A release candidate for the Rocky Linux 8.3 distribution is available for testing, aimed at creating a new free build of RHEL that can take the place of the classic CentOS, after Red Hat decided to stop supporting the CentOS 8 branch at the end of 2021, and not in 2029, as was originally intended. Rocky Linux builds are prepared for x86_64 and aarch64 architectures.
The distribution is fully binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3. As in the classic CentOS, the changes made to the packages come down to getting rid of the link to the Red Hat brand. The project is being developed under the leadership of Gregory Kurtzer, founder of CentOS. In parallel, to develop advanced products based on Rocky Linux and support the community of developers of this distribution, a commercial company Ctrl IQ was created, which received $ 4 million in investments. The Rocky Linux distribution itself is promised to be developed independently of the Ctrl IQ company under the control of the community. MontaVista, 45Drives, OpenDrives and Amazon Web Services have also joined to develop and fund the project.
As an alternative to the old CentOS, in addition to Rocky Linux, the AlmaLinux project is being developed with the support of CloudLinux, the first stable release of which has already taken place at the end of March. Oracle Linux is also being promoted to replace CentOS. In addition, Red Hat has made RHEL available free of charge to open source organizations and individual developer environments of up to 16 virtual or physical systems.
Source: opennet.ru