What Happens to CentOS After Red Hat Ends Free Support? Key Dates & Alternatives

One year ago Red Hat announced that it would stop providing free CentOS Linux by the end of this year.

Last Friday Red Hat reminded that CentOS Linux 8 will reach its end of life (EoL) on December 31, 2023.

CentOS is a Linux distribution built from the source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Because it shares the same source, many servers that require high stability use CentOS as a free alternative to the commercial RHEL.

Last year Red Hat announced that CentOS will shift to a platform for DevOps developers, not for stable server or VM operating systems. The new platform is called CentOS Stream , and there will be no CentOS 9.

CentOS Stream 9, originally planned for release in Q2 of this year, has been delayed until mid‑November. Users can download components for IBM Power, IBM Z, ARM64, and x86 architectures from the CentOS website. CentOS Stream 8 will no longer automatically upgrade to newer versions.

The final version of CentOS 8 will receive updates only until December 31, 2021 , whereas CentOS 7 will be supported until June 30, 2024 .

For CentOS 8 users, Red Hat will provide a RHEL 8.5 rebuild for CentOS when RHEL 8.5 is released, which may be the very last CentOS release, possibly after the EoL date.

Like RHEL point releases, the final CentOS 8 version will receive several security updates, but Red Hat’s support will only extend to January 31, 2022; after that, no further updates will be issued.

When a CVSS‑rated security vulnerability of 9 or higher appears after the end of January, the affected version will be removed from the mirror sites and permanently archived on vault.centos.org, which stores EoL products.

CentOS is used by many large enterprises and websites, including Facebook, Disney, GoDaddy, Toyota, Verizon, and it serves as the underlying OS for vendors such as Juniper, F5, and Fortinet.

ZDNet recommends alternatives to CentOS 8 such as AlmaLinux, CloudLinux OS, Rocky Linux, Amazon Linux, HPE ClearOS, Oracle Linux, Ubuntu, and of course RHEL.

Reference: https://www.ithome.com.tw/news/148329