RockyLinux was started by one of the original creators of CentOS.AlmaLinux was created by CloudLinux, a commercial Linux vendor who used to base their product on CentOS.

You can commercial support, but you can also just use it for free.Īnd with CentOS in its old form gone, two projects are trying to replace it: Oracle Linux ( oraclelinux on Docker Hub) is a pre-existing clone of RedHat Enterprise Linux, maintained by Oracle. Option #1: AlmaLinux, Oracle Linux, and RockyLinux Specifically, the goal is free images that are compatible with RHEL8. What base image should you use instead, if you still want to the equivalent of the old CentOS? Going forward, there is still a product called CentOS Stream, but it doesn’t provide the stability the old CentOS did, so it’s not suitable for a Docker base image. This is where the centos:8 image came in handy: it was the same packages as RHEL, just rebuilt without RedHat’s branding (and without RedHat’s commercial support, of course.) RedHat has also added support for software that has been released since 2019, so you can for example install Python 3.9.Ī Linux distribution that guarantees backwards compatibility, has good long-term availability of security updates, and also adds new packages over time makes a good Docker base image.

RHEL 8 was released in May 2019, will continue to get full support until May 2024, and security updates until May 2029. So if you’ve been using centos:8 as your base Docker image, what should you use now? Motivation: a stable, long-term-support base image For many years, CentOS provided a free, binary-compatible version of RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).īut as of January 2022, CentOS 8 has reached its end-of-life, even as RHEL 8 will still be supported for many years.

Centos 8 latest version