Which RHEL‑Based Linux Should You Choose in 2022? A Quick Guide to CentOS, AlmaLinux, and Rocky Linux

CentOS Linux 2022 – The End of an Era

CentOS’s original mission has officially ended, and its downstream or derived versions—Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.6, AlmaLinux 8.6, and Rocky Linux 8.6—are now available for all platforms.

RHEL

RHEL 8.6, code‑named “Ootpa,” was released on May 11. It builds on the 2019 RHEL 8 base, still using Fedora 28 and kernel 4.18‑372, with six months of bug‑fixes and security updates remaining.

The distribution includes PHP 8.0, Perl 5.32, GCC 11, LLVM 13.0.1, Rust 1.58.1, Go 1.17.76, and choice of OpenJDK 1.8, 11, or 17. It also supports Log4j 2 and GNOME 3.32 for the desktop edition.

Red Hat supports AMD and Intel x86/64 CPUs, 64‑bit ARM, IBM POWER (little‑endian), and IBM Z mainframes.

AlmaLinux

AlmaLinux 8.6, code‑named “Sky Tiger,” arrived on May 12. Built from the same RHEL source code, it is essentially identical to RHEL in versioning and components, offering x86‑64, AArch64, and ppc64le builds supported by an active online community.

Rocky Linux

Rocky Linux 8.6, code‑named “Green Obsidian,” was released on May 16. It honors one of CentOS’s co‑founders and provides x86‑64 and AArch64 images, with community support channels on Mattermost, Twitter, LinkedIn, Twitch, YouTube, forums, and Reddit.

Technically, the three distributions are the same operating system. Red Hat shifted CentOS to a rolling‑release “CentOS Stream” model in December 2020, positioning it as a development branch rather than a production‑ready platform, while RHEL targets customers needing paid support.

If you are not a Red Hat customer, choosing between AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux depends on which community you prefer. For example, CloudLinux sponsors AlmaLinux, and CIQ sponsors Rocky Linux, offering tailored support for shared‑hosting and high‑performance‑computing users respectively.

Which distribution will you pick?