Important update (03.01.2022): CentOS Linux 8 reached end-of-life, it is no longer supported!
The new version of Linux distribution that is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS released at the end of September. CentOS- 8 (1905) comes with major fixes, new features, and many improvements. CentOS is the second most used Linux distribution after Ubuntu, its popularity comes from its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) core.
DNF based YUM
After the release of RHEL 8 in May, the development team finally announced the latest release of CentOS which has been expected by CentOS users. Yum package manager is now based on the DNF (a.k.a. Dandified yum).
From now on software developers can use control systems such as Mercurial 4.8 and Subversion 1.10. Python 3.6 version is manually installable, but the distribution has limited support for Python 2.7. CentOS also supports Node.js 10.1, PHP 7.2, Ruby 2.5, Perl 5.26, and SWIG 3.0.
CentOS Desktop with Wayland
Based on version 8.2, the CentOS GCC compiler comes with the support for more recent C++ language standard versions. In this release, GNOME Shell saw an update. It has been rebased to version 3.28. Now Wayland is used by the GNOME session and the GNOME Display Manager as their default display server.
The default display server in RHEL 7 the X.Org server is still available if you prefer. With the change of crypto-policies command, it is much easier to switch between default, legacy, future, and fips modes. It is recommended that you have at least 4 GB of RAM to proceed with the installation. After installation, the centos plus kernel (kernel-plus) can be used on supported devices.
What is new in CentOS 8?
- Python 3.6 (default Python version)
- PHP 7.2 (default PHP version)
- A new version of YUM based on DNF
- MariaDB 10.3, MySQL 8.0, PostgreSQL 10, PostgreSQL 9.6, and Redis 5 database servers
- Apache HTTP 2.4 and Nginx 1.14
- RPM 4.14
- Mercurial 4.8 and Subversion 1.10 control systems
- The brand-new CentOS Stream
- Usage of RHEL 8 web console Cockpit for virtualization
- Wayland (default display servers)