Conda-forge.github.io: CentOS 8

[jakirkham]

A few use cases for CentOS 8 have come up recently. Namely CUDA support for ARM and PPC64LE. Potentially more use cases will show up in the future. Am opening this issue so that we can discuss how best to handle this need

cc @jaimergp @kkraus14 @isuruf @beckermr @conda-forge/core

[beckermr]

CentOS 8 EOL is December 31 of this year. I don't think implementing support for it is well-motivated. Vendors will have to move on from it anyways.

[jakirkham]

Right so maybe we need to use an alternative. Rocky Linux has come up before.

Also here's a longer post on alternatives: https://haydenjames.io/what-centos-alternative-distro-should-you-choose/

[jakirkham]

However it's worth noting we are using upstream Docker images for these architectures & CUDA versions. So the OS is already fixed

Edit: Raised upstream issue ( https://gitlab.com/nvidia/container-images/cuda/-/issues/123 ) about this

[beckermr]

@chenghlee What is anaconda moving to? Mirroring that is likely a good idea.

[jakirkham]

A suggestion brought up on the NVIDIA CUDA image repo upstream would be to look at RedHat's Universal Base images, which are also being supplied. Have not looked at these closely yet, but that might be something else to consider

[chenghlee]

Anaconda's current plan is to stay on CentOS/RHEL 7 (glibc 2.17) as much as possible for the packages on repo.anaconda.com (defaults); if we need a newer glibc for some reason, we'll likely look at Debian 9 or 10.

[kkraus14]

if we need a newer glibc for some reason, we'll likely look at Debian 9 or 10.

Debian 9 is not supported by CUDA: https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/cuda-installation-guide-linux/index.html#system-requirements

The only OS supported by CUDA across x86_64, PPC64, and ARM SBSA is RHEL 8 (since CentOS 8 isn't really a thing anymore).

[mbargull]

if we need a newer glibc for some reason, we'll likely look at Debian 9 or 10.

Debian 9 is also EOL in about a year and 10 uses the same base glibc version as CentOS 8, so I'd advice to go for 10 when really needed.
EDIT: Going for Debian 10 would be problematic for Ubuntu 18.04 though (and Debian 9 also for Ubuntu 16.04 but, as I now learned, that Ubuntu version is EOL since a couple of days by now.)