Rocky Linux - True CentOS Replacement - Everything you need to know

The creator of CentOS started planning for a new Linux Distribution called Rocky Linux. It is going to be a true replacement for CentOS and will be enterprise-ready.

The recent strategy change by RHEL to discontinue CentOS 8 and making it a rolling-release-based CentOS 8 Stream created a whole lot of problems across the community. The CentOS 8 used by many small, medium, and some large enterprises as their rock-solid server operating system. Because it is a true “free” or “community” version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Many enterprises, already started deploying and testing CentOS 8 in their servers for applications. Because it was supposed to be supported into 2029. But with moving this to CentOS 8 Stream also cut short the support of CentOS 8 to December 2021.

This was never announced earlier. Hence this created many problems for people as they are now looking for alternatives to CentOS. This unfortunate event is going to cost many enterprise precious time, money, and resources which were never required.

Well, the awesome open-source community always comes to the rescue. The founder of the CentOS project “Gregory Kurtzer”, decided to start a new project called “Rocky Linux”. Rocky Linux intends to follow the “RHEL” distribution for packages.

This is still an in-progress project and almost everything is not final yet. But here I compiled all the information available together for Rocky Linux.

Rocky Linux Logo

Table of Contents

What is Rocky Linux?

Rocky Linux is a new community Linux distribution initiated after the premature discontinuation of the CentOS 8 project by Dec 2021. It is not affiliated with Red Hat, Inc.

When Rocky Linux will be released?

Rocky Linux 8.4 released as first stable version on June 22, 2021.

Rocky Linux – technical details

Developer	Community
OS Family	Unix
Source Model	Open Source
Initial Release	June 22, 2021
Latest Release	8.4 “Green Obsidian” on June 22, 2021
Target Market	Commercial, personal, Servers, and desktops
Language	Multilingual
Update Method	via DNF
Package Manager	RPM or DNF
Default User Interface	GNOME
License	BSD
Platforms	x86-64, AArch64