A few days ago, the Red Hat team, that develops and maintains the CentOS (Community Enterprise Operating System) distribution, announced that “over the next year we will move from CentOS to Linux, rebuild Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), to CentOS Stream, which comes just before a new version of RHEL. CentOS Linux 8, as a rebuild of RHEL 8, will end in late 2021. CentOS Stream continues after that date, serving as an upstream (development) branch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. ”
The company adds that “at the end of CentOS Linux 8 (rebuilding RHEL8), your best option will be to migrate to CentOS Stream 8, which is a small delta of CentOS Linux 8, and has regular updates like traditional versions of CentOS Linux.
In summary, this means for users of the GNU / Linux distribution for servers and workstations that CentOS 8 will be discontinued earlier than expected. Initially, the maintenance of this distribution was assured until May 31, 2029.
However Against all expectations, Red Hat has unilaterally decided to bring this date closer to December 31, 2021. In addition to this announcement, which mows the grass under the feet of users using CentOS 8, Red Hat declares that there will be no version 9 of CentOS. At the end of the CentOS 8 life cycle, CentOS users will have to search for CentOS Stream 8, which is used upstream for RHEL 8 development, or pay to use RHEL 8 or look for other alternatives.
For many users, although it is possible to run CentOS 7 until 2024, This announcement from Red Hat sounds like an incentive to find another solution to replace the distribution, as many people no longer trust Red Hat. In fact, for some users, "seeing a large corporation like Red Hat make this kind of abrupt change, which has a significant operational impact on a large user base, with no clear direction to follow, is a terrifying precedent." For others, this decision is just the result of those of IBM lining their pockets after having invested billions to acquire Red Hat.
However, not all users share the same anger. One user points out that there is nothing unreasonable in Red Hat's decision. He adds that the model announced by the company is quite similar to other open source projects: we give you free software, but you test it in beta for us. For another commenter, the reasons for this change made by Red Hat are purely technical. This will ease the integration of CentOS features and bug fixes in RHEL. In any case, whatever the alleged reasons, the mass is said for some users: we must look for new alternatives to CentOS Linux.
As alternatives we have for example:
RockyLinux: is a new project that has just been announced by Gregory Kurtzer, co-founder of CentOS. According to the author, it will be designed to be 100% compatible with Enterprise Linux now that CentOS has changed direction. Rocky Linux aims to work downstream like CentOS did after companies added their commitments, not before. Therefore, users will be able to use it in production.
OracleLinux: is a Linux distribution compiled from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux source code. It is distributed by Oracle for free and has been partially available under the GNU General Public License since late 2006. For companies using Oracle systems, Oracle Linux is considered the ideal choice.
ClearOS: It comes as a simple, secure, and affordable operating system based on CentOS and RHEL. Provides an intuitive web interface and an application store with more than 100 applications. ClearOS is available in 3 main editions: Home, Business, and Community Edition. The Home edition is ideal for small offices. The Business Edition is designed for small and medium businesses who prefer paid support, while the Community Edition is absolutely free.
SpringdaleLinux: (formerly PUIAS Linux) is a complete operating system for workstations and servers, built with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux source packages. In addition to the RHEL legacy packages, the project also provides several other repositories: “Plugins” containing additional packages not included in a standard Red Hat distribution; "Computational" containing specific software for scientific computing; and "Not Supported", which contains several experimental packages. The distribution is maintained by the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University in the United States.
CloudLinux: is a RHEL rebuild distribution designed for shared hosting providers. Because it requires subscription fees for production use, CloudLinux is more like RHEL than CentOS. However, following Red Hat's announcement, CloudLinux operating system officials have said they will release a replacement for CentOS in Q2021 8. The new fork will be a 'standalone, completely free, and fully RHEL XNUMX compliant operating system. and future versions ”.