Difference Between CentOS Linux And CentOS Stream

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Hi,

I am confused between CentOS Linux and CentOS Stream as per https://www.CentOS.org/download/. Please guide me on which one I need to use in the production environment. Is there a difference between CentOS
Linux and CentOS Stream?

Thanks in advance and I look forward to hearing from you.

Best Regards,

Kaushal

18 thoughts on - Difference Between CentOS Linux And CentOS Stream

  • I think a lot of good answers can be found here:

    https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-CentOS-stream-updates

    So, the short answer is that CentOS 8 goes end of life at the end of December, 2021. So it is fine for production use until that point.

    However, CentOS 8 Stream should be fine for most uses. My only concern will be for people who use 3rd-party kernel module repositories like ELRepo.org for support of their hardware (such as RAID drivers). ELrepo doesn’t plan on building a kmod for the kernels in CentOS Stream, so it would be a painful transition from 8 to
    8-stream. But if you aren’t using any 3rd-party kernel modules, you should be fine.

    The Kmod SIG plans to try to build GPL’d kmods for CentOS Stream kernels, but we’re just starting up now.

  • The short/simple answer is that CentOS Stream is slightly *before* RHEL
    and CentOS Linux is slightly *after* RHEL.

    Note that CentOS Linux 8 will be discontinued on December 31st, 2021. The project will be shifting focus to CentOS Stream at that time. As such, we recommend that you use CentOS Stream.

  • Hello,

    Check https://wiki.CentOS.org/About/Product to find the EOL dates for each version of CentOS.

    To my opinion the only CentOS version that is anymore appropriate for production usage is version 7. CentOS 8 is production ready but the eol date is only a few months away.

    I choosed to migrate my CentOS 8 machines to oracle linux 8 for production usage, but many more distros have appeared (almalinux, rockylinux, springdale linux, etc). All of them follow the EOL dates for RHEL 8.x ( May 2029) and are build from the sources packaes of RHEL.

    Regard, Antonis Kopsaftis

    —

    =============================================================

    ……………………………………………………
    . . Kopsaftis Antonis – akops@teiath.gr – akops@uniwa.gr . .
    . . Network Operation Center . .
    . . University of West Attica – http://www.uniwa.gr . .
    . . (ex Technological Educational Institute of Athens) . .
    . . Ag. Spiridonos, Aigaleo, 12243 Athens, Greece . .
    . . Office: +30 2105385790, +30 2105387200 . .
    . . System Engineer . .
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    . . Certified Fiber Optic Technician (CFOT – FOA) . .
    . . MTCNA – MikroTik Certified Network Associate . .
    . . MTCWE – MikroTik Certified Wireless Engineer . .
    ……………………………………………………

    =============================================================

  • You are entitled to your opinion :D // but, IMHO ..

    If you are not doing anything special with the kernel, then there is very little difference between CentOS Stream and CentOS Linux.

    I would surely rather trust the 1500 RHEL developers who are maintaining CentOS Stream than anyone else .. but that is just my opinion.

  • Hello,

    Even if CentOS stream 8 is pretty stable for production usage his eol date is until 2024 (same as CentOS 7). In the following 2 years i will have to migrate my CentOS 7 servers to something newer. I can choose a distro with the same eol date. I need a distro which much more long eol date.

    Finally i choose to trust the oracle developers who maintain the oracle linux (based on rhel source packages). In the future i will also try the almalinux distro (maintained by cloudlinux).

    Regards, Antonis Kopsaftis

    —

    =============================================================

    ……………………………………………………
    . . Kopsaftis Antonis – akops@teiath.gr – akops@uniwa.gr . .
    . . Network Operation Center . .
    . . University of West Attica – http://www.uniwa.gr . .
    . . (ex Technological Educational Institute of Athens) . .
    . . Ag. Spiridonos, Aigaleo, 12243 Athens, Greece . .
    . . Office: +30 2105385790, +30 2105387200 . .
    . . System Engineer . .
    . . VMware Certified Professional (VCP) . .
    . . Certified Fiber Optic Technician (CFOT – FOA) . .
    . . MTCNA – MikroTik Certified Network Associate . .
    . . MTCWE – MikroTik Certified Wireless Engineer . .
    ……………………………………………………

    =============================================================

  • Sure .. but just like you are using EL8 right now .. EL9 will be released before the 8-Stream EOL. Again .. Have no issues using whatever, but there will be plenty of time to get Stream 9 up and going for most loads before Stream 8 EOL.

    Yes, some items, if you really need 10 years, would require Alma or Rocky or Oracle if you don’t want to pay for RHEL.

  • FWIW, Rocky Linux dropped GA v8.4 on Jun 21st and has been really stable for me thus far. For those not aware, Rocky is based on RHEL and has the primary goal to be a CentOS replacement.

    Also has solid sponsors – AWS, Microsoft, & Google…

    – – –

  • Judging from the dates on /etc/*release Alma dropped on May 26. Also been solid.

    —
    J Martin Rushton MBCS

  • Il 2021-07-19 21:38 Johnny Hughes ha scritto:

    Any news about in-place migration from Stream-8 to Stream-9?
    Thanks.

  • Out of curiosity, do we yet know the frequency of reboot-required updates (kernel, glibc, systemd, etc.) in CentOS Stream?

    For me (and I suspect many others), this is the things that is likely to make CentOS Stream less “stable” than RHEL, CentOS Linux, and other derivatives.

  • I have been there for the same reason solely. Switching to “rolling release” style distribution (Like Debian and clones, or FreeBSD – the last is no Linux ;-) will occasionally require a but of work when some component steps up and does need a bit of config adjustment, but it pays off by smooth in-place upgrade (which I just did on one box from Debian
    9 “stretch” to Debian 10 “buster”, and was doing FreeBSD upgrades same smoothly through multiple releases during last decade…)

    Just my 2 cents.

    Valeri

    —
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  • We’ve been using the 10 year support to convince researchers to install CentOS instead of their preferred option Ubuntu. We’ve now lost that argument so most will go to Ubuntu. Those who need 10 year support will move to Oracle.

  • From what I’m seeing in terms of numbers from watching EPEL¹, CentOS Stream is the most popular “successor”. For RHEL rebuilds, Oracle is the most popular but will soon be overtaken² by Alma Linux. Rocky Linux has just started to show up on the radar; it’ll be interesting to see what the trends look like in six months.

    Also worth noting that CentOS Linux continues to grow — this is CentOS Linux
    8 installations, as this method doesn’t include anything before that.

    —-

    1. https://twitter.com/mattdm/status/1418631176839999489/photo/1

    2. Caveat: Oracle Linux is undercounted here because they have their own
    EPEL rebuild

    —
    Matthew Miller

    Fedora Project Leader

  • And it was 7 years before it was 10 .. so 5 could certainly be good enough for most people. But not everyone.

    Again .. I couldn’t care less what anyone uses or how they feel about things i can’t control. I am just saying, for the vast majority of users, 5 years is OK and Steam is good enough and stable enough to use. RHEL is based off it, it must be good enough.

    Not trying to start a philosophical debate or a tread on how someone is offended by such and such release date changing, etc. Just stating that Stream is good enough for almost anyone to use. It has a lifetime as good as Debian or Ubuntu LTS .. it gets security updates in a timely manner.

    If it doesn’t meet your needs (not you in particular Nicolas .. YOU in the larger / plural sense) .. then use something that does.