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CentOS remembered
Delve into the illustrious history behind one of the most respected server-targeting Linux distributions.
By the mid-90s, Red Hat had irrefutably demonstrated that it was possible to make money from Linux. Together with SUSE it showed how the burgeoning free software ecosystem, combined with premium support, was a boon for enterprises, small businesses and anyone else that thought that Microsoft site licenses were too pricey.
That legacy continues, and today whenever you think about ‘corporate’ Linux distros, chances are Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) will spring to mind. The RHEL title was introduced in 2000, but it was just a new name for the Red Hat Linux it had been supporting since its inception. Alongside this name change came the inauguration of Fedora Core: an experimental, community-supported distro that would function as the upstream for RHEL. In other words, new features would stabilise in Fedora Core and then be adopted by RHEL.