The Fall of CentOS

Technology
,

TL;DR

Use Oracle Linux (run RHCK) as free RHEL alternative.

main()

Goodbye CentOS, well done IBM (Red Hat).

  • There will be NO CentOS 9.
  • No updates for CentOS 8 after 31 December 2021.
  • No updates for CentOS 7 after 30 June 2024.

CentOS Steam will be the only release using CentOS badge moving forward, sitting in between Fedora (cutting edge) and RHEL (production stability), as a development rolling branch for RHEL.

Oracle Linux is

  • completely free to use, distribute and upgrade
  • application binary compatible with RHEL whether running the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel or Red Hat compatible kernel.

see the FAQ for more information.

Funny enough, I have been maintaining Oracle Linux {5,6,7,8} VM images since I started using Vagrant as a part of the development & test workflow. Looks like it has paid off (facepalm), the switch is painless.

It’s a great opportunity for Oracle Linux to recovery lost territory, look forward to seeing the rise of Oracle Linux, ironically, thanks to IBM & Red Hat.

I don’t believe people would refuse to use free (& reliable, with good docs) Oracle Linux simply because they dislike (hate) Oracle (the company), same applies to VirtualBox.

The best tools are the ones that do what you want at the best cost.

As long as it does the job, who cares about the logo.

"Shut up and get the work done." - Linus Torvalds

2020-12-14 update

Founder of CentOS started a new RHEL rebuild called Rocky Linux, aiming to be a community driven, enterprise grade production ready Linux distribution.

In the meantime, Senior Directory of Oracle Linux & Virtualization wrote an interesting blog post with the intention to attract CentOS refugees as soon as possible by throwing the centos2ol 1-click switch script ;-)

Oracle Linux has been tracking RHEL releases consistently (since 2006), faster than CentOS, making it a better option if the Oracle Logo is not a concern.

  • errata typiclly within 24 hours
  • minor releases within 5 business days
  • major releases within 3 months

2 kernel options

  • RHCK (100% RHEL)
  • UEK (more modern kernel tracking mainline - UEK source code)

Supports workloads on both x86 and ARM systems, hip.

ISO images, Vagrant Boxes, container images and Raspberry Pi disk images can be directly downloaded from ---> YUM!

References

EOF