CentOS 8 Ending Next Year To Focus Shift On CentOS Stream

Well here is a surprise for those that have long used CentOS as the community-supported rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux... CentOS 8 will end in 2021 and moving forward CentOS 7 will remain supported until the end of its lifecycle but CentOS Stream will be the focus as the future upstream of RHEL.

For those relying on CentOS 8 to enjoy the reliability and features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 but without the licensing costs, etc, that will end in 2021. At the end of 2021, CentOS 8 will no longer be maintained but CentOS 7 will stick around in a supported maintenance state until 2024.

The CentOS Project will be focused moving forward just on CentOS Stream as the upstream/development branch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. CentOS 8 users are encouraged to begin transitioning to CentOS Stream 8.

The CentOS Project announced this shift in focus today via the CentOS Blog.

Red Hat's announcement meanwhile is promoting the change as beneficial to CentOS Stream. Red Hat also says Intel will be collaborating with them and the community on CentOS Stream. Red Hat also talks up Facebook using a derivative of CentOS Stream in their data centers.

This will at least offer a transparent look into the RHEL upsteam and potentially more collaboration, but a disappointment for those wanting a free nearly identical build to the current RHEL8 releases that CentOS 8 provided. Oracle Linux continues to be another popular "rebuild" of RHEL but with their own features available too like the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (though the Red Hat Compatible Kernel is also offered) and there Oracle is trying to sell support contracts as well. Last year meanwhile Scientific Linux EOL'ed as what was the other popular community alternative to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and they referred its users at the time to CentOS.