CentOS

CentOS is a popular free and open-source Linux server distribution. The name, CentOS is short for Community Enterprise Operating System. The community-supported project was popular amongst web hosting service providers. It was developed by a growing team of core developers, supported by an active user community including IT professionals mostly. The distribution is released under the GNU GPL license. CentOS fully supports x86-64, POWER8, and 64-bit ARM architectures.

CentOS was created as a build of CAOS Linux, an RPM-based operating system started by Gregory Kurtzer in 2002. In 2006, David Parsley decided to join CentOS after retiring from Tao Linux, which increased CentOS’ popularity. In 2010, CentOS was the most popular Linux distribution among web servers, with approximately 30% of all Linux web servers using it. However, Debian managed to take the first place back in 2012. In 2014, ownership of CentOS trademarks was transferred to Red Hat, after Red Hat announced that the company would sponsor the CentOS Project. Most of the CentOS head developers also joined Red Hat and became a part of Red Hat’s Open Source and Standards team. The team operates independently from the RHEL team and a new governing board for CentOS is also established.

In 2020, Red Hat announced that the company is shifting its focus and investment from CentOS Linux to CentOS Stream, which is an upstream development platform for ecosystem developers. Almost all CentOS users reacted negatively to Red Hat’s decision and started looking for a reliable CentOS alternative.