Almost a year ago, when it was Red Hat has changed CentOS from the Red Hat Enterprise clone Linux (RHEL) in Linux development distribution, CentOS Stream. Many users were not satisfied. As a result, several CentOS / RHEL replacement clones have emerged, such as AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux. But Red Hat has continued with its plans to use CentOS. Now, the new CentOS project shows what it has achieved in its first completely new release: CentOS 9.
This new edition has passed a series of tests and verifications to ensure it meets the stringent standards that will be included in RHEL. Updates published on Stream are identical to those published on an unpublished minor version of RHEL. “The goal? “said Rich Bowen, Red Hat’s CentOS manager,”To make CentOS Stream as fundamentally stable as RHEL itself“, ZDNet broadcasts.
To achieve this stability, CentOS Stream starts with a stable release of Fedora Linux. In CentOS Stream 9, this means Fedora 34. This is the same code base used by RHEL 9. Then, as updated packages are introduced in Fedora, and pass testing and meet stability standards, they are pushed into CentOS Stream as RHEL’s nightly version. In short, as Bowen said, “What CentOS Stream looks like now is what RHEL will look like in the near future“.
The graphics below show the path of CentOS Stream 9 from the Fedora 34 branch to becoming a leader in the development of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 in the future.
Fedora itself is now increasingly seen as a stable release in itself. For example, Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently decided to use Fedora as the basis for its production of Amazon Linux 3.
CentOS Stream is now being developed on GitLab. For now, git.centos.org remains RHEL and CentoS Stream 8 appropriate location for all RHEL and CentOS Stream 8 sources.
CentOS Stream 9 includes upgrades to help users keep up with the latest technologies. Some of them are:
- PHP 8.0
- Python 3.9
- MariaDB 10.5
- Nginx 1.20
- GCC 11.2
CentOS Stream can be downloaded as an ISO here. You can run it on 64-bit x86 (x86_64 v2 +), 64-bit ARM (AArch64), IBM Z (s390x Z14 +) and IBM POWER (ppc64le POWER9 +) architectures. Red Hat has not yet released release notes on this issue.
We know, however, that there will be no CentOS Linux 9. In the future, the only CentOS will be CentOS Stream. Red Hat will no longer support CentOS Linux 8 after the end of 2021. Users who want to stay on CentOS Linux 8 will need to contact CloudLinux or third-party support.
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