The developers behind the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) binary-compatible distribution CentOS have announced the immediate availability of CentOS 8.3 . The new version inherits most of the features and innovations from RHEL 8.3, which was released a little over a month ago.
The new version brings innovations mainly in security and container tools. Migration to CentOS Stream is also made easier. To this end, changes have been implemented to the Yum repository file, such as changing the names of some files in /etc/yum.repos.d.
New focus
In addition, CentOS will make changes to its positioning relative to Fedora and RHEL. According to this, from the end of 2021 the focus of the distribution will no longer be on binary compatibility with RHEL, but rather concentrate on the rolling release distribution CentOS Stream, which to a certain extent represents a second, more server-oriented upstream for Red Hat alongside Fedora. CentOS 7, on the other hand, will be supported until the end of support in 2024.
CentOS was acquired by Red Hat in 2014 to provide a version of RHEL for users who did not require support from Red Hat. Red Hat’s aim was to present corporate solutions such as OpenStack, OpenShift as well as virtualization and containerization to a wider audience outside of its own distribution model.
CentOS Stream as upstream
The CentOS Stream distribution has existed since 2019, which is slightly more up-to-date than the corresponding RHEL version and whose changes will be incorporated in the next minor versions of RHEL. In companies, RHEL is often used in production, but CentOS in development. However, there have been increasing complaints recently that CentOS is too far behind to be relevant in development. The realignment could be a response to such complaints.
The future of the CentOS Project is CentOS Stream, and over the next year we’ll be shifting focus from CentOS Linux, the rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), to CentOS Stream, which tracks just ahead of a current RHEL release. CentOS Linux 8, as a rebuild of RHEL 8, will end at the end of 2021. CentOS Stream continues after that date, serving as the upstream (development) branch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Rich Bowen, CentOS
Not well received
In the Red Hat blog, Red Hat Vice President Chris Right explains the Group’s perspective, and an FAQ on CentOS explains questions about the switch. In the CentOS blog, the announcement is sharply criticized in the comments . Many users are already announcing their departure from the distribution, because from the end of 2021 with the end of support for CentOS 8.3 due to the loss of the stable basis and the long support period, there will be no more reason to use CentOS. Anyone who thinks bad about it could assume that Red Hat wants to generate new paying groups of buyers. A petition was started on Change.org to prevent CentOS from ending as a stable distribution.
CentOS 8 (2011) as the release is officially known, is from the website of CentOS for architectures x86_64, aarch64and ppc64le downloaded are. CentOS Stream is also available for download there.
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