Rocky Linux Making Progress Towards Their First Release In Q2 As A Free RHEL Alternative

If Red Hat's new no-cost offering for up to 16 production systems for RHEL doesn't fit your requirements and are evaluating alternatives to CentOS 8 that will be EOL'ed this year, Rocky Linux remains one of the leading contenders and is on track for its inaugural release in Q2 of this year.

Rocky Linux and CloudLinux's AlmaLinux appear to be the two main contenders (along with existing players like Oracle Linux) coming out of last month's announcement that CentOS 8 will be EOL'ed at the end of 2021.

Rocky Linux continues to be worked on by CentOS founder Gregory Kurtzer and others. With Kurtzer involved has provided a lot of weight for this early stage Linux distribution project prior to shipping any release. Today the project provided their latest development update as they aim to ship their first official release in the second quarter.

Much of the work so far has been on establishing the Rocky Linux build infrastructure and getting that rolling. There has also been the various administrative tasks involved with the newly-formed The Rocky Linux Foundation, being able to accept sponsorships / donations, etc.

In getting to the initial Rocky Linux release in Q2, they are aiming to have the build systems and infrastructure going by the end of this month. They plan to have a test repository by the end of February along with beginning to test their installer. By the end of March is when they hope to ship a release candidate and facilitate wider-spread community testing.

At least for now Rocky Linux is relying upon Amazon AWS for its build infrastructure.

Those interested in the latest bits of Rocky Linux work can see today's status update on RockyLinux.org.