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Building better servers
Want to shift to CentOS Stream? Done with RPM-distros entirely? We have options that will ensure your boxes are firmly ticked.
In the wake of the sudden demise of CentOS, a number of poorly written articles appeared on the web purporting to answer the complex question of “What can I use now that CentOS is gone?” in simple, SEO-friendly, oft’ listicleised form. We hope to do better here, and while we do hope you give Rocky Linux a try we really don’t want you to feel pressured into nixing your long-running CentOS machines so early in the game. There’s a summary of most of the other RHEL-derived distros in the box (right), and thanks to them all aping RHEL (the goal is to be bug-for-bug compatible, remember) they all should work much the same as Rocky.
But besides staying downstream from RHEL, or taking advantage of the free licencing and shifting straight to it, it might be worth considering a different approach. Red Hat’s advice is, of course, to switch to CentOS Stream, and if you’re okay with being a little bit closer to the edge, then this is sound advice. Remember that CentOS Stream packages are all tested thoroughly in Fedora, before being tested again by Red Hat, so the chance of breakage is pretty low. For the CentOS Stream 8 (there are no point releases as in RHEL) lifecycle, you’ll probably find it tracks very close to Rocky Linux (or any descendent of RHEL), but as development accelerates, and certainly once CentOS Stream 9 is released (Q2 2021 according to Red Hat, are you waiting for it to be released before you submit this feature? – Ed), it’ll start to look a little fresher, version number-wise. CentOS Stream 8 is a transition release. If you’re reading this in the future you’ll note a major shift in the contribution workflow with CentOS Stream 9. To that end may want to hold off making judgements about the stability or suitability