Well, this seems another good news for many CentOS users. The CloudLinux Team announced that they plan to fork RHEL and create a CentOS like distribution named Project Lenix.
A while back, Red Hat decided to pull the plug on CentOS Linux. CentOS Linux is a free and open-source rock-solid server-based Linux distribution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It is known to be the exact binary compatible of RHEL. The current CentOS 8 version was supposed to be supported until 2029 by Red Hat. However, it is decided to end the support pre-maturely by Dec 2021 and migrate the project to a new rolling based close “CentOS Stream”. The new Linux Distribution – CentOS Stream will not be exact binary compatible with RHEL technically. Instead, centOS Stream may contain bleeding-edge packages (which might break certain environments) and it is believed to be a “testbed” for RHEL.
With this, many users, enterprises around the world forced to take a relook at their enterprise deployment strategy with CentOS. Obviously, the new CentOS Stream will not be that rock-solid as its predecessors. It is also risky to deploy it on production servers for enterprises and users.
Like always, the FOSS community comes to the rescue. earlier, the original creator of the CentOS project “Gregory Kurtzer”, announced that a new project called Rocky Linux. Rocky Linux will be a completely new Linux distribution based on RHEL. It’s currently in a planning phase and no ETA for release at the moment. You can learn more about Rocky Linux here.
Project Lenix – CentOS Fork
While Rocky Linux is being developed, the CloudLinux team announced that they plan to develop ProjectLinux – an exact fork of CentOS based on RHEL. CloudLinux is a commercial company which provides its CoudlLinux OS to Data centers, hosting provider.
The CloudLinux team plans to develop an exact binary compatible with the current RHEL 8 stable by Q1 2021. This is a very optimistic target. The main reason being is, the CloudLinux team already have the infrastructure setup, experience with CentOS already with their CloudLinux OS.
If you are running CentOS 8 – we will release an OS very similar to CentOS 8 based on RHEL 8 stable. We will provide stable and well-tested updates until 2029 – completely free. You will be able to convert from CentOS 8 at any moment by running a single command that switches repositories & keys.
We plan to make all the build and test software free, open-sourced, easy to set up, so if we ever go in the wrong direction – the community can just pick up where we left off.
Project Lenix Team
If the CloudLinux team manages to release Project Lenix by Q1 2021, then it will be good news for many enterprises, users across the world. It is becoming a stable distribution in servers, then users have time to properly migrate their servers to Project Lenix before Dec 2021.
I am almost certain, that Rocky Linux might not be able to release its first alpha by March 2021.
Overall, whoever does it, it’s always to have multiple alternatives for users, eventually benefitting the FOSS community.
You can learn more about Project Lenix on Reddit. More details in the announcement.
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