The Birth of Rocky Linux: A Ray of Hope Amidst the End of CentOS
In the vast world of Linux, CentOS was once a favorite among many server users. Built on the source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), it occupied an important position in the server operating system domain due to its stability, free availability, and high compatibility with RHEL, especially favored by enterprise users and developers, becoming the first choice for many data centers.
However, in December 2020, a significant announcement from Red Hat shattered the tranquility of CentOS users. Red Hat announced a shift in the development direction of CentOS from being a downstream stable version of RHEL to CentOS Stream, a rolling release version positioned between Fedora and RHEL, aimed at providing testing and feedback for RHEL development. This transition meant that CentOS was no longer the operating system pursuing long-term stability, and the lifecycle of CentOS Linux 8 was significantly shortened, ending on December 31, 2021, instead of the originally planned May 2029, leaving many users who relied on CentOS’s stability and long-term support caught off guard.
Faced with this significant change in CentOS, users found themselves in a dilemma. Continuing to use the soon-to-be-discontinued CentOS meant bearing security risks and the uncertainty of lacking official support; switching to CentOS Stream required adapting to its rolling update characteristics, which was not easy for enterprises seeking stable production environments. Thus, finding a replacement for CentOS that could continue to provide a stable, free, and RHEL-compatible operating system became an urgent need for many users.
At this moment, Rocky Linux emerged. In 2021, Gregory Kurtzer, co-founder of CentOS, stepped forward with the determination to continue the legacy of CentOS and initiated the Rocky Linux project. Named after Rocky McGaugh, one of the early co-founders of CentOS, this project carries a nostalgia for the past and hopes for the future, aiming to become a reliable new home for CentOS users, providing them with a stable operating system that is 100% binary compatible with RHEL, allowing users to find a familiar and reliable “harbor” after the end of CentOS.
Origin Exploration: Who is Driving Rocky Linux?
The birth of Rocky Linux cannot be separated from a key figure—Gregory Kurtzer. He is a veteran in the Linux and open-source field, with over 20 years of rich experience, particularly renowned in the high-performance computing (HPC) domain. In his early years, while serving the U.S. Department of Energy and the University of California, Berkeley, he showcased exceptional talent by designing scalable and manageable security architectures, laying a solid foundation for innovative performance-intensive computing.
In 2004, Gregory Kurtzer co-founded the CentOS project with Lance Davis, aiming to recompile the source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to create a free, stable, and highly compatible Linux distribution with RHEL. Once launched, CentOS quickly emerged in the Linux community due to its outstanding features, attracting a large number of users and developers, becoming an indispensable part of the Linux world.
However, with Red Hat’s acquisition by IBM, the development direction of CentOS underwent a significant change. In response to this change, Gregory Kurtzer decided to step up and embark on a new entrepreneurial journey. In 2021, he founded the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation (RESF) and initiated the Rocky Linux project. He hopes that Rocky Linux can inherit the mantle of CentOS and become a reliable Linux distribution in the eyes of users. The project name “Rocky” is a tribute to the early co-founder of CentOS, Rocky McGaugh, who, although he has passed away, will always be remembered for his contributions and dedication to CentOS.
At the initial stage of the project, it demonstrated strong appeal. Within just 24 hours on GitHub, over 650 contributors eagerly joined, coming from all over the world, driven by their love for open source and expectations for Rocky Linux, contributing their efforts. Among these contributors were experienced developers, system administrators, and novice open-source enthusiasts, all working together to advance the development of Rocky Linux, achieving significant progress in a short time.
Growth Journey: Version Iteration and Key Milestones
Since its inception, Rocky Linux has adhered to the philosophy of continuous innovation and optimization, bringing users a better experience and more powerful features through ongoing version iterations. Below is a summary of the release dates and features of its major versions:
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Rocky Linux 8.4 (June 21, 2021): As the first stable version of Rocky Linux, its release was significant, marking the project’s official transition from the preparation phase to the mature application phase. This version is built on RHEL 8.4, ensuring high compatibility with RHEL, allowing users to migrate seamlessly. In terms of package management, it introduced the FastTestMirror DNF plugin, which heuristically sorts the BaseOS mirror list based on the time required to open mirror connections during network installations, greatly improving the efficiency of mirror selection and speeding up the installation process. Additionally, it added several software packages, such as PGP-supported Thunderbird and OpenLDAP server, enriching the software choices for users.
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Rocky Linux 8.5 (Mid-November 2021): In this version, Rocky Linux further optimized system performance and stability. In terms of software packages, multiple modules were updated, such as Ruby 3.0, nginx 1.20, Node.js 16, providing developers with more advanced development tools and runtime environments. Component versions also saw significant upgrades, with PHP upgraded to version 7.4.19, Squid to version 4.15, and Mutt to version 2.0.7. Compiler and development tools were also updated, introducing GCC Toolset 11, LLVM Toolset 12.0.1, Rust Toolset 1.54.0, and Go Toolset 1.16.7, enhancing the system’s development capabilities. OpenJDK also received important updates, with OpenJDK 17 officially launched, OpenJDK 11 updated to version 11.0.13, and OpenJDK 8 updated to version 8.0.312. Additionally, it introduced secure boot support features, providing a stronger guarantee for system security.
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Rocky Linux 9.0 (December 2022): This version marks another important milestone in the development of Rocky Linux, updating to the latest kernel and providing more comprehensive support for new hardware, fully leveraging the performance advantages of new hardware. It also supports more advanced hardware features, offering users a more efficient computing experience. In terms of system functionality, various optimizations were made, enhancing the overall performance and stability of the system, providing strong support for enterprise applications and large-scale data processing.
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Rocky Linux 9.1 (Release date to be confirmed): This version brings many significant changes. Keylime, a remote boot proof and runtime integrity management solution using Trusted Platform Module (TPM), makes its debut, adding a new line of defense for system security. The rolling updates of modules are also impressive, including node.js 18, php:8.1, maven:3.8, and ruby:3.1, providing developers with a richer technical selection. The compiler toolset has also been upgraded, with the addition of GCC 12, LLVM 14.0.6, Rust 1.62, and Go 1.18, further enhancing the system’s development and compilation capabilities. Cloud images and container images are available on all x86-64, aarch64, ppc64le, and s390x architectures, with Vagrant images also available on x86-64 and aarch64, and the official Rocky Linux images launched on the Oracle Cloud platform, with LVM variants of general, EC2, and Azure images now online, greatly enriching user options across different cloud platforms and virtualization environments.
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Rocky Linux 9.2 (Release date to be confirmed): One of the major changes is that centos-release-nfv is built on RHEL 9 buildroots, ensuring the reliability and stability of package updates. The universal base image for containers adopts the RHEL UBI method, changing the image pull method to docker pull rockylinux/rockylinux:9-ubi, which means that packages in the image have changed, such as replacing libcurl with curl-minimal and libcurl-minimal, adding packages gdb-gdbserver and gzip, and removing packages binutils, brotli, dmidecode, etc. Additionally, a network configuration cleanup feature has been added, and on Microsoft Azure, images are released in both shared libraries and the marketplace. All LVM cloud images have had the /etc/lvm/devices/system.devices file removed to resolve PV/VG/LV issues caused by hardcoding to specific devices during installation. New features include the addition of kernel-64k for aarch64, which can provide better performance and efficiency for certain large memory system requirements; Wayland is enabled by default with Aspeed GPU support, providing support for hardware graphics acceleration; and Intel ARC GPU is theoretically also supported. WireGuard can be used in conjunction with SELinux, providing users with a more flexible network security solution. The desktop version has added a Cinnamon version, touted as a replacement for GNOME 3, offering users more desktop environment choices. In terms of operations and maintenance, software such as Nginx 1.22, PostgreSQL 15, Python 3.11, and Grafana 9.0.9 are available, with enhanced Podman functionality, including system roles, event auditing, etc., while the CNI network stack has been deprecated.
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Rocky Linux 9.5 (November 2024): This version focuses on enhancing container management and file management capabilities. The introduction of Podman 5.0 marks a significant breakthrough in container management, greatly reducing startup times, optimizing volume compatibility, and adding the “PodmanFarm” feature to support multi-platform image builds, meeting diverse development environment needs. The Cockpit web console has added the cockpit-files file management plugin, allowing easy remote browsing, uploading, downloading, or modifying files through the interface, significantly improving operational management efficiency. In terms of development and system management tools, it provides the latest network services, such as support for Apache HTTP Server 2.4.62 and Node.js 22, with performance tuning toolchains covering updated compilers and debugging tools like GCC 11.5 and GDB 14.2, providing advanced performance monitoring solutions through the integration of Performance Co-pilot and Grafana. Additionally, the SIG/Cloud team has upgraded cloud image builds using OpenSUSE’s KIWI application generator, making cloud service deployment more efficient and flexible to meet continuous integration and continuous delivery needs.
Community Ecosystem: Many Hands Make Light Work
The remarkable achievements of Rocky Linux in such a short time are inseparable from its active and strong community support. This community is like a vibrant open-source family, gathering developers, system administrators, enthusiasts, and others from around the world, who, driven by their love for open source and confidence in Rocky Linux, actively engage in the development, maintenance, and promotion of the project.
In the development process of Rocky Linux, community members play a crucial role. They actively participate in coding, testing, and fixing work through platforms like GitHub. As of now, Rocky Linux has thousands of contributors on GitHub, who have submitted numerous code changes and feature improvements, injecting continuous momentum into the ongoing enhancement of Rocky Linux. Whether it is fixing system vulnerabilities, optimizing performance, or adding new features, the busy figures of community members can be seen everywhere. For example, in a certain version, community members discovered a critical vulnerability affecting system stability, and they quickly organized to conduct in-depth analysis and research. After several days and nights of effort, they successfully fixed the vulnerability, ensuring the security of users’ systems.
In addition to development work, the community also plays an important role in technical exchanges, problem-solving, and documentation improvement. Rocky Linux has multiple active communication channels, such as official forums, mailing lists, and Slack groups, where users and developers can freely express their experiences, technical insights, ask questions, and seek help. On the forums, a large number of new posts are published daily, covering various issues from system installation and configuration to application development and performance optimization. Enthusiastic members of the community are always quick to respond and provide answers, creating a good atmosphere of mutual assistance and collective progress. For instance, a novice user encountered difficulties while installing Rocky Linux and posted for help on the forum, quickly receiving detailed guidance from several experienced users, ultimately helping him successfully complete the installation.
The community’s documentation improvement work also provides strong support for the promotion and use of Rocky Linux. The official documentation of Rocky Linux covers various aspects such as system installation, configuration, management, and development, and is continuously updated and improved. Most of this documentation is voluntarily written and maintained by community members, who organize their practical experiences and technical knowledge into easy-to-understand documents for other users to learn and use. For example, after the release of Rocky Linux 9.0, community members quickly updated the relevant installation and configuration documentation, detailing the new features and usage methods of the new version, helping users adapt to the new version more quickly.
The Rocky Linux community is also actively collaborating with enterprises and other organizations to jointly promote the development and application of Rocky Linux. For example, collaborating with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to integrate Rocky Linux into AWS’s cloud computing services, providing users with a more convenient cloud service experience; and partnering with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to ensure the stable operation and good performance of Rocky Linux on GCP. These collaborations not only provide Rocky Linux users with more choices and conveniences but also further enhance the visibility and influence of Rocky Linux.
The Future Blueprint of Rocky Linux
Looking ahead, Rocky Linux is expected to continue expanding and deepening its development across multiple dimensions. In terms of functional innovation, it will keep pace with technological trends, continuously optimizing kernel performance, and further enhancing system responsiveness and resource utilization. With the rapid development of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data, Rocky Linux will strengthen its support and adaptation to related technologies, such as providing more efficient container orchestration capabilities to meet enterprises’ needs for large-scale data processing and distributed computing during digital transformation.
In terms of community development, the Rocky Linux community will continue to uphold the principles of openness and inclusiveness, attracting more developers, enterprises, and institutions from around the world to participate. The community plans to hold more offline technical exchange activities and online seminars to strengthen interaction and cooperation among members. At the same time, it will improve the community’s contribution incentive mechanism, recognizing and rewarding members who actively contribute code, documentation, and participate in community building, thereby stimulating the enthusiasm and creativity of community members.
In terms of collaboration expansion, Rocky Linux will strengthen cooperation with hardware manufacturers to conduct in-depth optimizations for different hardware architectures, ensuring optimal performance across various hardware platforms. In the software ecosystem, it will establish partnerships with more open-source projects to jointly build a more complete open-source ecosystem. For example, collaborating with popular cloud computing platforms to achieve seamless deployment and efficient operation of Rocky Linux in cloud environments.
In the internationalization process, Rocky Linux will increase support for multiple languages, improving localized documentation and interfaces to meet the needs of users in different regions. By collaborating with local communities and organizations, it will gain a deeper understanding of market demands in different countries and regions, providing products and services that better align with local user habits.
Sources of Knowledge
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Rocky Linux 8.8 – The Authoritative Replacement for CentOS
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Linux System – Rocky System Installation
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Rocky Linux: A Linux Suitable for Production Environments
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Features and Advantages of Rocky Linux
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CentOS’s Successor – Initial Experience with Rocky Linux