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CentOS ○›｜Definition｜1st｜20260917193015-00-⌔

CentOS - Wikipedia

CentOS

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CentOS (/ˈsɛntɒs/, from Community Enterprise Operating System; also known as CentOS Linux)12 is a discontinued Linux distribution that provided a free and open-source community-supported computing platform, functionally compatible with its upstream source, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).34 In January 2014, CentOS announced the official joining with Red Hat while staying independent from RHEL,5 under a new CentOS governing board.67

The first CentOS release in May 2004, numbered as CentOS version 2, was forked from RHEL version 2.1AS.[^1] Since version 8, CentOS officially supports the x86-64, ARM64, and POWER8 architectures, and releases up to version 6 also supported the IA-32 architecture. As of December 2015, AltArch releases of CentOS 7 are available for the IA-32 architecture, Power ISA, and for the ARMv7hl and AArch64 variants of the ARM architecture.89 CentOS 8 was released on 24 September 2019.10

In December 2020, Red Hat unilaterally terminated CentOS development11121314 in favor of CentOS Stream 9, a distribution positioned upstream of RHEL.15 In March 2021, CloudLinux (makers of CloudLinux OS) released a RHEL derivative called AlmaLinux.16 Later in May 2021, one of the CentOS founders (Gregory Kurtzer) created the competing Rocky Linux project as a successor to the original mission of CentOS.17

Printed 2026-09-17.

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Footnotes

  1. “Community Profile–CentOS Project | Open Source Community”. community.redhat.com. Retrieved 10 September 2019. ↩

  2. “CentOS Forums - Index page”. centos.org. Retrieved 10 September 2019. ↩

  3. “Frequently Asked Questions about CentOS in general: 1. What is CentOS Linux?”. centos.org. 12 October 2014. Archived from the original on 12 September 2019. Retrieved 2 November 2014. ↩

  4. “Red hat + CentOS”. Red Hat. Retrieved 15 April 2014. ↩

  5. Karanbir Singh (7 January 2014). “CentOS Project joins forces with Red Hat”. centos.org. Retrieved 8 January 2014. ↩

  6. “CentOS Governance”. centos.org. 2014. Retrieved 8 January 2014. ↩

  7. Karanbir Singh (9 December 2014). “Karanbir Singh: CentOS Linux: A Continuously integrating platform”. Archived from the original on 7 November 2021. Retrieved 4 June 2016 – via YouTube. ↩

  8. Singh, Karanbir (19 December 2015). “[CentOS-announce] Release for CentOS AltArch 7 (1511)”. Retrieved 24 December 2015. ↩

  9. Perrin, Jim (4 August 2015). “[CentOS-announce] Release for CentOS 7 on AArch64”. Retrieved 1 November 2015. ↩

  10. Karanbir Singh (24 September 2019). “[CentOS-announce] Release for CentOS Linux 8 and CentOS Streams”. centos.org. Retrieved 26 September 2019. ↩

  11. “The killing of CentOS Linux: ‘The CentOS board doesn’t get to decide what Red Hat engineering teams do’”. The Register. 26 January 2021. Retrieved 8 March 2021. ↩

  12. “CentOS Linux is dead—and Red Hat says Stream is”not a replacement"". 10 December 2020. ↩

  13. “Where do I go now that CentOS Linux is gone? Check our list”. 11 December 2020. ↩

  14. “Why Red Hat killed CentOS—a CentOS board member speaks”. 26 January 2021. ↩

  15. Vaughan-Nichols, Steven J. “CentOS Linux 8 is about to die. What do you do next?”. ZDNet. Retrieved 22 December 2021. ↩

  16. Vinogradov, Alexander. “Announcing Open-sourced & Community-Driven RHEL Fork by CloudLinux”. cloudlinux.com. Retrieved 28 January 2021. ↩

  17. Anderson, Tim (10 December 2020). “Rocky Linux is go: CentOS founder’s new project aims to be 100% compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux”. The Register. Retrieved 12 December 2020. ↩