CentOS (, from Community Enterprise Operating System; also known as CentOS Linux) is a discontinued Linux distribution that provided a free and open-source community-supported computing platform, functionally compatible with its upstream source, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). In January 2014, CentOS announced the official joining with Red Hat while staying independent from RHEL, under a new CentOS governing board.
The first CentOS release in May 2004, numbered as CentOS version 2, was forked from RHEL version 2.1AS. Since version 8, CentOS officially supports the x86-64, ARM64, and POWER8 architectures, and releases up to version 6 also supported the IA-32 architecture. , AltArch releases of CentOS 7 are available for the IA-32 architecture, Power ISA, and for the ARMv7hl and AArch64 variants of the ARM architecture. CentOS 8 was released on 24 September 2019.
In December 2020, Red Hat unilaterally terminated CentOS development in favor of CentOS Stream 9, a distribution positioned upstream of RHEL. In March 2021, CloudLinux (makers of CloudLinux OS) released a RHEL derivative called AlmaLinux. Later in May 2021, one of the CentOS founders (Gregory Kurtzer) created the competing Rocky Linux project as a successor to the original mission of CentOS.
History CentOS originated as a build of CAOS Linux, an RPM-based Linux distribution started by Gregory Kurtzer in 2002. Infiscale described its GravityOS as "[including] the small footprint of Caos",Infiscale Product page in November 2013 indicating a certain level of influence from the discontinued distribution.
In June 2006, David Parsley, the primary developer of Tao Linux (another RHEL clone), announced the retirement of Tao Linux and its rolling into CentOS development. Tao users migrated to the CentOS release via .
In July 2009, it was reported in an open letter on the CentOS Project web site that one of CentOS's founders, Lance Davis, had disappeared in 2008. Davis had ceased contribution to the project, but continued to hold the registration for the CentOS domain and PayPal account. In August 2009, the CentOS team reportedly made contact with Davis and obtained the centos.info and centos.org domains.
In July 2010, CentOS overtook Debian to become the most popular Linux distribution for web servers, with almost 30% of all Linux web servers using it. Debian retook the lead in January 2012.
In January 2014, Red Hat announced that it would sponsor the CentOS Project, "helping to establish a platform well-suited to the needs of open source developers that integrate technologies in and around the operating system". As a result of these changes, ownership of CentOS trademarks was transferred to Red Hat, which now employs most of the CentOS head developers; however, they work as part of Red Hat's Open Source and Standards team, which operates separately from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux team. A new CentOS governing board was also established.
On 8 December 2020, the CentOS Project announced that the distribution would be discontinued at the end of 2021 in order to focus on CentOS Stream. The community's response to this announcement was overwhelmingly negative. Soon thereafter, Gregory Kurtzer (one of CentOS's founders) announced a new project to continue the original CentOS focus, which became known as Rocky Linux. CloudLinux created AlmaLinux to provide a community-supported successor to CentOS Linux, aiming for binary-compatibility with the current version of RHEL. A beta version of AlmaLinux was first released on February 1, 2021, and the first stable release of AlmaLinux was published on March 30, 2021. A beta version of Rocky Linux was released on April 30, 2021, and subsequently on June 21, 2021, the stable release of Rocky Linux 8.4 was released.
Following CentOS 7's end-of-life in June 2024, several commercial vendors began offering extended security support for organisations unable to migrate immediately. These include TuxCare's Extended Lifecycle Support, CloudLinux's ELS service, and MontaVista's MVShield, which provides continued CVE patching and technical support for CentOS 7.9 through at least 2029.
Design CentOS developers use Red Hat's source code to create a final product very similar to RHEL. Red Hat's branding and logos are changed because Red Hat does not allow them to be redistributed. CentOS is available free of charge. Technical support is primarily provided by the community via official mailing lists, web forums, and chat rooms.
The project is affiliated with Red Hat but aspires to be more public, open, and inclusive. While Red Hat employs most of the CentOS head developers, the CentOS Project itself relies on donations from users and organizational sponsors.
Versioning and releases
CentOS releases CentOS version numbers for releases older than 7.0 have two parts, a major version and a minor version, which correspond to the major version and update set of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) used to build a particular CentOS release. For example, CentOS 6.5 is built from the source packages of RHEL 6 update 5 (also known as RHEL version 6.5), which is a so-called "point release" of RHEL 6.
Starting with version 7.0, CentOS version numbers also include a third part that indicates the monthstamp of the source code the release is based on. For example, version number 7.0-1406 still maps this CentOS release to the zeroth update set of RHEL 7, while "1406" indicates that the source code this release is based on dates from June 2014. Using the monthstamp allows installation images to be reissued for () oncoming container and cloud releases, while maintaining a connection to the related base release version.
Since mid-2006 and starting with RHEL version 4.4, which is formally known as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 update 4, Red Hat has adopted a version-naming convention identical to that used by CentOS (for example, RHEL 4.5 or RHEL 6.5).
On 10 September 2019 CentOS deferred CentOS 8.1 work for CentOS 7.7 since CentOS 7.x was in production and CentOS 8.x was not in production. Once CentOS 7.7 was released resources moved back to CentOS 8.0.
On 24 September 2019 CentOS officially released CentOS version 8.0. Since CentOS was discontinued at the end of 2021, its final release was version 8.5 (2021-11-16). In contrast, its RHEL counterpart continued to version 8.10 (as of 2024-09).
End-of-support schedule According to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) life cycle, CentOS 5, 6 and 7 will be "maintained for up to 10 years" as it is based on RHEL. Previously, CentOS 4 had been supported for seven years.
CentOSversion Releasedate Fullupdates Maintenanceupdates 3 2004-03-19 2006-07-20 2010-10-31 4 2005-03-09 2009-03-31 2012-02-29 5 2007-04-12 2014-01-31 2017-03-31 6 2011-11-27 2017-05-10 2020-11-30 7 2014-07-07 2020-08-06 2024-06-30 8 2019-09-24 2021-12-31
Older version information CentOS version Architectures RHEL base Kernel CentOS release date RHEL release date Delay (days) 2.1 IA-32 2.1 2.4.9 2004-05-14 2002-05-17 728 3.1 IA-32, x86-64, IA-64, s390, s390x 3.1 2.4.21-15 2004-03-19 2003-10-23 148 3.3 IA-32, x86-64, IA-64, s390, s390x 3.3 2.4.21-20 2004-09-17 2004-09-03 14 3.4 IA-32, x86-64, IA-64, s390, s390x 3.4 2.4.21-27 2005-01-23 2004-12-12 42 3.5 IA-32 3.5 2.4.21-32 2005-06-10 2005-05-18 23 3.6 IA-32 3.6 2.4.21-37 2005-11-01 2005-09-28 34 3.7 IA-32, x86-64, IA-64, s390, s390x 3.7 2.4.21-40 2006-04-10 2006-03-17 23 3.8 IA-32, x86-64 3.8 2.4.21-47 2006-08-25 2006-07-20 36 3.9 IA-32, x86-64, IA-64, s390, s390x 3.9 2.4.21-50 2007-07-26 2007-06-15 41 4.0 IA-32, x86-64, various 4.0 2.6.9-5 2005-03-09 2005-02-14 23 4.1 IA-32, IA-64, s390 4.1 2.6.9-11 2005-06-12 2005-06-08 4 4.2 IA-32, x86-64, IA-64, s390, s390x, alpha 4.2 2.6.9-22 2005-10-13 2005-10-05 8 4.3 IA-32, x86-64, IA-64, s390, s390x 4.3 2.6.9-34 2006-03-21 2006-03-12 9 4.4 IA-32, x86-64 4.4 2.6.9-42 2006-08-30 2006-08-10 20 4.5 IA-32, x86-64, IA-64 4.5 2.6.9-55 2007-05-17 2007-05-01 16 4.6 IA-32, x86-64, IA-64, Alpha, s390, s390x, PowerPC (beta), SPARC (beta) 4.6 2.6.9-67 2007-12-16 2007-11-16 30 4.7 IA-32, x86-64 4.7 2.6.9-78 2008-09-13 2008-07-24 51 4.8 IA-32, x86-64 4.8 2.6.9-89 2009-08-21 2009-05-18 95 4.9 IA-32, x86-64 4.9 2.6.9-100 2011-03-02 2011-02-16 14 5.0 IA-32, x86-64 5.0 2.6.18-8 2007-04-12 2007-03-14 28 5.1 IA-32, x86-64 5.1 2.6.18-53 2007-12-02 2007-11-07 25 5.2 IA-32, x86-64 5.2 2.6.18-92 2008-06-24 2008-05-21 34 5.3 IA-32, x86-64 5.3 2.6.18-128 2009-03-31 2009-01-20 69 5.4 IA-32, x86-64 5.4 2.6.18-164 2009-10-21 2009-09-02 49 5.5 IA-32, x86-64 5.5 2.6.18-194 2010-05-14 2010-03-31 44 5.6 IA-32, x86-64 5.6 2.6.18-238 2011-04-08 2011-01-13 85 5.7 IA-32, x86-64 5.7 2.6.18-274 2011-09-13 2011-07-21 54 5.8 IA-32, x86-64 5.8 2.6.18-308 2012-03-07 2012-02-21 15 5.9 IA-32, x86-64 5.9 2.6.18-348 2013-01-17 2013-01-07 10 5.10 IA-32, x86-64 5.10 2.6.18-371 2013-10-19 2013-09-30 19 5.11 IA-32, x86-64 5.11 2.6.18-398 2014-09-30 2014-09-16 14 6.0 IA-32, x86-64 6.0 2.6.32-71 2011-07-10 2010-11-10 242 6.1 IA-32, x86-64 6.1 2.6.32-131 2011-12-09 2011-05-19 204 6.2 IA-32, x86-64 6.2 2.6.32-220 2011-12-20 2011-12-06 14 6.3First look at CentOS 6.3, DistroWatch weekly. IA-32, x86-64 6.3 2.6.32-279 2012-07-09 2012-06-21 18 6.4 IA-32, x86-64 6.4 2.6.32-358 2013-03-09 2013-02-21 15 6.5 IA-32, x86-64 6.5 2.6.32-431 2013-12-01 2013-11-21 10 6.6 IA-32, x86-64 6.6 2.6.32-504 2014-10-28 2014-10-14 14 6.7 IA-32, x86-64 6.7 2.6.32-573 2015-08-07 2015-07-22 16 6.8 IA-32, x86-64 6.8 2.6.32-642 2016-05-25 2016-05-10 15 6.9 IA-32, x86-64 6.9 2.6.32-696 2017-04-05 2017-03-21 15 6.10 IA-32, x86-64 6.10 2.6.32-754 2018-07-03 2018-06-19 14
CentOS version 7 CentOS version Architectures RHEL base Kernel CentOS release date RHEL release date Delay (days) 7.0-1406 x86-64 7.0 3.10.0-123 2014-07-07 2014-06-10 27 7.1-1503 x86-64 7.1 3.10.0-229 2015-03-31 2015-03-05 26 7.2-1511 x86-64 7.2 3.10.0-327 2015-12-14 2015-11-19 25 7.3-1611 x86-64 7.3 3.10.0-514 2016-12-12 2016-11-03 39 7.4-1708 x86-64 7.4 3.10.0-693 2017-09-13 2017-07-31 43 7.5-1804 x86-64 7.5 3.10.0-862 2018-05-10 2018-04-10 31 7.6-1810 x86-64 7.6 3.10.0-957 2018-12-03 2018-10-30 34 7.7-1908 x86-64 7.7 3.10.0-1062 2019-09-17 2019-08-06 427.8-2003 x86-64 7.8 3.10.0-1127 2020-04-27 2020-03-30 28 7.9-2009 x86-64 7.9 3.10.0-1160 2020-11-12 2020-09-29 44
Latest version information
CentOS version 8 CentOS version Architectures RHEL base Kernel CentOS release date RHEL release date Delay (days) 8.0-1905 x86-64, ppc64le, AArch64 8.0 4.18.0-80 2019-09-24 2019-05-07 140 8.1-1911 8.1 4.18.0-147 2020-01-15 2019-11-05 71 8.2-2004 8.2 4.18.0-193 2020-06-15 2020-04-28 48 8.3-2011 8.3 4.18.0-240 2020-12-07 2020-11-03 34 8.4-2105 8.4 4.18.0-305 2021-06-03 2021-05-18 16 8.5-2111 8.5 4.18.0-348 2021-11-16 2021-11-09 7
AltArch releases AltArch releases are released by the Alternative Architecture Special Interest Group (AltArch SIG) to support architectures that are not supported by the base CentOS releases.
CentOS version Architectures RHEL base CentOS release date 7.1-1503 AArch64 7.1 2015-08-04 IA-32 2015-10-12 7.2-1511 IA-32 7.2 2015-12-19 ARMv7hl 2015-12-19 PowerPC64 (TechPreview) 2015-12-19 POWER8 (le) (TechPreview) 2015-12-19 7.3-1611 ARMv7hl 7.3 2016-12-14 POWER8 (le) 2016-12-22 AArch64 2017-01-04 IA-32 2017-01-27 7.4-1708 ARMv7hl 7.4 2017-09-13 POWER8 (le) 2017-09-14 POWER7 2017-09-14 AArch64 2017-09-13 IA-32 2017-10-12 7.5-1804 ARMv7hl 7.5 2018-05-10 POWER8 LE 2018-05-10 POWER7 2018-05-10 AArch64 2018-05-10 IA-32 2018-05-10 7.6-1810 ARMv7hl 7.6 2018-12-03 POWER8 (le) 2018-12-03 PowerPC9 2018-12-03 AArch64 2018-12-03 IA-32 2018-12-03 7.7-1908 ARMv7hl 7.7 2019-09-17 POWER7 2019-09-17 POWER8 (le) 2019-09-17 POWER9 2019-09-17 AArch64 2019-09-17 IA-32 2019-09-17
Add-ons releases