In 2021, the team behind CentOS announced they would be making significant changes to how the software is managed. CentOS as we know it would be ending and would no longer be maintained in its current fashion. The team would be rebranding the software as CentOS Stream.
Currently, CentOS receives features after RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) has implemented them. RHEL, for those of you who don’t know, is the Enterprise version of CentOS and, therefore, a paid product. Historically, this meant CentOS only ever received new features and updates that had been tested well. This made it a very attractive, free OS for end users and, especially businesses. It was considered to be extremely stable with well-tested updates and features.
CentOS to CentOS Stream
With CentOS evolving into CentOS Stream, the product will receive new features and updates before RHEL. This will make CentOS Steam an unattractive OS for Enterprise users. Unattractive because the updates to CentOS Stream will not have been tested thoroughly. Our customers may have noticed we never introduced CentOS 8 to our network. We didn’t do this because it became end-of-life in 2021, soon after this announcement.
Ending Support For CentOS
Understandably, the CentOS community had an overwhelmingly negative view of this development. CloudLinux attempted to tackle this issue by releasing AlmaLinux, with funding from cPanel. And the founder of CentOS, Gregory Kurtzer announced a new project called Rocky Linux to track RHEL. Based on these developments, CentOS 7 will be the last version of CentOS we provide to our customers. First2Host will still provide the ISO versions of CentOS but, will not provide a CentOS template that can be used to create instances at order point after CentOS 7.
We already provide AlmaLinux 8 which is a direct copy of CentOS 8 that’s still maintained and, we will be providing AlmaLinux 9. We also plan to introduce Rocky Linux. In the future, we expect one of these projects to end but in the meantime, we will support both. AlmaLinux 9 and Rocky Linux will be ready for use in the near future.
With CentOS 7 becoming end of life on June 30, 2024. We can no longer guarantee CentOS 7 will function on our network. We, therefore, will end support for all CentOS instances on this date.
What does this mean for customers?
CentOS 7 will not receive any updates. As the software becomes older it will become incompatible with our systems. Customers need to ensure they update to AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux or another version of REHL before this date. We will provide instructions below for customers to follow. This will allow you to migrate your instances to your chosen Operating System. Our support team are unable to provide advice on which Operating System you migrate to, except for cPanel systems. Where cPanel is in use, we advise you to migrate to the AlmaLinux project.
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