CentOS officially died on December 31, 2021, a fact that undoubtedly generated a lot of discord between Red Hat, the community and countless companies, and at the same time caused the explosion of multiple projects who seek to fill the gap and be the best alternative.
From Greg Kurtzer’s Rocky Linux (original co-creator of CentOS), to the Spanish Navy Linux project, passing through the “best positioned” AlmaLinux for now. Options are not lacking and continue to appear. The latest alternative to the distro comes from SUSE and its name is Liberty Linux.
The free download and optional purchase of commercial support from SUSE
The plan is that this new distro will be offered for free like other alternatives, although at the moment the only way to try a demo is by requesting it from the SUSE Liberty Linux website, where the new product appeared from one day to the next without much Hype.
Initially Liberty Linux should be equivalent to the current version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.5 and compatible with packages from Red Hat’s own EPEL repositories. Let us remember that, after announcing the end of CentOS, Red Hat announced a free RHEL but this is only for non-profit and open source organizations. CentOS Linux 9, like the derivative distribution of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9, never came and never will.
SUSE is building Liberty Linux using its own Open Build Service tool from official Red Hat RPMs (SRPMs), except the kernel, which will be that of SUSE Linux Enterprise ServerSUSE’s own enterprise distribution, but compiled using a Red Hat compatible configuration.
The idea is similar to the one proposed by CloudLinux: offer support (obviously paid) to users abandoned by CentOS during the transition without having to switch to another distro immediately and then end up moving to CloudLinux OS or using another fork.
Now there are more alternatives. Instead of paying RedHat With IBM moving to CentOS Stream, you now have the option to jump to another fully supported paid alternative, compatible with RHEL and from a company well established in enterprise Linux solutions like SUSE.
More information SUSE – Via | TheRegister