When IBM announced that they were changing CentOS and introducing “CentOS Stream,” one minor detail was a sharply curtailed lifespan for CentOS 8, the final “Classic” version.  IBM has announced that support for CentOS 8 support will end on December 31, 2021.

For those still running CentOS 8, the options to date have been to either gamble on CentOS Stream (which is now IBM’s development playground rather than a RHEL clone), or switch to an open source alternative such as Rocky Linux or Alma Linux.

This week, CloudLinux announced another option for users: they will provide support through December 31, 2025 for CentOS 8.

According to their announcement, “The CloudLinux TuxCare Extended Lifecycle Service includes 24/7 support and updates for system components on Linux operating systems that are no longer supported by their original vendor — that is, reached their end-of-life date. CentOS 8 is an addition to TuxCare’s Extended Lifecycle Support that covers Ubuntu 16.04, CentOS 6 and Oracle 6.

For organizations running CentOS 8 systems, this gives them more time to analyze and determine the right Linux distribution to migrate their systems to, at their own pace, rather than being forced into a hasty decision in the four remaining months. IT decisions with strategic business impact like the operating system running their servers have far-reaching consequences at all levels of the organization. It can impact, for example, application compatibility across business departments and software development stacks for customer-facing systems.”

More information is available on the TuxCare site.

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raindog308

Dread Lord of LowEnd Content at LowEndBox

I'm raindog308, techno polymath and long-time LowEndTalk community Administrator. My technical interests include all things Unix, perl, python, golang, shell scripting, vintage operating systems such as MVS, and relational database systems such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

I also enjoy using LEBs! I have an empire of little guys for VPNs, larger guys for apps, and big guys for databases and storage. When I'm not in front a screen I'm into German Shepherd dogs, quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop roleplaying games, and forest hiking.

I enjoy writing technical articles here on LowEndBox to help people get more out of their systems. You can find me on LowEndTalk @raindog308

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