Langdon White

Platform Architect, Red Hat

Langdon White

Passionate technical leader with a proven success record architecting and implementing high-impact software systems for companies ranging from startups to large companies. Participated as an executive, architect, and developer for over 150 projects. In-depth knowledge and experience architecting Microservices (nee SOA), containers, CMS and portal solutions on various platforms. At present, re-architecting a Linux Distribution for more flexibility in a containerized world. Evangelist and implementer of the “perpetual beta,” the promise of DevOps, and the hybrid cloud as ways to create more resilient and usable web applications. Published and spoken at professional and industry conferences.

Recent Posts

Python 2 support is going away soon: Make the move to Python 3

Python 2 support is going away soon: Make the move to Python 3

By Langdon White

Seeing this tweet from Guido van Rossum the other day prompted me to write this “OMG, Python 2 is going away SOON” article. You have definitely heard it before, but seriously, folks, the Python upstream community is ending support for Python 2 at the end of the year!

Let’s stop saying “2020” because that sounds far away when, in fact, we are talking about January 1, 2020, which is two and half months from now. In this article, I’ll provide some quick links and basic information to help you make the move to Python 3.

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What, No Python in RHEL 8 Beta?

What, No Python in RHEL 8 Beta?

By Langdon White

TL;DR Of course we have Python! You just need to specify if you want Python 3 or 2 as we didn’t want to set a default. Give yum install python3 and/or yum install python2 a try. Or, if you want to see what we recommend you install yum install @python36 or yum install @python27. Read on for why:

For prior versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and most Linux Distributions, users have been locked to the system version of Python unless they got away from the system’s package manager. While this can be true for a lot of tools (ruby, node, Perl, php) the Python use case is more complicated because so many Linux tools (like yum) rely on Python. In order to improve the experience for RHEL 8 users, we have moved the Python used by the system “off to the side” and we introduced the concept of Application Streams based on Modularity.

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Introducing Application Streams in RHEL 8

Introducing Application Streams in RHEL 8

By Langdon White

With the introduction of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 (RHEL 8) we have tried to greatly simplify the layout of the content available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The main repository, BaseOS, provides the parts of the distribution that give you a running userspace on physical hardware, a virtual machine, a cloud instance or a container. The Application Stream (AppStream) repository provides all the applications you might want to run in a given userspace. The Supplemental repository provides other software that has special licensing. The CodeReady Linux Builder provides mostly build time components for developers (see Introducing CodeReady Linux Builder).

As a result, most RHEL 8 systems will only need two repositories enabled. However, this may lead to the the question, where do I find alternate versions of software if there is only 1 application repository? In prior versions, you would look to the RHSCL or Extras repositories. However, in RHEL 8, through a new technology called Modularity, we can offer those alternate versions in the same physical repository.

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Announcing the DevConf.US 2018 developer conference

Announcing the DevConf.US 2018 developer conference

By Langdon White

I am happy to announce that DevConf.US registration is now open and the schedule is live. DevConf events are free, but online registration is required. If you are available August 17–19, 2018, we would love for you to come and participate.

Similar to DevConf.CZ, DevConf.us 2018 is the 1st annual, free, Red Hat sponsored technology conference for community project and professional contributors to Free and Open Source technologies (FOSS) at the Boston University in the historic city of Boston, USA.

You should consider attending this DevConf event if you are:

  • A developer
  • A technology architect
  • An IT consultant
  • An IT student or a teacher from an IT university/faculty
  • Or simply an IT enthusiast interested in the latest trends in open source and emerging digital technologies

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Rachel Laycock joins DevNation 2016 as a general session speaker

Rachel Laycock joins DevNation 2016 as a general session speaker

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By Mike Guerette and Langdon White and Jen Krieger and Grant Shipley and Christine Flood and Andrew Lee Rubinger and Ray Ploski

We are pleased to announce that Rachel Laycock, Head of Technology for North America at ThoughtWorks, will be joining us at DevNation 2016 as a general session speaker.  With her background in Agile, Continuous Delivery, and strategy, Rachel is uniquely qualified to explain why CD is more than simply using new tools. This is certainly a relevant topic for everyone – should be fun!

Welcome, Rachel!

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Useful Dockerfiles for the RHEL-ecosystem

Useful Dockerfiles for the RHEL-ecosystem

By Langdon White

Shipping_containers_at_ClydeLike most programmers, I find it much easier to take some existing example of code and modify it to do what I want. Sometimes, I end up with nothing from the original source, but I still find it easier. I wonder if this is akin to writing where, I find, if you put the words down in a stream of consciousness manner, then “rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.”

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