CentOS has announced that CentOS 9 Stream Appliances will soon be available via KIWI on the CentOS-Infra repository.

What is KIWI?

KIWI is one of the most popular command line utility to build Linux system appliances. KIWI had recently phased out its legacy code and has now come up with KIWI NG (Next Generation) with the release of v9.x, which is now stable and ready to be used for live projects.

KIWI NG can create images in ISO, PXE as well as Vagrant formats.

What is a CentOS 9 Stream Appliance?

An Appliance is a ready to use image of any Operating System (CentOS 9 Stream in this case) which can be used in any Workstation environment, Cloud, Vagrant or any other type of containers.

The need for Appliances of any Operating System arises due to the additional needs of Cloud or Containerised environments, where one would need API access between the Cloud or Container managers, including RedHat’s own OpenShift Container Orchestrator and the OS for being able to manage the workflow of the Operating System right from the management consoles.

The work for the first stable release of the CentOS 9 Stream Appliance is in progress and one can checkout the same on the CentOS Community Build Service Staging Repository.

Where are the legacy CentOS Appliances?

The legacy CentOS Appliances can still be accessed at the CentOS Virtualization Appliances repository.