CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor.  CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendors redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork.)  CentOS is free.

CentOS is developed by a small but growing team of core developers.  In turn the core developers are supported by an active user community including system administrators, network administrators, enterprise users, managers, core Linux contributors and Linux enthusiasts from around the world.

CentOS has numerous advantages over some of the other clone projects including:  an active and growing user community, quickly rebuilt, tested, and QA'ed errata packages, an extensive mirror network, developers who are contactable and responsive, multiple free support avenues including IRC Chat, Mailing Lists, Forums, a dynamic FAQ.  Commercial support is offered via a number of vendors.

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The CentOS team is pleased to announce the availability of CentOS 5.4. Major changes in CentOS 5 compared to CentOS 4 include:

These updated software versions: Apache-2.2, php-5.1.6, kernel-2.6.18, Gnome-2.16, KDE-3.5, OpenOffice.org-2.3, Evolution-2.12, Firefox-3.0, Thunderbird-2.0, MySQL-5.0, PostgreSQL-8.

Better desktop support with compiz and AIGLX.

Virtualization provided by the Xen hypervisor with Virtual Machine Manager and libvirt.

Major changes compared to earlier CentOS 5 versions include:

KVM as a preview for the new virtualization technology in Enterprise Linux.

ext4 as a technology preview in file systems.

Links:
Distro Release Announcement |
Documentation: CentOS 5

Release Notes: CentOS | Upstream

Download: i386 | x86_64

The CentOS team is pleased to announce the availability of CentOS 4.8. Major changes in 4.8 include a) There is now a Preview Edition of OpenOffice.org-2.0.4 and b) Firefox is rebased to Firefox-3.0.x. These improvements along with many more are detailed in the online release notes here and upstream release notes here

These architectures are complete and released as final:

CentOS 4.8 i386.
CentOS 4.4 i386 LiveCD.
CentOS 4.8 x86_64.
CentOS 4.7 Single ServerCD i386
CentOS 4.7 Single ServerCD x86_64
CentOS 4.7 IA64
CentOS 4.7 s390
CentOS 4.7 s390x
CentOS 4.3 for Alpha

The following architecture are beta releases:

CentOS 4.0 for ppc32
CentOS-4.2Beta for sparc

Single Server CD
CentOS 4 offers a Single Server CD. This CD contains a subset of packages used for most server installs on a single CD for installation. This CD can be a time saver (1 CD instead of 4 for download). Available here.

LiveCD
There is also a CentOS 4 LiveCD for i386. This LiveCD is a fully functional workstation and can be used as a system recovery tool as well. See this release announcement for more information. Available here.

Please read the latest CentOS 4 Documentation for complete details.

Download CentOS 4 i386 | x86_64 ISOs

Reviews: Linux.com | NewsForge | Linux.com

CentOS 3.9 is the currently released version of CentOS 3. It includes the following features the Native Posix Thread Library, Gnome 2.2.2, KDE 3.1.3, MySQL 3.23.58, PostgreSQL 7.3.10, Apache 2.0.46, OpenOffice.org 1.1.2, Samba 3, IMPI, SeaMonkey-1.0.x and many others.

CentOS 3 currently supports these architectures:

i386
x86_64
ia64
s390
s390x

Single Server CD
CentOS 3.9 offers a Single Server CD (i386 and x86_64 only) . This CD contains a subset of packages used for most server installs on a single CD for installation. This CD can be a time saver (1 CD instead of 4 for download). The latest Single Server CD is available at the ISO link below.

Latest Release Announcement is here

Latest CentOS 3 Documentation and release notes are here

Download CentOS 3 i386 | x86_64 ISOs.

The CentOS Project would like to thank the following sponsors of the project.

UK Dedicated Server Hosting

If you would like to help the CentOS project by sponsoring a link then please contact us using the web contact form

The CentOS Development team had a routine meeting today with Lance Davis in attendance. During the meeting a majority of issues were resolved immediately and a working agreement was reached with deadlines for remaining unresolved issues. There should be no impact to any CentOS users going forward.

The CentOS project is now in control of the CentOS.org and CentOS.info domains and owns all trademarks, materials, and artwork in the CentOS distributions.

We look forward to working with Lance to quickly complete all the agreed upon issues.

More information will follow soon.

Original Letter

Last Update: August 1, 2009 04:34 UTC by Donavan Nelson

CentOS is not dead or going away. The signers of the Open Letter are fully committed to continue the CentOS Project. Updates and new releases will continue.

Most of the Issues have been resolved, there is an action plan with agreed upon dates for any outstanding issues.

The CentOS Project now owns the CentOS.org and CentOS.info domains and there will be no disruption in services.

We thank the people who have stepped forward and want to donate to the CentOS project. We ask that you hold off for now until issues surrounding our new donation policy are put into place.

The CentOS Project is run completely by volunteers and we are aware that this requires a different management style. We have been and continue to work to prevent issues like these from occurring in the future. We will continue this effort in the future, look for some new policy information soon

Last Update: August 1, 2009 04:36 UTC by Donavan Nelson

We now have 3 new News Categories that allow article submissions by our registered users. They are:

CentOS in the News - External News articles about CentOS.

Projects based on CentOS - Projects from other organizations that use CentOS as their base operating system. If you are using CentOS as the base OS for your project or if you find one we don't know about, please let us know.

We use CentOS - CentOS is an enterprise operating system. If you are using CentOS in an enterprise environment, we want to publish your story here.

You can use the above links to read the current articles in each area. If you are a registered CentOS.org user, you can submit an article for one of the above categories.

CentOS has released the Cluster Suite and Global File System for CentOS-3 and CentOS-4.
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Cluster Suite 4 (CS) and Global File System 6.1 (GFS) for CentOS-4 is available from this directory:

http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/csgfs/

See this Announcement for more information.
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Cluster Suite 3 (CS) and Global File System 6.0 (GFS) for CentOS-3 is available from this directory:

http://mirror.centos.org/centos/3/csgfs/