CentOS New "AutoSD" Distribution Announced For In-Vehicle Linux Distro

[phoronix]

Phoronix: CentOS New "AutoSD" Distribution Announced For In-Vehicle Linux Distro

The CentOS Automotive Special Interest Group today is announcing the Automotive Stream "AutoSD" Linux distribution...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=CentOS-AutoSD-Announced

[skeevy420]

Without looking deeper into it, AutoSD sounds like some sort of memory card daemon or management tool. Granted, Microsoft Windows sounds like a company that could be make plastic windows so WTF do I know about naming things?

I have to image they need the newer software with Stream due to all the quick power-on requirements that vehicle operating systems are supposed to have (especially if they have video systems). As someone driving a car with the horrid Microsoft Sync system I really hope this evolves into a standardized in-car operating system instead of the current status quo of every maker having a different infotainment OS from different companies.

My obligatory snarky comment:

Just because my car rolls on wheels doesn't mean that it needs a rolling release operating system.

[RahulSundaram]

Just because my car rolls on wheels doesn't mean that it needs a rolling release operating system.

CentOS stream is not really a rolling release in the traditional sense, it has distinct parallel set of updates, CentOS 8 stream is different from CentOS 9 stream and the updates follow the pattern of RHEL ie) largely bug and security fixes and not a full rebase of upstream versions. In addition to that, RHEL continues to be released and maintained the same way as before including the automotive variants.

[Jabberwocky]

What is the incentive for a community distro to be in the automotive industry?

the place where anyone and everyone can join, contribute, and experiment and benefit from the infrastructure developed around this SIG, but without engaging Red Hat

Anyone can use CentOS AutoSD you can even upstream your code, but you have to maintain every piece of driver code and or userland code for every piece of hardware in every vehicle you sold for every new release of Centos AutoSD to get the latest security updates... or you can buy RHEL and get the sweet stable interface so you don't need to spend so much time updating your code... but anyone can work together on CentOS AutoSD!

At this stage it would be less confusing if they just called CentOS free-to-try RHEL.
</rant>

I would rather have people using Linux than Wandoos, but that's the only positive thing I can come up with right now. :-/

[BingoNightly]

What is the incentive for a community distro to be in the automotive industry?



Anyone can use CentOS AutoSD you can even upstream your code, but you have to maintain every piece of driver code and or userland code for every piece of hardware in every vehicle you sold for every new release of Centos AutoSD to get the latest security updates... or you can buy RHEL and get the sweet stable interface so you don't need to spend so much time updating your code... but anyone can work together on CentOS AutoSD!

Textbook definition of value-add.

[RahulSundaram]

Textbook definition of value-add.

Yes, if you want to put in sweat equity and maintain a distro based on CentOS stream (like some large organizations do), that is a valid model if you have the in-house resources to do so and sometimes interesting changes from that effort can trickle upstream and you can use the SIGs to coordinate that which benefits future releases but if you want to offload that platform maintenance to Red Hat, Red Hat is equipped to handle that for you in exchange for a service fee and support contract because they have upstream developers and support staff on a payroll. Fairly straightforward.

[skeevy420]

CentOS stream is not really a rolling release in the traditional sense, it has distinct parallel set of updates, CentOS 8 stream is different from CentOS 9 stream and the updates follow the pattern of RHEL ie) largely bug and security fixes and not a full rebase of upstream versions. In addition to that, RHEL continues to be released and maintained the same way as before including the automotive variants.

I wasn't expecting that in-depth of a response for an attempt at humor. Thanks, I suppose.

Yes, if you want to put in sweat equity and maintain a distro based on CentOS stream (like some large organizations do), that is a valid model if you have the in-house resources to do so and sometimes interesting changes from that effort can trickle upstream and you can use the SIGs to coordinate that which benefits future releases but if you want to offload that platform maintenance to Red Hat, Red Hat is equipped to handle that for you in exchange for a service fee and support contract because they have upstream developers and support staff on a payroll. Fairly straightforward.

Exactly. It's like hosting your own server, security, IT staff, and more for some app when you could just hire a few people in devops and host it on some provider. Although with this I see it being somewhere in between since I don't assume that the RHEL programmers are going to magically know all the features for every vehicle from every manufacturer coming out in 2029. I imagine a lot of collaboration will go into this.

[RahulSundaram]

I wasn't expecting that in-depth of a response for an attempt at humor. Thanks, I suppose.

My response was to you but directed largely at folks who look at the word "stream" and assume naturally that it is more a rolling release. Red Hat I think botched the naming because it is neither memorable (silverblue) or descriptive (core os). They also botched other things including not announcing the expanded free subscription of RHEL, culling down the maintenance lifecycle of CentOS 8 abruptly and not explaining the community development model properly among other things leading to a lot of confusion around the topic. Having seen the earlier botched transition from Red Hat 9 to Fedora, there is a distinct sense of dejavu around this topic for me and I thought I would take the moment to add some clarity.

Exactly. It's like hosting your own server, security, IT staff, and more for some app when you could just hire a few people in devops and host it on some provider. Although with this I see it being somewhere in between since I don't assume that the RHEL programmers are going to magically know all the features for every vehicle from every manufacturer coming out in 2029. I imagine a lot of collaboration will go into this.

The h/w situation isn't entirely dissimilar to partnerships they have with server h/w manufacturers like Dell or Lenova etc for RHEL. They have in-house engineers including a very large kernel team who could fix h/w drivers if they have to but largely that is handled via their partners through certifications and contractually maintained update collaborations.

[Duve]

Having seen the earlier botched transition from Red Hat 9 to Fedora, there is a distinct sense of dejavu around this topic for me and I thought I would take the moment to add some clarity.

Ok, so I was not the only one getting that feeling.