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CentOS

CentOS
Centos-logo-light.svg
CentOS 7.0 GNOME.png
Default GNOME desktop in CentOS 7
Developer The CentOS Project
(affiliated with Red Hat)
OS family Unix-like
Working state Current
Source model Open source
Initial release 14 May 2004; 12 years ago (2004-05-14)
Latest release

7.3-1611 (12 December 2016; 2 months ago (2016-12-12))
6.8 (25 May 2016; 9 months ago (2016-05-25))

5.11 (30 September 2014; 2 years ago (2014-09-30))
Marketing target Free computing (desktops, mainframes, servers and workstations)
Update method Yum (PackageKit)
Package manager RPM Package Manager
Platforms x86-64
Kernel type Monolithic (Linux kernel)
Default user interface Command-line, GNOME and KDE Plasma Desktop (user-selectable)
License Free software (GPL and other licenses)
Official website www.centos.org

7.3-1611 (12 December 2016; 2 months ago (2016-12-12))
6.8 (25 May 2016; 9 months ago (2016-05-25))

CentOS (/sɛnt.ɑːs/, from Community Enterprise Operating System) is a Linux distribution that attempts to provide a free, enterprise-class, community-supported computing platform functionally compatible with its upstream source, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). In January 2014, CentOS announced the official joining with Red Hat while staying independent from RHEL, under a new CentOS governing board.

The first CentOS release in May 2004, numbered as CentOS version 2, was forked from RHEL version 2.1AS. Since the release of version 7.0, CentOS officially supports only the x86-64 architecture, while versions older than 7.0-1406 also support IA-32 with Physical Address Extension (PAE). As of December 2015, AltArch releases of CentOS 7 are available for the IA-32 architecture, Power architecture, and for the ARMv7hl and AArch64 variants of the ARM architecture.

Prior to becoming known under its current name, CentOS originated as a build artifact of cAos Linux. At the time, some of the cAos contributors were merely interested in this build artifact for their own use, citing difficulties in collaborating with other noteworthy Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) clones of the time.


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