Since CentOS announced the following statement on Dec. 8th, 2020 last week:

The future of the CentOS Project is CentOS Stream, and over the next year we’ll be shifting focus from CentOS Linux, the rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), to CentOS Stream, which tracks just ahead of a current RHEL release. CentOS Linux 8, as a rebuild of RHEL 8, will end at the end of 2021. CentOS Stream continues after that date, serving as the upstream (development) branch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Meanwhile, we understand many of you are deeply invested in CentOS Linux 7, and we’ll continue to produce that version through the remainder of the RHEL 7 life cycle.

there is a lot of disappointment within the CentOS community. People like CentOS because it’s a rebuild of RHEL and it has had a very good reputation on stability.

The original founder of CentOS, Gregory Kurtzer has started a new project Rocky Linux right after that announcement. It is to achieve the original goals of CentOS — be a downstream, complete binary-compatible release using the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) operating system source code.

When I read the news, my first thought for CentOS users is why not give Oracle Linux a try? I used to play CentOS for my personal interests. Ever since my orginization started to use Oracle Linux in our products more than 10 years ago, I’ve been using it.

It’s a rebuild of RHEL although it has it’s own kernel. It also has a RHEL Compatible Kernel. It’s stable, 100% application binary compatible with RHEL. And it’s FREE if Oracle support is NOT needed.

Interestingly enough, 4 days after that announcement, Oracle blogged “Need a stable, RHEL-compatible alternative to CentOS? Three reasons to consider Oracle Linux“. As a CentOS user which is just abandoned by RedHat, you might think about it twice — who knows what next moves those evil big companies will take? For them, it’s alway a profit driven business.

Anyway as they bragged it’s been free for 14 years and they’ve even put a script to help CentOS users to migrate to Oracle Linux from CentOS, it’s always good to have a backup solution in mind, huh?

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