CentOS Stream will now be the sole repository for public RHEL-related source code releases. For Red Hat customers and partners, source code will remain available via the Red Hat Customer Portal.

By limiting the RHEL public sources to CentOS Stream, it will now be more difficult for community/off-shoot enterprise Linux distributions like Alma Linux, Rocky Linux, Oracle Linux, Amazon Linux, etc, to provide 1:1 binary compatible builds against given RHEL releases.

If you’ve been following the way Red Hat has been moving CentOS from being a downstream distro to RHEL to making it the upstream community distro with the start of CentOS Stream, you’d know the major shift in Red Hat’s strategy to cater more to the paying customers and partners and killing the spirit of continuing to remain a community enterprise operating system.

“As the CentOS Stream community grows and the enterprise software world tackles new dynamics, we want to sharpen our focus on CentOS Stream as the backbone of enterprise Linux innovation. We are continuing our investment in and increasing our commitment to CentOS Stream. CentOS Stream will now be the sole repository for public RHEL-related source code releases. For Red Hat customers and partners, source code will remain available via the Red Hat Customer Portal.” said Mike McGrath, Red Hat VP of Core Platforms.

We’ll now have to wait and watch the path that will be taken by AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux, the 2 most popular community RHEL distros that were started since the time CentOS was moved upstream.

Both Rocky Linux as well as AlmaLinux have tweeted asking their community to not panic and a solution will soon be found.

Back in 2019, Redhat had announced that they will be changing their sponsorship for CentOS Linux distribution from December 2021. CentOS Stream would be an upstream development platform designed for CentOS community members.

Rocky Linux

Rocky Linux is a community enterprise operating system led by Gregory Kurtzer, founder of the CentOS project after RedHat decided to switch to CentOS Stream. One reason it is also called the unofficial successor to the CentOS Project.

Rocky Linux continues to keep the original charm of CentOS to be the stable downstream build of Redhat. It is taken as a drop-in replacement of CentOS being a 100% bug-for-bug fork.

What does Rocky Linux mean to the CentOS users?

It means that you can continue to expect the same stable Enterprise Linux build that one would be used to while using CentOS, on Rocky Linux as well, since it continues to be the downstream build of Redhat. It means that Rocky Linux will continue to follow the RedHat release cycle and release after a stable release of Redhat.

AlmaLinux

AlmaLinux, like Rocky Linux, is also a community enterprise operating system led by CloudLinux. CloudLinux has been in the Linux distribution, by the same name, offers a commercial linux distribution targeted towards the web hosting industry.

When Redhat announced the change in the sponsorship of the CentOS Project from being downstream to upstream CentOS Stream project, AlmaLinux was the first one to come up with a replacement for CentOS.

What does AlmaLinux mean to the CentOS users?

AlmaLinux is also a drop-in replacement for CentOS and unlike its parent company’s CloudLinux, it will continue to remain a free and open source Linux distribution.

Final Thoughts

The choice of whether you would go for CentOS Stream or Rocky Linux or AlmaLinux depends on what is your use case?

If you love having bleading edge features of a new enterprise operating system, which still have been tested more than a Fedora Linux and don’t mind getting operating system updates more often. Then CentOS Stream would be a good choice.

If you rather have a stable, well tested operating system with specific timelines of the releases/updates, then Rocky Linux or AlmaLinux should be the way to go.

Amongst Rocky Linux or AlmaLinux, as of today, there truely is hardly any difference, while not ruling out how far they end up differing as the time passes and newer releases of enterprise linux get released.

Both come with the backings of past experience. While Rockly Linux is from the very people who founded and led the CentOS Project, AlmaLinux is from the company who was able to see the features that were missing in the whole of Redhat, Fedora, CentOS environment, specifically from the web hosting industry stand point and actually build them up as part of their CloudLinux commercial offering.