CentOS (short for Community Enterprise Operating System) is a free, open-source Linux distribution built directly from the source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It provides the same enterprise-grade stability, performance, and security as RHEL — without the commercial licensing costs.
For developers, system administrators, and businesses that demand predictable performance and long-term support, CentOS has long been one of the most trusted Linux distributions for servers and VM hosting environments.
in 2020 Red Hat announced a strategic shift to CentOS Stream, a rolling-release distribution positioned between Fedora (upstream) and RHEL (downstream).
latest CentOS Stream versions
CentOS Stream 10 — December 12, 2024
CentOS Stream 9 — December 3, 2021
CentOS Stream 8 — September 24, 2019

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