What is CentOS? | Fedora Podcast 059

A couple of episodes ago, we interviewed Carl George about extra packages for enterprise Linux, better known as Apple. And in that episode, we talked a lot about a fellow community project called CentOS. And so we we got a lot of questions about what is CentOS, how does it relate to Fedora? And so we figured what better opportunity than an episode of this show to talk about a very closely related project in CentOS. >> [music] [music] >> Hey there and welcome to the Fedora podcast. I'm your host. I'm one of your hosts, Eric the IT guy, Hendricks. So excited to be uh talking about uh CentOS today, both the the community and the project. This is episode 59, but it would not be an episode of the Fedora podcast if I didn't bring in someone to uh someone to get all of my jokes and all of my references. And that of course is the Ask Noah guy himself, Noah Challaya. Welcome to the Fedora podcast, my friend. >> Hello. Hello. Thanks for being thanks for welcoming me. [laughter] >> Thank Thanks for being here. You can tell we've done done this for a number of years. Although piece of personal news, Noah, I am proud to announce that after last episode's debacle, I went and rewatched hackers. So, I now finally, after a couple of weeks, get your uh uh roof leak uh reference. >> That's great. You're ready to hack the Gibson. This is awesome. This is a better episode already. [laughter] >> So, no, we have a full house today. Uh, I don't think we've ever had this many guests on the Fedora podcast before, but we're going to have a bit of a panel, if you will, about CentOS Linux and the CentOS community. >> Awesome. Let's welcome them in. >> Yeah. So, first up is uh Sean Mccants. I'm just going to go go down my list. This is in by no means in any priority order. Just going down the list here. Sean Mccants, why don't you tell us who you are, what you do uh and what you do for technically Red Hat. Um, and then of course everyone's favorite question. What do you do for fun? >> Oh goodness. Okay. Uh, hi, I'm Sean Mccantsz. Um, I work for Red Hat as the CentOS community architect. Uh, which means that I take care of um, non-technical things around the project. So, I'm the one who puts on um, uh, CentOS Connect, the the main CentOS contributor conference. Uh, I handle the blog and the social media and the outreach and and uh, other stuff like that. Um I also as of a couple weeks ago happened to be the um Fedora community architect. So um kind of a a dual role in uh doing both of those things. Um as for fun um I guess a few things but I uh I do like video games. I'm a huge Zelda nerd actually which like if you look there's always like Zelda stuff in the background of my um of my shot. So that's >> So you must be really excited about the remaster that's that's getting ready to come out. I'm I'm I'm pretty stoked about that. Yeah, >> that's awesome. And speaking of Fedora Community Architect, shameless self-plug for the show, you need to hit the subscribe button like right now because not the next episode, but two episodes from now, so about a month from now, we're actually going to be interviewing Sean and Justin who are the now current and former community architects about Fedora. And we'll we'll talk a little bit about what that position is, some plans for the project, that kind of thing. So, not only do you get a shameless plug, but also a little bit of a sneak peek for an upcoming episode. Up next on my list is Amy Marish. Amy, welcome to the Fedora podcast. >> Thanks for having me. >> Yeah. So, tell us uh tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, what you do for CentOS andor Fedora, and uh the uh crowdmandated uh question of what's something you do for fun. >> I'm also employed by Red Hat. I am the technical marketing manager focusing on OpenStack, so nothing Linux related. And I serve as the chair of the board for CentOS. Um, >> as far as for fun, I ride horses and train dogs for agility. >> Oh, cool. >> Cool. >> Now, today's panel of people is the exception to the rule that most people that work in open source don't get paid to work on open source. So today's kind of the exception to that rule, but um but that's awesome that you you actually work on OpenStack by day and CentOS by night. That's that's really cool. >> And uh last but not least, the amazing the incredible the well-dressed man, Mr. Troy Dawson himself. >> Well, I I will claim one of those things. I think I'm well-dressed. Um, same questions. >> Same questions. Who who are you and what what do you do and why are you here and what do you do for fun? >> Um, so my name is Troy Dawson. I also currently work for Red Hat. I am the currently the Centos Stream team lead. Um, what do I do for fun? I actually build operating systems for fun. If I wasn't building Sentos stream, I would be building Sentos stream. Um, [laughter] >> that's a great answer. You're in the right position, >> right? >> And as a result of that, that's one of the things I do for fun. building. I'm on the Centos board, but I'm also on the Centos ISA SIG where I am building Centos stream on risk >> five >> uh as well as alternative images SIG which where I build uh images alternative CentOS images as well as right now I'm working on the risk 5 images >> um and because that's too much computer stuff uh I also sew Um, so not only am I well-dressed, I have made >> I'm designed to make these shirts and I love penguins, as you can see, and make the stuffed penguins in the stuffed. >> So, what I'm hearing is Troy and Amy have the most wellbalanced lives, Eric. They're not >> That's what I hear as well. >> All consumed by nerdisms, >> unlike Sean. >> I'm always in front of a screen, apparently. Yes. >> Yeah. You and me both, buddy. I hear that. >> So, >> so today Yeah, go ahead. >> What is Tell me a little bit about the origins of CentOS. Um, I understand that, you know, it's I think we know it's a it's it's a community rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but where did it come from? Why does it exist? And in what state does it exist now? >> I think I can take that. So back in the day, CentOS Linux was a rebuild of RE. It was a trailing project. It was basically a clone of RE. Um, what it is now, it is the CentOS project and CentOS stream. So we call the community the project and what comes out of the project is stream or what comes out of the individual SIGs. As Troy already mentioned, he's rebuilding for risk five and other platforms. There's hypers scale which specifically makes a version of CentOS that is used on big hypers scale environments. So what it was and what it is now is two different places in the life cycle. Um, we are actually closer to Fedora now than we were. Um, because we take the ALN version of Fedora, we get it where we want it, we make a cut, do a little more work on it, and then it be we have a pre-release, a release, which then becomes the next version of RE. So it's a little it's more open- source some people would say now because you can contribute to it especially in the sigs whereas before it was taking what existed in re using those source packages changing out shadow man and making it sent to us. Does that help explain it? >> It does. Can you define you used a term or an abbreviation was it ELN? Can you help define that a little bit for us? >> Um take that one Amy. >> Yeah. Yeah, you take it. I >> was gonna say that's part of part of my what I'm working with. >> Um, Fedora ELN is Fedora Fedora rawhide re the packages the subset of packages that would go into rail recompiled with the the flags and other tags set to what rail would have them. Um, sometimes the biggest example people always use is butterfs. Rail doesn't have Butter FS. Fedora does. That flag has been turned off in in Rail and Fedora ELN. The reason we do this is because there's a lot of in the spec files, the RPM files that you find in RPM, there's a lot of if Fedora and or if this or if that. And when they build, we want to make sure they don't break on rail. >> Okay. >> So, I think I think what what the kind of the imagery that you want to use and I I use this all the time when I was a Red Hatter. Um, picture the upstream GitHub repository where the Linux kernel lives. We we've talked on the show a number of times about how Fedora Rawhidede in particular pulls from that upstream repo. Um, and that's th those are the packages that we rebuild that we uh that Fedora has opinions about how a kernel should operate, what flags are are compiled, what hardware platforms we're going to compile for, and that that eventually becomes Fedora rawhide, which becomes Fedora Linux, whether that's the server variant or the desktop variant. So, you start to picture a river we refer to as upstream and downstream. So you've got at the top you've got Lionus Torvald and his team the the Linux team that build the Linux kernel and then you've got Fedora and then uh in in the olden times back when I first started as a Linux systems administrator then you had Red Hat Enterprise Linux. So you'd see Fedora and it was very developer focused very enduser focused um and then it would go it would get sucked into Red Hat all the enterprisy things would happen and then you'd get versions of uh you'd get versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This was of course after the split between Red Hat Linux and Fedora Linux. Correct me if I'm wrong. Um, but uh after re then downstream of re you'd have CentOS Linux and that's that's what a lot of people think of when they think of CentOS which by the way stands for community enterprise operating system. So fun fact, put that in your trivia bag. You may need it at some point. Um but uh so you'd have upstream, you'd have Fedora, you'd have re then you'd have CentOS Linux. uh about goodness uh what was that 2022 2021 >> real 9 >> yeah right around real 9 uh that that switch cents Linux retired and sent to us stream took its didn't really take its place but now CentOS stream sits squarely in between Fedora and re so like Amy was talking about it's much much more open source now because Red Hat partners individual contributors different uh SIGs SIGs are incredibly popular with CentOS special interest groups. So you have a hypervisor SIG, you have a cloud SIG, you have all these different special interest groups that are developing something specific. Now all of these partners and all of these communities can actually contribute directly to CentOS stream and know that at at most probably it'll be three years guaranteed that you will will get a new feature or a new file system or whatever into real because you you know that every 3 years re builds a new uh major version. So CentOS stream kind of leads that a little bit. Did I miss anything? I think it's important also to note because Troy mentioned Butterf FS that for instance the hypers scale SIG uses it. >> So they bring in butterfs they make their own kernel. So there are ways of getting that sooner or also getting features that will never make it to RE or could make it to RE but they're farther down the line require BEu you know and other communications that are internal that we're not involved in necessarily >> but the users can make what they need out of CentOS stream especially in the SIGs. Talk to me a little bit about Red Hat beginning to sponsor CentOS and the governmental board that is formed. So the their the project is communitygoverned and yet it gets its funding from Redhead. Can you talk a little bit about that relationship and the support that Red Hat gives to CentOS? >> As Amy pointed out, it's important to distinguish between the project uh and the deliverables, you know. So, so CentOS stream because because it contains what the next uh minor version of rail will have. Um the maintenance for CentOS stream is is rail maintenance and it's built and and developed by by uh real engineers. Um but as we talked about the sigs can make whatever they want. They can they can build on that and they do. Um so you know Red Hat of of course CentOS stream is extremely important to Red Hat uh because it's how RE is built. Um but uh you know Red Hat wants to see the the kinds of the kinds of things that we do in the SIGs. It gives an an indication of of um where the community is is interested in going where uh where potential customers are are interested in going. Um so Red Hat does you know fund the project as a whole. We we you know Red Hat provides build infrastructure and community infrastructure and sponsors the conference and uh you know CentOS presence at various events um just because it's it's important for the the long-term development um of of Red Hat's product portfolio. And I think that's the same answer you know for Fedora. Fedora is a little bit more I'd say quite a bit more forwardlooking right um but you know Red Hat is also sponsoring that be because it's important for the the long-term health of uh Red Hat's products >> and just to add a little bit about the governance um there is only one member of the board who speaks as Red Hat >> um and that is our leazison to the BEu the rest of us even if we are employed by Red Hat we are really speaking for the community um How I got involved was I started attending as part of the cloud sig um and just started answering questions about governance because I have a history of being on other boards. Um and I was elect nominated and elected onto the board. Um so it's not because I'm a Red Hatter that I'm on the board and it's not because I'm a Red Hatter that I am chair. Um so I think that's important to note. There is nothing in the governance that says there can only be so many people from a company. Um, but just because you're a Red Hatter does not mean you will be elected to the board. So, we're actually very happy that we have people from Firmeny Lab and Meta and Microsoft. Um, we used to have someone from CERN until he moved projects so he stepped down. So, having a wide base of members is also very important on the board. So we get a really good idea and have really good in um conversations on different industries and that helps us to make our decisions on how to govern the project. >> So lots of support but not to the point that there's a a conflict and or it's necessarily dominated. There's separate interests. You have freedom and autonomy as the CentOS project apart from day job we'll call it. Can you talk to me about the core distinction that most people miss when they hear CentOS, particularly when they're comparing it to Red Hat or Fedora? What would you say is is is the definition of that core distinction? >> Um, and let let me take that part. CentOS Linux no longer exists. Cent Linux was 10 years of support. CentOS stream is five years of support. I think we've already mentioned before CentOS Linux was downstream. sent to us. Stream is upstream. Oh, now I forgot the the actual question. Let me explain stream and and and the integration between FedoraN stream and the current addition of stream and rail because it's changed over the past year uh in my opinion in a much better way. Um we've we've mentioned the Fedora ELN goes into Central Stream and then into Rail, but the tie between rail and central stream has become extremely tight. When a rail developer makes a change, Gibbc VI or Vim or whatever it is, they make that change in the central stream GitLab repository. When they do that, it immediately gets built and checked on both rail and central stream at the same time. That exact same code gets built on central stream and rail at the same time, it then goes through various tests and that packager if they're happy with it and it pass all their tests, they say, you know, they we'll just say a checkbox. they make a checkbox and it then gets uh marked we we call it pending but it doesn't really matter but it goes into Centto Stream pretty much immediately and then for real re has a six-month release cadence but Centos stream has a oneweek release cadence so you're going to see that update I'm going to use Vim as the example even though it doesn't get updated very much you're going to see that update in Vim uh in one week, but in rail, the next rail is say 10.3, it's going to be, you know, one two to six months before you're going to see that updated VIM. And that's where currently this stream and rail is tied together. And it's it's very tight. It used to it used to be different. The year before it would be built on CentOS and there was this hand passing back and forth. Now it's very tightly integrated and this allows uh I'm going to say customers but it's not just customers users u clones and alma linux uses our stuff so that people can see what's coming into rail in the next next thing and they get a preview immediately instead of having to wait six months or be a special partner to get a beta. Um and so the central stream stuff right now is really tied in with rail and it it's it is tying us the central stream part closer to the rail environment but then we come to the community part and that's where I can't remember what your question was. >> Absolutely. So basically just looking for that distinction of what what is the what is the definition of stream and and how does that track um compared to to re >> oh then I think I answered it pretty well I hope >> ve very much so my my followup would be that a lot of people just assume that cent stream is just the unofficial re beta which I argue strongly against. Um, so my question is, uh, what what what use cases are we seeing for CentOS stream? Who's who's out there using it? >> Oh, Sean or Amy, if you want to answer, you can, but I I have a good answer for this. >> Go ahead. >> Um, there's there's three main people. Uh there's uh industry uh big big companies uh since it's not a since they're on our board. I think some of these big companies that are on Centos's board, they use rail, but they also use CentOS to see what's coming down the pipe. And uh in the case of Meta, they actually have people that test and say, "Oh, this is coming down the pipe." And if they see something they don't like, they will actually interact with our developers. Sometimes the developers say, "No, that's still going to happen." Or sometimes they will actually be able to influence. Um so there's those big companies doing it. There's also the the users and I fall under this thing. I'd like a three-year cadence. Um, meaning I install CentOS stream 10 and I'm going to stay on it for three years and I don't have to worry about every six months having this big update because I get an update once a week. It's stable. It's been tested. Um, so there's that other things that people are actually using it. Should you use it if you are a as your production if you're a big company? Probably not. But is it stable for personal use? And I I'll say small business use. Yeah. If you're not if if you're needing to using it to make millions of dollars, you really need the support that Rail's going to give you. Um and but um and then the third PE I could have sworn there was three groups of people. [laughter] >> I do that all the time. So anyway, Sean and Amy, if you have different >> Yeah, I'll add on to that because two years ago at Red Hat Summit, we actually had this as part of a talk on community day and it was like why you should be using it, who should be using it, >> and it's great for partners, which Troy didn't mention. You know, you can be working on your drivers, make sure it's working, so that when the next release comes out, you know you're good. um even those businesses to make sure that their code is going to run when they upgrade. You know, they can get ahead of the the curve by knowing that, you know, they've got these machines and they're running their code and everything's happy and when it comes time to upgrade to the real version, they know they're good. Um so there another good reason to use it is feedback loop. And I always [clears throat] talk about feedback loop because if we don't know what's going on and what's working, what's not working, >> then we can't improve. >> Um, and this goes not just for CentOS stream, but every open source project I'm involved in because if we're not getting the feedback from the people using it, we can't make new features, we can't fix bugs. So being having people working on things that are not quite released yet in the product allows us to make sure that when it does get released, there's minimal bugs. If no bugs, you know, there's never going to be no bugs up. Let's be real. But, you know, you can minimalize the impact of that next upgrade. >> Can I can I add on to that, Amy? Um I I just want to also interject that cent stream bugs 99% of the times are rail bugs and when you go um to report a bug which we love feedback and I appreciate it. Uh don't necessarily send it to the central stream team because that will come to me and I am not the expert on the kernel drivers or the the various things. I will forward your thing to the people. But go ahead and just click re and select [snorts] vim or whatever the package is and but then mark sentto stream and um and go ahead for that. I'm happy to take your bugs but 99% of the times they're not for me. >> I I think that's a great way to look at it. Um, hardware drivers was something that that came to mind as well, Amy. Um, like, uh, Carl George and I have talked on a couple of different shows about how much easier it is on the Apple team. Uh and I I was working on the rail beu team when uh when Rail 9 came out and just the sheer number of packages that Red Hat partners, people that built build software to run on top of RE uh whether it's a database or some kind of web front end, they have some kind of product. the amount of people that were excited when Re 9 came out because they were able to build on CentOS stream 9 well ahead of the Real 9 release and being able to just say, "Hey, guess what? Real 9.0 was just announced at Red Hat Summit. The the the ISOs, the packages, they're all available today. And guess what? Day one, we can release our database or our web front end or whatever our product is. we we release on the same exact day because we've spent the last 6 8 however many months building against stream 9 and we're we're ready to go. So if you want to do if you want to do a uh you know a major version if you want to do a leap upgrade today we're we're ready to go. It's and and I just know that got even better with real 10 and I'm sure re 11 will see a similar uh improvement when stream 11 comes out here in a couple years. It just it made the CentOS and RA relationship just so much smoother, so much better for everyone involved. So, we talked a lot about sent to a stream and re. So, I I kind of want to kind of flip this over on its head and and ask ask the question, maybe Sean, I'll throw this one to you first. Um, what does that relationship look like between Fedora and CentOS? first the projects and then the the software. >> Um, sure. [snorts] Uh, so as as we mentioned, you know, it it's we we make a cut of CentOS stream from from ELN, which is effectively rawhide built as if it was real. Um, but those those releases more or less coincide with a with a Fedora release. So, you know, Fedora Linux has a new release every six months. Uh, Santos Stream has a new release every three uh, every three years. So, it's every well, how you know, do the math. That's six releases, I suppose. Right. I have a degree in math. I should be able to do that quickly. Um, so every every three years >> carry the four square root. Yeah, I think I think your math is right there. >> I got it. [laughter] So, so every three years, uh, we we make a cut from from ELN. uh and it it it's basically starting from or has more or less the package set or the package versions of the package it does have as the corresponding uh Fedora Linux release. Um although obviously as we talked about you know it's it is different. Um, so it's important I think if you want to see something, if you want to see something in CentOS stream 11, if you want to see something in RE 11, you should be working in Fedora right now, right? That's the way to do it. Um, and if you look at the people the the people in the community that are um that are in the CentOS community that are doing work um in in our various SIGs and are are trying to make you know good use of CentOS um they're they're all Fedora contributors. Um I think every single one of them they might identify first as CentOS contributors but like the fact is Fedora is how uh how work gets done. um to make things happen in CentOS. So uh obviously I mean Fedora is is the the upstream of CentOS and it's a very important uh project for us >> and I think it's also important to note that we share things like the FA account. Um >> so there's a lot of integration between the two projects. We're on their matrix server. Um, I think our mailing list might run off of their mail server as well these days. So, there's a lot of integration between the two. Um, and [clears throat] that's a good thing because they are our upstream. So, being on very good terms with them, working closely with them is important, you know, um, it helps to make decisions more smooth between the two groups as well. So, it's not just technical that it helps, but communitywise as well. A lot of times you'll actually see us sharing booths places. Um [clears throat] Sean even made a tablecloth that is half fedora, half sent to us. So when we're, you know, in the booth together, we're we're well branded, but you'll see pop people crossing to both sides of the table to answer questions. Um and it's a great way to run the communities. >> Amy, you talked a little bit about the makeup of the governing board. Can you talk to me a little bit about the mechanics of how CentOS uh is governed today? Um what role do special interest groups play? Um talk to me a little bit about the governance model. >> So looking from the board down, >> [clears throat] >> um it is a self well it's dominated from within the community voted by the board itself for any new members. Sean twice a year checks with the two different cohorts. Is it is everyone happy? Is everyone staying? Do we need to have an election? Um, and basically we are overseeing things like copyrights and new SIGs coming in, but we also now have what we call the SIG council, which is made up of the SIG chairs or their representatives. Um the board has a a non- voting seat but to be involved in the in the council we also have a couple slots for if we need real representation we can ask those people to attend you know so we have it so that we can make technical decisions and the idea being that we can make technical decisions faster. Um we also have what is called Freckle which is the Fedora Red Hat CentOS leadership. Um and it's just a group that gets together weekly um and discuss different things between the communities things that are going on within Red Hat. Um so just it's non-binding. It's just conversations but it gives us a heads up of what's going on. Um and then there's the SIGs themselves. So what we ask of the SIGs is that they have leadership chair, co-chair um to some degree they're self governing um if they need something like hey we need a new server that's going to cost x amount of money you know that has to come to the board um but for them to make a decision that they want better FS have fun make make your release with butterfs. So it allows for a lot of independence and decision-m within those groups. >> And if somebody wanted to get involved either by way of governance or maybe they want to get involved in the project, um what would you point them to as kind of a starting point as a launchpad to to learn more about the project and and get their feet wet? Um, we're always making improvements to [clears throat] the documentation because when we migrated it, some stuff like the wiki is really old, but it's still available. Um, so docs is always a great place to get started. Um, [laughter] but I say that about every community. Um, because if you're using something and you see something's wrong with the documentation, please send an update to that documentation. If you can't figure out how to make an your own update, open a bug, you know, so that we can get it fixed because if we again don't know about it because sometimes when you use something regularly and you're going through instructions, you skip a part because you know it exists or it ex. Um, so Docs is always always a great place to start. Um, but look at the different SIGs and see if there's something that really interests you. Most of them are very obvious on what they are. Hypers scale works on hypers scale. Cloud is a little different in that it's half RDO which is OpenStack and half OKD which is Kubernetes. Um, but cloud made the best sense to put it there. But if you know cloud SIG and Fedora, it is more running on cloud versus cloud infrastructure which is what CentOS is. Um so there's definitely different groups that you can find something that makes meets your interest. You love working on kernels, there's KOD, you know. So there's hopefully something for everybody's interest. Um check us out on Matrix. Um we've got mailing lists. You can ask questions. Say, "Hey, I'd like to get involved. Where's a good place to start?" I love helping people getting started in open source. Um, recently at scale this past year we did what was called actually a Fedora hatch. It was a lot of open um sent to us people involved in it but it was called Fedora Hatch and we started the day with how to get started in open source with a focus on Fedora and sent to us. >> Eric, are you noticing a pattern of all of the people that say when in doubt get started with documentation? And it's almost as if there's this massive need across all open- source projects. And it's almost as if that's always the way in. It's there's a massive need. So if anybody wants, you know, even wants to doesn't know that they want to get started with something, maybe pick documentation for a particular project or a flavor of your choice and go help out in >> So there's I just wanted to add one thing because I've noticed Amy didn't say this one particular thing. CentOS.org or >> um the web page has been updated in much to Sean's thank you Sean and it's much easier to get so you can find that documentation you can find those SIGs start at cententos.org And >> yeah, >> and then everything else Amy said, >> can I add one too because Amy mentioned some SIGs that do packaging work and maybe the packages they're doing are not in your wheelhouse. Um but there's a really large repository of packages uh in Apple and Apple is technically under the Fedora umbrella but I am telling you if you if you contribute to Apple I consider you a CentOS contributor because it is I think vital to most CentOS install installations. >> We fight who who Apple should belong to. [laughter] So Noah to your point I thought you were going to point out that to get involved with CentOS that you had to join Matrix. Um which by the way if you're >> in you if you go watch back and watch the recording I get a huge grin on my face. I just didn't feel the need to distract [laughter] us again. Yeah. Uh but actually if you're interested in getting uh connected with either of these communities, you can actually go back and watch our previous episode where Noah and I sit down and we literally go through a list of things on how to get connected with Fedora specifically. But as Amy's pointed out, >> half episode is Matrix. >> Half the episode, literally half the episode is talking about Matrix and how awesome it is. Um and we actually had about a dozen or so people join the Fedora podcast matrix room. So, if you're new uh to our matrix room, thank you so much for joining. The conversation's been great this past week. Most of it's been making fun of me for not remembering a line from hackers, but you know, hey, we we live and let live. Um, but no, I I had I had two thoughts about that uh about uh some of these connections that that Amy was talking about. And by the way, all of these the there will be links and resources in the show notes. No. And I spend quite a bit of time trying to put those together. So, make sure you check out the show notes for for a lot of these links. But I I had two thoughts on that. First off is all these projects are put together by a shoestring group of developers. Some of which spend crazy people like Troy who spend their work hours building CentOS stream and then are just crazy enough that they spend uh their their non-work hours working on CentOS stream. Um, but for a lot of these projects, each each of these spaces has one, two, maybe three core people that own it and love it and and they're they're kind of uh dare I say a sort of a moderator of of that. Um, almost like a volunteer team lead, but for the most part, all of these projects, anything in open source still needs people. One of the scariest things that I'd ever heard when I was working for Red Hat was that OpenSSL, yes, OpenSSL, the thing that helps secure web traffic, has like three people that work on it, three people manage a package that touches almost every packet that goes out over the internet. Think about that. I mean, just to log into a website, it what a thousand packets go back and forth just to establish uh your your initial download. the the initial login handshake. God forbid you're using two 2FA. It's I mean three people to work on a package like OpenSS OpenSSL. Um so first off, don't convince yourself that you don't need to get involved because they've got enough people. You know, Fedora, CentOS, these are these are top-of-the-line uh projects. They they don't need my help. Baloney. They need help. Trust me. People want to take vacations. people have, god forbid, other hobbies like sewing uh penguin pillows. Um they want time off and they want help and they need new blood, new ideas, new effort. Um so definitely sign up. Second of all, Noah, the thing that I also noticed Amy mentions with with the mention of documentation and it's sad that even after gosh, I've been in I've been in this space for 10 years, Noah, you were in the space five, six, seven years before I even came around. was that open- source development isn't just coders. You don't have to understand, you don't have to be able to read the matrix, haha, pun intended, um to be able to contribute to open source. There is always a need for developers. There is always a need for the next kernel engineer to come up with some crazy subsystem for Linux. Yes, all those things are true, but there is so much that goes around it. And and I won't tell the full story here, but the short version is I actually got involved in the Fedora podcast because I was like, "Hey, I see you have a podcast and I see it's been a while since you've had a last episode. So if the current podcast host ever needs some time off or wants a co-host, I'm more than happy to to volunteer." Short version is within about two weeks, the Fedora Project podcast was my baby. Not not just volunteering every now and then. No, the whole thing the whole pipeline was my baby. So, [laughter] be careful what you volunteer for. >> Amy, I got a question for you. Eric just um reminded me of something or or clued me on to something. Would you say would you say it's a inaccurate summation to say that in some ways people who maybe are a little concerned about their own technical competence might be the best people to write technical documentation because that documentation should if it's written well presume no prior knowledge. >> Yeah. I mean how I originally gotten started in OpenStack was installing it you know. So when you're installing it, you're going through all the documentation, making sure all the configuration works. >> Um, >> and that's where I say being new sometimes gives you a set of eyes that >> you know when you're so familiar with it, you skip steps because you know what you're doing. >> Um, so yeah. So, and that's why I always say start with docs because while you're running through that, you're also doing manual QA. you know, you run into something, you ask a question on a channel or you open a bug and >> you you start having conversations with people and that's a great way to get started. Um, if every time you go on on channel and say, "Hey, I was running through the docs and I I found this, this, and this. This error message is not what I was expecting." You're also earning trust. And how to >> move up in a community and take bigger roles is also by earning trust. You know, becoming what we call a maintainer, what we call an open stack, a core reviewer. You earn trust by answering questions, um, reviewing code. Reviewing code is another great place. I don't consider myself a developer, but I can read code >> and I read it quickly. Um, but if you give me a blank page, I'm going to sit there for five hours and I am going to overengineer it. Um, but being able to run a meeting, doing other things that are within your comfort level earns you trust and as you earn trust, you take on more and more and your community appreciates you more and more. Um, so yes, not knowing what you're doing and going through and reading the code, asking questions about the code. Um, reading the documentation, asking questions about the documentation. Hey, I noticed we went from this file over here and then we added this line and then we're going over here. Is there a reason for it? And someone might go, "Oh, well, we forgot this step in the documentation or we, you know, you release code and because documentation tends to be trailing." Um, well, we release the code and we forgot to update the new documentation, you know. So, all those things come out and all those things are important in an open source community. Um, so and that happens in every community. Um, anything else? Uh, anything else about getting people involved or if there are newcomers or people that want to meet and greet? Are there any events that go on centered around CentOS? No pun intended. >> Sure. Uh, our major, uh, core contributor event is called CentOS Connect. Um, and it happens as part of the Fosdom Fringe every year. Uh so we're right now negotiating with the venue and you know all the boring stuff. Um but that that'll be you know look out for the announcement of that. Um you know with FOSM up FASDM happens in early February or late January in Brussels. Uh there are a lot of ancillary events that happen around Fazdom and we're one of them. So we're on the the Thursday and Friday before Fazdom. uh and we have like a day and a half of uh of presentations and then a half day of like team meetups and workshops and it's just it's a really big hallway track event. So if you happen if you're interested in this space and Santos or or even Fedora there's a lot of Fedorans that show up. Uh if you are someone who goes to Fosdom I think it's definitely worth uh coming in two days early for that. Um, I understand not everybody's going to fly to Brussels um in February with me. Uh, so you can find us at some other events. Um, we will have a booth at DevConf US in Boston next month. Uh, Amy and I will both be there. Um, I think that's a great event. Um, I believe we'll also have a a smaller booth at All Things Open in Raleigh in uh, October. Um, one place that we do consistently have a big presence is scale. And Amy mentioned there was the the Fedora Hatch event that we we kind of colllocated at scale um this year. Uh, and I think we're we're looking at doing that again, maybe expanding it. Um, so I think that's a wonderful event for learning to get involved, becoming a new contributor. Um and then of course we have a booth at scale as well and you can come talk to just a lot of CentOS and Fedor Fedora developers show up there. Um that that hatch format is something that we would really like to roll out to um to some other events. There are a lot of other kind of regional events. Um Frost Con was very recent I think in Germany. Linux days in Prague. These are both places that a lot of contributors show up to. Uh, so we'd like to be able to roll out this um this hatch format to to to bring in new contributors at um at other events, but obviously I can't attend every event. Uh as >> fun Texas Linux Fest. >> Oh, thank you Amy. >> Yeah, sorry I forgot that. >> Texas Linuxfest. um first weekend of November um on th on Friday and Saturday workshops on Friday and talks on Saturday and I can tell you there will be some sent to us talks on Saturday um and then we'll we're planning on having a booth there as well. >> Good. And I'll be there too. >> Sweet. >> With all my shirts. >> I I I too plan on being at Texas Linux Festival. Be a big uh big old reunion. Excellent. >> Awesome. Well, um I I picked this up from from a fellow podcaster and I stole it and I don't attribute it, so I I forget who I stole this from, but uh I want to kind of go around the horn real quick as we wrap up our episode and ask each of you if there's anything we we didn't uh cover that you're hoping to to speak to. >> Try try it out. If if you're intimidated by rail or one of these enterprise things, uh hey, one of these live things is is an easy way to to try it out and see it. Um I think the question of who who should use it is a good one and the question is try it and it might be you. [snorts] So >> to be fair, uh, so our audience probably has heard that I've been rebuilding my home lab the last few months and I almost went with CentOS stream almost, but I decided to go a little crazy and went with Fedora server bootc images. So my systems reboot every night almost. [laughter] So [clears throat] >> pretty soon you might be able to do that with the simplest stream ones. >> There you go. I'll have a decision to make then. Although I I've been Fedora podcast host for a few years off and on. So, I'm I'm I'm pretty set in my ways for using Fedora Server in my my home lab. But, uh I don't know with with some bribery. Troy, you might you might be able to get me to run Sudge West Stream. [laughter] >> I can't give you a shirt. They're too expensive. >> Dread. I tried. I tried. Well, folks, that brings us to the bottom of our episode. Um really excited that you all joined us. Thank you, Sean, Amy, Troy. This was probably the biggest Fedora podcast uh panel that we've ever had. So really appreciate each of you giving up time at the end of uh of a Monday evening as we record here. So uh really thankful to each of you for joining us. >> Thank you. >> For sure. For sure. Love it. Uh with that said, um I think our next episode we're going to be talking about project hummingbird, which is something big that Red Hat and some of the uh open surrounding open source communities are very very interested in. Uh so if you've been around uh around the neighborhood as it were, you might have heard mention of Hummingbird. We're going to be talking to uh uh uh George Castro who's been on the show before and uh Scott Mccardi who is part of the Railbeu. We'll be talking about Project Hummingbird. So if you're curious about what that is, definitely tune in two weeks from uh the release of this episode. And as I mentioned, we're bringing Shawn back. We're going to be talking about uh Fedora Community uh a little bit here in a couple of episodes. And Noah, we've got uh quite a few other episodes in the backlog, guests lined up, lot of exciting things to talk about. Of course, we'll have the next version of Fedora Linux coming up before too much longer. But uh Noah, did I miss anything? >> I think we got it. We'll see them right back here. Same bat, please. Same bat channel. >> And most of our audience is probably too young to get that reference, but but I got it. I don't have to go watch Batman. I I got it. [laughter] Well, folks, on behalf of all of our guests today and on behalf of my co-host, Noah Chalia, thank you all for joining us. Make sure to check out the show notes. And if you would, please go leave a review wherever you get your podcast uh from. This audience is growing. You all are amazing, but there's still one more person out there probably that hasn't heard the Fedora podcast yet. So, definitely go leave us a review. Until next time, really appreciate you all tuning in tuning in and we'll see you all again real soon.