Updated April 3, 2023
Introduction to CentOS Version
CentOS stands for Community Enterprise Operating System which is provided by Linux. It basically focuses on the robust and open source ecosystem to be delivered. It is manageable, predictable, stable, and reproducible which is mainly implemented by the sources of RHEL which stands for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Several version of CentOS is available and its first version came in 2004. We also have several commands to check the version of CentOS. The latest version of CentOS which is released in 2019 is CentOS 8 which support various architecture configuration and this version based on Linux 4.18 kernel. We will see about its working and command that can be used to check the CentOS version, also the history in detail, and its usage.
Different CentOS Versions
As we know that CentOS is a Linux distribution. It has several released versions below we are discussing few of them because all of them have major release changes which includes security, installation, web servers, dynamic language and many more changes.
1. CentOS Version 6.3
CentOS is a Linux distribution, it promises us to be 100% binary compatible. AS we look closely there is no support by which we can upgrade or install the prior release to the new release version in CentOS, in short like CentOS 5 cannot be with this CentOS 6.
We can see it as a limitation but it is not it shows their upstream approach on this.
- rpm -e –nodeps: This is a generic command can be used with any CentOS version not specific to this one. By the use of this command we can easily remove the previous CentOS release packages. After this only we can install the new version of CentOS, if you do not do this you will face some issues.
Changes related to this CentOS Version:
Now we will see on the major features changes.
1. CentOS previous version does not support libreoffice suite, but now this version comes up with full support to the libreoffice, now the ‘desktop’ folder will automatically install the complete libreoffice suite for us.
2. Previous version of CentOS provide openoffice, so you upgrading your CentOS version to 6.3 by using ‘yum update’ command then it will automatically install the libreoffice on your system and will remove the openoffice from system.
3. In this version they are providing new tools which will helps us to move our machines that is from current to Virtual. They have come up with two packages which are responsible to do this job such as virt-v2v and virt-p2v. virt-v2v this packages will move from virtual to virtual, for moving physical to virtual we have another packages virt-p2v.
Once you have successfully installed the packages then you can find them inside the below folder.
/usr/share/
4. With this upstream gas decided to deprecated one of the API named as Matahari, if the user wants to continue with this then they can install it, with the updates provided by the CentOS version 6.3, but in the future release it will no longer will be the part of both upstream and CentOS.
Packages Modified:
In this release they have number of packages which are modified by the CentOS 6.3 release.
- librsvg2
- libreport
- abrt
- firefox
- gnome-applets
- kabi-whitelists
- gnome-desktop
- kde-settings
- initscripts
- fake-provides
- kabi-yum-plugins
- anaconda
- kernel
- httpd
- and many more.
2. CentOS Version 8 Release
CentOS 8 is the latest version of CentOS, and it is manageable, predictable and stable. For the installation of CentOS 8 we have several images available, we just need to download the image which is totally depends upon our environment. If you are not able to take decision about which image should we pick then just go for DVD image it will contain all the packages which are needed.
Changes in CentOS 8:
In this release we have several features:
1. Security: There is major change in the security part, we have system wide cryptographic which now can be customizable. Now the admin of this have authority to modify this completely or just can modify some values of the policy.
2. They also provide some new features like setools console analyses and setools gui this will help us in data inspections and analysis of SELinux-policy. This is given by the CentOS documentation.
3. Infrastructure: In this CentOS rebased they have added some tuning tools which will help and provide support to multiple directives and architecture tuning.
4. CentOS version 8 comes up with dynamic programming language support, also they provide support for database and web servers which are mentioned below:
- Python
- Maven
After installation you will see new modules and packages for this dynamic and we servers support.
5. They comes up with new tool such as HealthCheck, which is introduced by the identity management. Identity management also support some more features such as ansible roles, this will make the identity management based solution much easier.
6. They have made some changes to web console also, this component has been redesigned by the use of PatternFly 4 system design.
7. Also they have rebased DRM to upstream. DRM stands for Direct Rendering Manager. This provide several enhancements than the previous version, which includes driver updates, new APUs and GPUs etc.
Package that has been modified in this release are very much in number.
- cockpit
- firefox
- abrt
- apache-commons-net
- initial-setup
- basesystem
- cloud-init
- compat-glibc
- dhcp
- grub2
- fwupdate
- anaconda
- httpd
- many more
Conclusion – CentOS Version
As we have already seen the version of CentOS, in which CentOS 8 is the latest one. They have release the initially version in 2004. After that every version keeps on changes and providing new features and support for different tools. They have also come up with moving of machines physically and virtually in one of their version. So we can install CentOS version according to our need and environment configuration.
Recommended Articles
This is a guide to CentOS Version. Here we discuss the introduction and different CentOS version for better understanding. You may also have a look at the following articles to learn more -.
