But it is very old, and does not support a lot of features that new software like docker needs. The enterprise release cycle is just too slow for software that is dependent on kernel features.
And shipping with kernel 2.6 and being 4 years old.
yeah it makes sense the 2.6 kernel is too ancient. They have kept it patched up, but upward and onward!
Yeah it's huge in the enterprise. Not everyone has migrated to 7.x with systemd yet.
Far from it, I would be surprised if even most RHEL installations ran RHEL 7 yet.
Hell, CentOS 5 is still pretty widely deployed (and supported by RH until 2017).
Compatibility with CentOS was a big driver to adopting Docker at my prior employer. It's benefits were made even more pronounced on semi-legacy systems like that.
Completely agreed. It has been a huge help in the migration of legacy systems to containers while underlying monitoring and config infrastructure is being updated to support systemd.
You can still use 6.x as a base layer inside the container, just not on the host OS.