Will Dreamworks be migrating to RHEL?

[ghost]

Recently, I came across a couple of significant developments that I believe might affect the future of Moonray and its underlying infrastructure.

Firstly, CentOS 7, the operating system reportedly used by Dreamworks, is nearing its end of life on June 30th, 2024. Considering the importance of a stable and supported operating system, I'm curious to know if Dreamworks has any plans for migrating Moonray to a different operating system in light of this upcoming deadline.

Additionally, I discovered that Red Hat has implemented a new policy forbidding the use of RHEL accounts to access SRPM files for creating unauthorized RHEL clones. As Moonray is an open-source project, it would be valuable to understand how this policy change affects Dreamworks' workflows, particularly in terms of accessing and utilizing RHEL-related resources.

Given these recent developments, I would like to inquire about Dreamworks' perspective on the matter. Are there any plans or discussions within the team regarding a potential migration to RHEL or exploration of alternative operating systems for Moonray? How will these changes impact the long-term roadmap for Moonray's development and maintenance?

[kjeffery]

Hello,
I will explain why DreamWorks Animation is on Cent OS 7 and describe our plans.

First of all, you have legitimate questions. We currently target Cent OS 7 for several reasons: DreamWorks Animation is tied to the VFX Reference Platform. We have several movies in production, the oldest of which uses VFX Reference Platform 2020*, making it our least common denominator. Cent OS 7 was a previous Linux distribution recommended by the VFX Reference Platform and was used by many studios, including DreamWorks Animation. Upgrading operating systems at a large studio is cumbersome, as we have to support shows tied to the older operating system while mitigating any disturbance to shows moving to the latest software package. That said, the VFX Reference Platform evaluated newer Linux distributions in 2022, and they suggest that studios move to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux or one of its derivatives. DreamWorks Animation is migrating to Rocky Linux 9, and our releases of MoonRay will soon reflect that.

The above decisions were made before Red Hat made its announcements. I do not know if those statements would have altered the VFX Reference Platform recommended operating system. Perhaps they will revisit the recommendation.

While DreamWorks Animation is currently targeting Cent OS 7 and Rocky Linux 9, we are open to community contributions for other Linux distributions (or other operating systems altogether). I do not know of any code paths specific to a particular Linux distribution.

* This also determines, amongst other things, our use of C++14 and the older GCC ABI.

[kjeffery]

The latest release has preliminary support for Rocky 9.