We also saw alternatives to the “old” CentOS, for those that don’t want to use CentOS Stream. You now know what this shift means for businesses and end users that have been relying on CentOS for years. In this guide, we went over the shift of CentOS to CentOS Stream. This can sound like a very attractive alternative to distro hopping to an entirely different ecosystem, like Debian. There aren’t many differences between CentOS and AlmaLinux, so production systems should be able to shift to the similar operating system and experience very little downtime. You can even migrate directly from CentOS to AlmaLinux with just one command. New distributions like AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux are RHEL forks branding themselves as a CentOS replacement.

Without it, many have no reason to continue using it.įortunately, there are more than a few other Linux distros to choose from. Should we continue using CentOS (CentOS Stream, that is), or do we shift to a different distribution? The biggest feature of CentOS was its (free) stability. CentOS Stream or Distro Hop?Īll of this leads users and businesses to one question.

But it leaves the majority scrambling for an alternative before CentOS reaches its end of life.

Some may continue to use CentOS Stream, especially if they like testing the newest features and don’t rely on having extremely predictable systems. It makes sense why they would be alarmed at the news of CentOS becoming a markedly less stable distro. Some businesses have hundreds of machines running CentOS, which has historically been a very dependable operating system.

So it seems pretty obvious why Red Hat would introduce instability into CentOS, hindering the free alternative to RHEL, meanwhile boosting the stability of its flagship distro which pays the bills. Sounds like a pretty good deal for RHEL users, doesn’t it? Yeah, but RHEL costs money and CentOS doesn’t. RHEL enjoys supreme stability because of the tested distros, Fedora and CentOS Stream. This means that new features will be introduced into CentOS Stream, where the bugs are worked out, and ultimately the new updates trickle down to RHEL. The “new” CentOS, aptly called CentOS Stream, will take a similar approach to Fedora, which acts as an upstream source for RHEL. Sure, it had a few tweaks to set it apart from RHEL, but essentially, it was RHEL without the cost of a subscription. Before 2021, CentOS was regarded as an enterprise-stable, production-ready operating system that had been cloned from Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Centos 8 stream download