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    What is CentOS Stream?

    In September 2019, CentOS Stream was announced and at the end of 2020 Red Hat announced that CentOS Stream will be the future for CentOS.

    This announcement brought about a change in the End of Life of CentOS 8 from 2029 to 2021. This means that CentOS 8 will no longer receive security updates after 2021 and VPSs that use it are potentially vulnerable to attacks.

    You may wonder what CentOS Stream is and how it differs from previous CentOS versions. In this article we explain this and we answer some frequently asked questions.


    What is CentOS Stream?

    Simply put, CentOS Stream is the development arm of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is a new version of CentOS with continuous continuous updates. You can compare it to 'rolling release' Linux distros with one important difference from normal rolling releases: major releases of CentOS Stream are linked to Red Hat major releases.

    To better understand this, it is important to get an idea of where CentOS was before and after the introduction of CentOS Stream in the Linux landscape and who else is involved:

    CentOS Stream is part of the 'Red Hat ecosystem'. The core of this ecosystem consists of the following Linux distros:

    • Fedora Project: This is the core of the Fedora OS and is aimed at contributors who want to contribute to the innovation of the Red Hat landscape. Early developments within the Red Hat landscape often come first on Fedora.
       
    • Red HatEnterprise Linux: As the name suggests, this is a distro developed by Red Hat and aimed at the business market. There is a more basic free version and a paid version. With the paid version, full support is provided by Red Hat.
       
    • CentOS: A free version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Before the introduction of Stream, CentOS was built from the stable source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with some adjustments on top.

     

    Three roles:

    Broadly speaking, you can distinguish three roles in this landscape:

    • Innovation: new concepts/packages are tested and developed
       
    • Standardization: as the concepts/packages from the innovation phase mature, they become integrated and more stable (i.e. no more major changes). In addition, general and security updates will be made.
       
    • Expansion: The standard set in the previous step serves as a stable base. Only additional (small) features are added that do not affect that basis.

    From this it becomes somewhat clear that the aforementioned distros fulfill specific roles in the order innovation > standardization > expansion. CentOS Stream changes the traditional placement of CentOS within these roles as follows:

    Before CentOS Stream:

    Fedora > RHEL > CentOS

    After CentOS Stream:

    Fedora > CentOS Stream > RHEL


    Why CentOS Stream?

     

    As we saw in the previous section, CentOS Stream takes over the traditional role of RHEL. Red Hat lists several reasons for this change:

    • Developers using RHEL often need earlier access to code and enhanced and more transparent collaboration with the wider Red Hat partner community to steer the direction in which RHEL develops.
    • Ecosystem developers (OEMs, ISVs, and Application developers) can better steer the direction of RHEL in the new division of roles within the Red Hat landscape.
    • Traditionally, much development of CentOS has taken place behind Red Hat's firewalls. This will disappear, making development more transparent.
    • Red Hat wants to release more regular updates to Red Hat and therefore needs to be able to get developments from the community more quickly. CentOS Stream will be used for that.
    • An important part of open source is innovation. A rebuild (i.e. CentOS was a rebuild of RHEL) does not allow for that innovation that characterizes open source. CentOS Stream will therefore have a stronger focus on open source than CentOS 8 or its predecessors.

    You could say that CentOS Stream will focus more on developers and parties who want to be able to test and implement changes faster. An example of a major player doing this is for example Facebook, which uses its own modified version of CentOS Stream on millions of servers.

    Red Hat states that this does not mean that CentOS Stream is unstable compared to CentOS X or Red Hat. CentOS Stream takes the place traditionally occupied by RHEL and this has always been a system built on stability. Updates are extensively tested before they are released.

    Red Hat's arguments above suggest that CentOS Stream, while built on a stable foundation, will still be more experimental than Red Hat currently is. On the other hand, it can also serve to make a clearer distinction between the target groups of both systems


    Differences in usage between CentOS 8 and CentOS Stream

     

    There is no substantial difference in using CentOS 8 and Stream aside from the frequency of updates. Software is expected to be updated more regularly. Commands you are used to using such as yum, dnf and systemctl will remain.


    What does this mean for my VPS?

     

    After December 2021 VPSs using CentOS 8 are potentially vulnerable to attacks. As such, we recommend upgrading your VPS to AlmaLinux.


     

    This concludes our article on CentOS Stream.

    Should you have any questions left regarding this article, do not hesitate to contact our support department. You can reach them via the ‘Contact Us’ button at the bottom of this page.

     

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