CentOS

CentOS is an open source, community-supported and enterprise-ready distribution of Linux based on the publicly available sources of the commercial and highly acclaimed RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) operating system.

Besides being based on Red Hat, the project is also fully compatible with the award winning enterprise Linux distribution. Key features include active development, easy maintenance, open management, community infrastructure, and open business model.

The distribution is suitable for long term use in production environments, deployed as a server. It provides users and package maintainers with a friendly and familiar environment, as well as long-term support of the core and commercial support (offered by a partner vendor).

Availability and boot options

It is distributed as two installable-only DVDs, as well as minimal and netboot CD ISO images. Supported hardware platforms include the standard 64-bit (x86_64) and 32-bit (i386). In addition, Live CDs are also available for download separately on Softoware.

The default desktop environment used in CentOS is powered by the GNOME project, providing users with a user-friendly and familiar graphical session that pleases even the most discerning eye.

Default applications

Among the included applications and packages, we can easily mention the LibreOffice office suite, Mozilla Firefox web browser, GIMP image editor, Inkscape vector graphics editor, K3b CD/DVD burning software, Vim text editor, and Mozilla Thunderbird email client.

Server-oriented packages include the Apache web server, MySQL and PostgreSQL database server, OpenSSH and OpenSSL tools for encrypted communication sessions, Perl, Python and PHP programming languages, Postfix email server, and Samba network sharing framework.

As expected, the project provides support for multiple languages, and comes with built-in support for well known file systems, including EXT3 and EXT4.

Bottom line

Summing up, CentOS is a stable, reproducible, easy to maintain and supported Linux distribution specifically engineered to be deployed on enterprises' local servers, as well as behind firewall protections to secure sensitive data.

What is new in this release:

• Since release 1503 (abrt>= 2.1.11-19.el7.centos.0.1) CentOS-7 can report bugs directly to bugs.centos.org. You can find information about that feature at this page
• sudo is now capable of verifying command checksums
• A Kerberos https proxy is now available for identity management
• NSS no longer accepts DH key parameters < 768 nor RSA/DSA certificates with key sizes < 1024 bits, NSS also now enables TLS1.1/1.2 by default
• various packages now support TLS1.1/1.2 and EC ciphers
• The maximum number of SCSI LUNs has been increased
• The virt-v2v command line tool is now fully supported
• dd can now show transfer progress
• OpenJDK7 now supports ECC for TLS connections
• TPM version 2.0 driver level support has been added
• tcpdump now supports nanosecond timestamps
• Various updates to the networking stack (i.e. VXLANs, Data Center TCP, TCP/IP Stack, IPSec, ...)
• Various atomic related packages have been updated
• Update to the libATA, FCoE and DCB storage drivers
• Updates to various storage, network and graphics drivers
• Anaconda now supports NFS when adding additional repos during install
• Major rebases for the following: Gnome from 3.8 to 3.14, KDE from 4.3 to 4.14, Xorg-X11-Server from 1.15 to 1.17, libreoffice from 4.2.8 to 4.3.7. openldap from 2.4.39 to 2.4.40 and more.

What is new in version :

• Since release 1503 (abrt>= 2.1.11-19.el7.centos.0.1) CentOS-7 can report bugs directly to bugs.centos.org. You can find information about that feature at this page
• sudo is now capable of verifying command checksums
• A Kerberos https proxy is now available for identity management
• NSS no longer accepts DH key parameters < 768 nor RSA/DSA certificates with key sizes < 1024 bits, NSS also now enables TLS1.1/1.2 by default
• various packages now support TLS1.1/1.2 and EC ciphers
• The maximum number of SCSI LUNs has been increased
• The virt-v2v command line tool is now fully supported
• dd can now show transfer progress
• OpenJDK7 now supports ECC for TLS connections
• TPM version 2.0 driver level support has been added
• tcpdump now supports nanosecond timestamps
• Various updates to the networking stack (i.e. VXLANs, Data Center TCP, TCP/IP Stack, IPSec, ...)
• Various atomic related packages have been updated
• Update to the libATA, FCoE and DCB storage drivers
• Updates to various storage, network and graphics drivers
• Anaconda now supports NFS when adding additional repos during install
• Major rebases for the following: Gnome from 3.8 to 3.14, KDE from 4.3 to 4.14, Xorg-X11-Server from 1.15 to 1.17, libreoffice from 4.2.8 to 4.3.7. openldap from 2.4.39 to 2.4.40 and more.

What is new in version 7.3-1611:

• Since release 1503 (abrt>= 2.1.11-19.el7.centos.0.1) CentOS-7 can report bugs directly to bugs.centos.org. You can find information about that feature at this page
• sudo is now capable of verifying command checksums
• A Kerberos https proxy is now available for identity management
• NSS no longer accepts DH key parameters < 768 nor RSA/DSA certificates with key sizes < 1024 bits, NSS also now enables TLS1.1/1.2 by default
• various packages now support TLS1.1/1.2 and EC ciphers
• The maximum number of SCSI LUNs has been increased
• The virt-v2v command line tool is now fully supported
• dd can now show transfer progress
• OpenJDK7 now supports ECC for TLS connections
• TPM version 2.0 driver level support has been added
• tcpdump now supports nanosecond timestamps
• Various updates to the networking stack (i.e. VXLANs, Data Center TCP, TCP/IP Stack, IPSec, ...)
• Various atomic related packages have been updated
• Update to the libATA, FCoE and DCB storage drivers
• Updates to various storage, network and graphics drivers
• Anaconda now supports NFS when adding additional repos during install
• Major rebases for the following: Gnome from 3.8 to 3.14, KDE from 4.3 to 4.14, Xorg-X11-Server from 1.15 to 1.17, libreoffice from 4.2.8 to 4.3.7. openldap from 2.4.39 to 2.4.40 and more.

What is new in version 7.1-1611:

• Since release 1503 (abrt>= 2.1.11-19.el7.centos.0.1) CentOS-7 can report bugs directly to bugs.centos.org. You can find information about that feature at this page
• sudo is now capable of verifying command checksums
• A Kerberos https proxy is now available for identity management
• NSS no longer accepts DH key parameters < 768 nor RSA/DSA certificates with key sizes < 1024 bits, NSS also now enables TLS1.1/1.2 by default
• various packages now support TLS1.1/1.2 and EC ciphers
• The maximum number of SCSI LUNs has been increased
• The virt-v2v command line tool is now fully supported
• dd can now show transfer progress
• OpenJDK7 now supports ECC for TLS connections
• TPM version 2.0 driver level support has been added
• tcpdump now supports nanosecond timestamps
• Various updates to the networking stack (i.e. VXLANs, Data Center TCP, TCP/IP Stack, IPSec, ...)
• Various atomic related packages have been updated
• Update to the libATA, FCoE and DCB storage drivers
• Updates to various storage, network and graphics drivers
• Anaconda now supports NFS when adding additional repos during install
• Major rebases for the following: Gnome from 3.8 to 3.14, KDE from 4.3 to 4.14, Xorg-X11-Server from 1.15 to 1.17, libreoffice from 4.2.8 to 4.3.7. openldap from 2.4.39 to 2.4.40 and more.

What is new in version 7.1-1603:

• Since release 1503 (abrt>= 2.1.11-19.el7.centos.0.1) CentOS-7 can report bugs directly to bugs.centos.org. You can find information about that feature at this page
• sudo is now capable of verifying command checksums
• A Kerberos https proxy is now available for identity management
• NSS no longer accepts DH key parameters < 768 nor RSA/DSA certificates with key sizes < 1024 bits, NSS also now enables TLS1.1/1.2 by default
• various packages now support TLS1.1/1.2 and EC ciphers
• The maximum number of SCSI LUNs has been increased
• The virt-v2v command line tool is now fully supported
• dd can now show transfer progress
• OpenJDK7 now supports ECC for TLS connections
• TPM version 2.0 driver level support has been added
• tcpdump now supports nanosecond timestamps
• Various updates to the networking stack (i.e. VXLANs, Data Center TCP, TCP/IP Stack, IPSec, ...)
• Various atomic related packages have been updated
• Update to the libATA, FCoE and DCB storage drivers
• Updates to various storage, network and graphics drivers
• Anaconda now supports NFS when adding additional repos during install
• Major rebases for the following: Gnome from 3.8 to 3.14, KDE from 4.3 to 4.14, Xorg-X11-Server from 1.15 to 1.17, libreoffice from 4.2.8 to 4.3.7. openldap from 2.4.39 to 2.4.40 and more.

What is new in version 7.1-1602:

• Since release 1503 (abrt>= 2.1.11-19.el7.centos.0.1) CentOS-7 can report bugs directly to bugs.centos.org. You can find information about that feature at this page
• sudo is now capable of verifying command checksums
• A Kerberos https proxy is now available for identity management
• NSS no longer accepts DH key parameters < 768 nor RSA/DSA certificates with key sizes < 1024 bits, NSS also now enables TLS1.1/1.2 by default
• various packages now support TLS1.1/1.2 and EC ciphers
• The maximum number of SCSI LUNs has been increased
• The virt-v2v command line tool is now fully supported
• dd can now show transfer progress
• OpenJDK7 now supports ECC for TLS connections
• TPM version 2.0 driver level support has been added
• tcpdump now supports nanosecond timestamps
• Various updates to the networking stack (i.e. VXLANs, Data Center TCP, TCP/IP Stack, IPSec, ...)
• Various atomic related packages have been updated
• Update to the libATA, FCoE and DCB storage drivers
• Updates to various storage, network and graphics drivers
• Anaconda now supports NFS when adding additional repos during install
• Major rebases for the following: Gnome from 3.8 to 3.14, KDE from 4.3 to 4.14, Xorg-X11-Server from 1.15 to 1.17, libreoffice from 4.2.8 to 4.3.7. openldap from 2.4.39 to 2.4.40 and more.

What is new in version 7.1-1503:

• As of March 2015 ABRT (>= 2.1.11-19.el7.centos.0.1) can report bugs directly to bugs.centos.org. You can find information about that feature at this page
• Support for new processors (Intel Broadwell) and graphics (AMD Hawaii)
• Full support for LVM cache
• Ability to mount ceph block devices
• Updated Hyper-V network drivers
• New libguestfs features
• Full support for OpenJDK-1.8.0
• Improved clock stability (for PTP and NTP)
• Updated Networkmanager packages to version 1.0
• Updated docker to 1.4.1
• Updated OpenSSH to 6.6.1
• New package: Mozilla Thunderbird
• Update to numerous storage, network and graphics drivers
• Technology Preview: Support of the Btrfs file system, OverlayFS and the Cisco VIC kernel driver

What is new in version 6.6 / 7.0-1406:

• Since the upstream EL7 release, there have been some updates released - - these have been built and are being pushed to the CentOS mirror network at the moment. They will be available within the next 24 hrs. - From this point on we will aim to deliver all updates within 24 to 48 hrs of upstream releases.
• For the first time, this release was built from sources hosted at git.centos.org, however srpms being a byproduct of the build and also considered critical in the code and buildsys process are being published to match every rpm we release. Sources will be available from vault.centos.org in their own dedicated directories to match the corrosponding binary rpms. Since there is far lesser traffic to the source rpms compared with the binary rpms, we are not putting this content on the main mirror network, however if users wish to mirror this content they can do so using the reposync command available in the yum-utils package. All source rpms are signed with the same key used to sign their binary counterparts.
• CentOS 7.0-1406 introduces a new numbering scheme that we want to further develop into the life of CentOS-7. The 0 component maps to the upstream realease, whose code this release is built from. The 1406 component indicates the monthstamp of the code included in the release ( in this case, June 2014 ). By using a monthstamp we are able to respin and reissue updated media for things like container and cloud images, that are regularly refreshed, while still retaining a connection to the base distro version.
• In order to facilitate Special Interest Groups to further extend the CentOS Linux platform, we are also using component codes. The main distro is, therefore, titled 'Core'. SIGs would be able to adopt any name they need and deliver that by overriding the base centos-release rpm.

What is new in version 6.5:

• The Precision Time Protocol - previously a technology preview - is now fully supported. The following drivers support network time stamping: bnx2x, tg3, e1000e, igb, ixgbe, and sfc.
• OpenSSL has been updated to version 1.0.1.
• OpenSSL and NSS now support TLS 1.1 and 1.2.
• KVM received various enhancements. These include improved read-only support of VMDK- and VHDX-Files, CPU hot plugging and updated virt-v2v-/virt-p2v-conversion tools.
• Hyper-V and VMware drivers have been updated.
• Updates to Evolution (2.32) and Libre Office (4.0.4).

What is new in version 6.4:

• Microsoft Hyper-V drivers have been added to allow CentOS to be more efficient as a Virtual Machine when installed on Microsoft Hyper-V server.
• The samba4 libraries (provided by the samba4-libs package) have been upgraded to the latest upstream version to improve interoperability with Active Directory (AD) domains. If you upgrade from CentOS-6.3 to CentOS-6.4 and you have Samba in use, make sure to uninstall the samba4 package to avoid conflicts during the upgrade. samba4 is still - at least in part - considered a technology preview.
• As announced in the CentOS-6.3 Release Notes matahari is now deprecated. CentOS-6.4 ships one last update that should remove all remains of matahari. To ensure all remains are erased run yum erase matahari* after updating to 6.4.
• dev86, iasl, and qemu-guest-agent have been added to the i386 architecture.

What is new in version 6.3:

• In accordance with upstream CentOS 6.3 now includes libreoffice as Office suite. The "Desktop" install group will automatically install the complete suite. If you update from a previous version of CentOS 6 using 'yum update' and have openoffice installed, the update will automatically remove openoffice and install libreoffice. See this link for further information.
• Upstream has deprecated the matahari API set for operating system management. User who choose to continue to use matahari should - as always - install the updates provided with CentOS 6.3. Matahari will not be part of future upstream releases and therefore also not of future CentOS releases. See here for more information.
• There are new tools for moving machines (both Virtual and Physical) from their current format to a Virtual KVM Machine. The packages responsible are called virt-p2v (physical to virtual) and virt-v2v (virtual to virtual). Please see the upstream documentation linked in the further reading section of these release notes for more information on these exciting enhancements.