Until 2020, CentOS used to be our main choice as Red Hat Enterprise Linux alternative for Delft-FEWS installations on Linux. The CentOS Linux distribution provided a free and open-source community-supported computing platform, functionally compatible with its upstream source, Red Hat Enterprise Linux. CentOS has proven to be very stable and reliable.
In 2014 RedHat took hold of CentOS and in 2020 RedHat announced their decision that CentOS is going to be phased out: CentOS 8 EOL in 2021 and CentOS 7 EOL in 2024. RedHat will stop supporting CentOS, but instead focuses its efforts on CentOS Stream. CentOS Stream is not based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux but on Fedora. We expect our Delft-FEWS RPMs to install fine on CentOS Stream. But since Fedora is mainstream development, in practice this means that CentOS Stream receives new features sooner. It can also lead to more instability. RedHat says CentOS Stream is "not a replacement", but serves as pre-phase to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We conclude for this reason CentOS Stream is well-suited for Delft-FEWS test servers but we cannot recommend it as the best Red Hat Enterprise Linux alternative for production servers.
There are two well-know mainstream CentOS alternatives: AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux. They are functionally compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and offer the same stability / benefits as CentOS used to provide. Both have successfully been granted secure boot validation by Microsoft since version 8.4. See also https://almalinux.org/ and https://rockylinux.org/.
Because AlmaLinux is well-established, Deltares ICT and Delft-FEWS developers have chosen to support AlmaLinux for Delft-FEWS. AlmaLinux is a RHEL® fork since 2009 and is not owned by RedHat / IBM but provided by CloudLinux OS.
Our Delft-FEWS RPMs were always built and tested on CentOS 7. In the near future these will be primarily built and tested on AlmaLinux. Red Hat Enterprise Linux remains fully supported.
