I am worried that I'm shitting on it without using it, but every time I even take a look at the documentation, I just can't stomach it. There's so much happening, all over the place, and it all looks like it was created to be composable, but it seems very non-optional (as in you need to learn 4 OpenShift things before you can do the thing you wanted to do).
Maybe there's someone out there that loves working with it and feels like it's worth the effort but I haven't seen many posts from them. Makes me feel like they're all stuck in corporate dungeons toiling away using stuff they were forced to use.
I am currently moving all of my infrastructure to OpenShift and I love it - and I chose it after carefully evaluating the alternatives.
It's Kubernetes plus a PaaS platform that takes care of the annoying parts - deploying a cluster (using Ansible), container builds, triggers, deployments, a nice UI... Couldn't be happier.
Red Hat is a major Kubernetes contributor and OpenShift is barely lagging behind upstream k8s. It feels very polished and the documentation - while a bit overwhelming at times - is extremely helpful and extensive. Instead of forking Kubernetes, they only ever add new functionality while simultaneously upstreaming it. For example, the Kubernetes RBAC mechanism was contributed by Red Hat.
IMO OpenShift is RedHat's attempt to embrace extend and extinguish vanilla Kubernetes because it threatens their Enterprise OS domination. The host OS for Kubernetes clusters is mostly irrelevant.
It's like Kubernetes... forked from it, but adds all this other shit while they continue to just say it is Kubernetes under the hood. Technically true, but once you go to the OpenShift you're pretty much locked into RedHat's Kubernetesesque-world.
OpenShift predates Kubernetes by a bit, and IMO they operate at different levels (OpenShift is "deeper" and overlaps in some spots with Kubernetes). Also, I'm just about 100% sure no one is stupid/brave enough to challenge Kubernetes' current dominance in the container orchestration space right now. Kubernetes is complete enough and not-bad enough to be the defacto choice right now, and I doubt much will change -- plus Google is backing it, along with the CNCF, there are so many companies with a (in)vested interest.
I do think Red Hat replicates features that Kubernetes does well and trying to do those things well but they operate at different levels fundamentally -- Openshift is like a bunch of individual components that work together (usually at a lower level than Kubernetes does) and Kubernetes is like one coherent platform that smoothes over all the lower-level stuff (CRI, CSI, C*I)...
Maybe there's someone out there that loves working with it and feels like it's worth the effort but I haven't seen many posts from them. Makes me feel like they're all stuck in corporate dungeons toiling away using stuff they were forced to use.