Hi everyone,
I’ve got several Virtualmin servers running CentOS 7. I have multiple versions of PHP (5.4 through 7.4) and am just running Apache. Nothing too fancy. I typically use Remy’s PHP rather than RH’s. I am building up a new server, and defaulted to CentOS 7, I’m considering CentOS 8. Is Virtualmin on CentOS 8 mature, reliable, and every bit as good as on C7? Is there any compelling reason to pick 8 over 7, other than EOL dates?
Thanks.
Coming from CentOS 7 and Remi’s repo you’re likely to adapt just fine to CentOS 8. It has a larger memory footprint than 7 but I barely notice. Aside from newer packages, I think the modular packaging model built into dnf is the most interesting advantage 8 has over 7. Modularity is optional, and I’m still getting my head around it, but the ability to switch streams with dnf module reset without worrying about unwanted parallel installations or clashing repos has been comparable to a buying my first vacuum cleaner or some other quality of life experience.
Thanks ramin, much appreciated. I think I’ll give it a shot. C7’s EOL is 4 years away, but at the current speed of time, that’ll be about a month from now 
Even just the EOL would make not wanting to install any new servers with CentOS 7 unless there’s a compelling reason not to go to 8.
I’ve got one server I’d like to renew and go to 8 in the mean time, but I’m not because I have still got clients on there with very old themes on their WordPress which don’t work on anything newer than php5.6 and CentOS 8 doesn’t do anything older than php 7.2 (i think, could be 7.1)
For me it would depend on the mission, whether I expected it to extend beyond 7’s EOL, and whether I needed 8 for some functionality that’s lacking in 7.
I’ve been using CentOS since there was such a thing, so it’s not the first time I’ve had to change with the times. But I also tend to not be an early adopter. I did my time stomping bugs. I’m perfectly content to let other people do it now.
That being said, I have a client who’s going to need a new server soon. That will be running 8 because I expect and want it to still be running well past 2024. Now if I could only pry him away from cPanel…
Just as an aside, the only thing that’s stopping him from letting me switch him over to Virtualmin is a more full-featured interface to procmail. He needs something resembling cPanel’s “Mail Filters” functionality that allows multiple conditions.
Procmail itself is capable of it, but he would like a GUI interface; and my Perl sucks so bad that I wouldn’t trust any code that I wrote myself until at least three coders smarter than myself (who would be pretty easy to find in any random group of three coders) signed off on it.
I may spin up a CentOS 8 system and install Virtualmin and a couple of meaningless test sites on it just to get a better feel for it, and work on the procmail thing while I’m at it. It wouldn’t be the first time I spun up a live server running meaningless sites as a sandbox.
Richard
After a bit more research, I decided to go ahead and stick with CentOS 7 for this build. It came down to two things: Some known virtualmin bugs that I read about (I don’t have time to be an early adopter) and memory footprint: CentOS8 wants 1.5GB per core, and C7 wants 1GB per core. The server we have has 8 cores, 8gb. Seems obvious.
Regarding the EOL of 2024, by then I will have a solid argument for upgrading, and we can probably get a better VPS at a cheaper rate by then anyway 
I also ended up reverting back to CentOS 7.8, I had too many issues with CentOS 8.2 to be comfortable to move forward with it yet. I can’t wait for it to mature with virtualmin some more and i’m sure my next experience will be grand 
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