged, and Linux won.

I've been in the tech business since 1972. I've seen a lot of stuff come and go (Control Data, Burroughs, Wang, Data General, IBM 360/70, Cromemco, Osborne, Kaypro, COBOL, PL/1, JOVIAL, ALGOL, LISP, RPG, mini-computers, CPM, WordStar, dBase II, Paradox, Aldus, VisiCalc, Commodore, Atari, Sinclair, MSI, TRS80, Lisa, NeXt, and more.) If there is a future for FreeBSD I simply don't see it.

About two years ago they decided to switch all of them to Ubuntu Linux saying that package updates from FreeBSD as well as security patches were "slow in coming" and that FreeBSD was basically dying a slow painful death by neglect. The war was fought, the battles raged, and Linux won.

They were wrong. Linux distros all try to be all things to all people…basically, it's an alternative to Windoze…and all the distros are marketed that way.

The last kernels I built on 9/4/2022 were as a result of security patches. The ones before that were the upgrade from 13.0->13.1 (in August?).

However, Linux is the kernel only (controlled by a single guy with anger issues). The rest of a distro is a motley collection of fantastic, crap-tastic GNU copyleft stuff cobbled together to form a usable system. If your application-development domain can't handle the requirements of the copyleft (e.g. crypto or national defense), Linux is not for you.

*BSD (I'll include all three here -- NetBSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD) use a different approach. The *BSD system is a complete system that you can use to develop programs right out of the box. Except for NetBSD, there's no GNU copyleft code in the base system (NetBSD uses gcc because it's focus is platform support). If you want to use GNU code, that decision is up to you -- not the distro provider.

• FreeBSD's focus is to be a general purpose, highly-reliable server platform.
• NetBSD's focus is platform support (it's supported on more platforms than Linux).
• OpenBSD's focus is to be a highly-reliable, highly-available, highly-secure server platform.

Note that where *BSD shines is as a server platform (although desktop support is there, that's not really where *BSD makes it's mark -- I've run FreeBSD on a fairly low-end i386 laptop…I double dog dare you to try that with Windoze or any current Linux distro!).

There's generally a longer wait time for *BSD releases because the system is well-engineered and reviews/audits for correctness, security and reliability take time. For FreeBSD, the time between major releases is about 2 or 3 years (usually there's a couple of point releases in between):

• FreeBSD 13 was released on 4/13/2021.
• FreeBSD 13.1 was released on 5/16/2022.
• FreeBSD 13.2 is projected for release on 3/27/2023
• FreeBSD 14.0 is projected for release on 7/17/2023

That's a shorter schedule than the ones for Debian 9->10 and from Debian 10->11!

…and Linux won….If there is a future for FreeBSD I simply don't see it.

Linux didn't "win" anything…except an imaginary marketing campaign…

• If you've ever streamed a movie from Netflix, you got it from a server running FreeBSD.
• If you ever got real-time weather information from the Weather Channel, you got it from a server running FreeBSD.
• If you ever played a game on a Sony PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5, these gaming consoles run a modified version of FreeBSD.
• Verisign uses FreeBSD to maintain the .com and .net root domain registries.
• McAfee enterprise firewall products are all based on FreeBSD.
• Juniper Networks devices (routers, switches, etc) all run FreeBSD.
• Dell-EMC Isilon’s enterprise storage appliances are based on FreeBSD.
• Lockheed-Martin, Cisco, Apache, NetApp, even Red Hat all use FreeBSD.
• The macOS networking stack comes from FreeBSD.

*BSD is most likely to be found in:

• network infrastructure;
• academia (no copyleft to encumber research);
• application domains requiring high levels of availability, reliability and security (web servers, etc); and
• embedded devices.

I realize I'm not going to convince anyone to switch from Ubuntu "Jumpin' Jehosaphat Jackrabbit" to FreeBSD with any of this. My point here is that there is no one system that "owns" anything about the computer industry. Published "market-share" numbers are illusory at best and a clickbait scam at worst. You should pick the best system that fits your needs and abilities. For me, it's FreeBSD (I ran several releases of Ubuntu and Debian on my Linode before switching to FreeBSD…when I found that I could).

It just works…without any drama; without the marketing histrionics of the likes of Mark Shuttleworth ("It's the bestest Ubuntu that ever was or has been! Now with our latest and greatest 5th-generation-in-3-months display server!")…and without the bloated POS bug-nest that is systemd!

-- sw

No one is saying that FreeBSD is a bad system. I'm saying the system is no longer popular among people who run their own servers. How did that come to be?

I would think Linode would offer FreeBSD if there was a demand for it.

You can run FreeBSD on Linode but compared to installing Ubuntu, it is a PITA.

You run your FreeBSD server on Linode. Why not run it on Digital Ocean since it is a distro choice (TTBOMK) and installation would be slam-dunk?

DO is a den of iniquity. They say there are rules but it appears that DO doesn’t enforce any of them. Consequently, there are no rules…

Just this week I had to complain to them about 3 intrusion attempts from DO addresses.

Installation of FreeBSD on my Linode wasn’t hard…just tedious.

I wish Linode offered FreeBSD too. However, a lot of the Linode infrastructure requires ext3/ext4 file systems so I understand why they don’t.

Maybe someday…

— sw

What will it take for FreeBSD to regain the popularity it once had?

Or will it?

You may end up as the last man standing!! :-)

What will it take for FreeBSD to regain the popularity it once had?

I dunno… FreeBSD 13 is a long (LONG!) way from BSD 4.4.

IMHO, Linux's biggest obstacles are:

• Linus; and
• the fact that Linux's technical direction is not determined by market forces or technical excellence anymore -- it's determined by the rich suits who own/run the Linux Foundation (to whom Linus is beholden for his rice bowl).

You may end up as the last man standing!! :-)

Could be, could be…

-- sw