CentOS is dead as we know it, have you looked at Oracle Linux yet?
Oracle Linux tracks RHEL, using OpenELA as their base code going forward, so Oracle Linux 8.3 is basically the same as RHEL 8.3 or CentOS 8.3 or even RockyLinux 8.3. It’s used by over 86% of the Fortune Global 100, making it one of the most popular Linux options in the Enterprise. Since Oracle runs its business and Oracle Cloud on Oracle Linux, you know it will be supported regardless of what other bombshells IBM Red Hat drops on the users.
Did I mention Oracle Linux is free? It’s free to download, free to distribute, and free to patch! To distribute, I can give you a copy for free and no lawyers are required. To patch, there’s no need to register your system or pay any fees, and it would also be free to download. There is no license fee to get it!
Yes, Oracle has a paid support offering that is a lot less expensive than RHEL, and due to the free model to download and patch, you can easily use Oracle Linux for free in your non-production systems and still have paid support for your production systems on the same distribution. It is also very stable as it has been available since 2006. They even support Arm these days (Raspberry Pi, anyone?), and have several public mirrors where you can download it in case you don’t want to download it from http://yum.oracle.com/oracle-linux-isos.html.
There are several cool things you can get if you pay for support, but all of these are well above and beyond what RHEL offers with their support. This includes a few technologies such as the following:
- Ksplice: This lets you patch kernel and user space libraries while running
- DTrace: This came over from Solaris and gives you a real-time view into kernel and application internals
- Enterprise Manager: To manage and monitor the OS, logs, and more
If you are on CentOS, it’s really easy to move to Oracle Linux. Best of all is that when you move, you keep everything the same, so all your apps continue to run. Remember, Oracle Linux tracks RHEL, making it an easy drop-in replacement. Oracle has made the migration script free for anyone to use, and you can access it from the following GitHub URL: https://github.com/oracle/centos2ol.