Red Hat Announces End of Life for CentOS Linux 8 and Transition to CentOS Stream

In December 2021 Red Hat announced it would stop providing free CentOS Linux at the end of the year and reminded that CentOS Linux 8 will reach its End of Life on December 31, 2021.

CentOS is a Linux distribution built from the source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Because it shares the same source, many servers use CentOS as a stable, free alternative to RHEL. Last year Red Hat said CentOS would shift to a platform for DevOps developers, called CentOS Stream, and there will be no CentOS 9.

The planned release of CentOS Stream 9, originally scheduled for the second quarter of 2022, was delayed to mid‑November. Users can download components for IBM Power, IBM Z, ARM64, and x86 architectures from the CentOS website. CentOS Stream 8 will no longer receive automatic upgrades to newer versions.

The final CentOS 8 release will receive updates only until December 31, 2021, whereas CentOS 7 will be supported until June 30, 2024. For CentOS 8 users, Red Hat will provide a RHEL rebuild (the last CentOS version) when RHEL 8.5 is released, possibly after the EOL date.

Point releases of RHEL include several security updates, and the last CentOS 8 point release will receive similar updates, but Red Hat’s support will end on January 31, 2022, after which no further updates will be published.

If a CVSS‑rated vulnerability of 9 or higher appears after the end of January, the affected images will be removed from mirror sites and permanently archived on vault.centos.org, which stores EOL products.

Many large enterprises and websites—including Facebook, Disney, GoDaddy, Toyota, Verizon—and vendors such as Juniper, F5, and Fortinet use CentOS as a base.

ZDNet recommends alternatives to CentOS 8, including AlmaLinux, CloudLinux OS, Rocky Linux, Amazon Linux, HPE ClearOS, Oracle Linux, Ubuntu, and of course RHEL.

Did you find this article helpful? Liking and sharing is the biggest support!