Rocky Linux, from the creator of CentOS, has officially been released as an RC candidate. This Linux server distribution came into being after Red Hat shifted gears with CentOS, to make it a rolling release distribution. When that came about, Gregory Kurtzner (the creator of CentOS) decided to step back into the Linux server distribution game with a Rocky Linux.

Rocky Linux will be a community-based 1:1 binary replacement for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and currently ships with GNOME 3.32, kernel 4.18.0-240.22.1.el8, SQLite 3.26, virt-what 1.18, samba 4.12.3, dnf 4.2, rpm 4.14, glibc 2.28, libgcc 8.3, and plenty of other foundational tools to get you started on a more stable and reliable track than what you might find with the now rolling release CentOS.

Rocky Linux will be a community-supported server distribution and will be capable of running all of the applications and services you're used to deploying to CentOS. Rocky Linux will be more CentOS-like than CentOS now is.

It should be noted, however, that this is a release candidate, and should not, under any circumstances, be used in a production environment.

For those looking to try out Rocky Linux, download the official first release candidate and install it in a testing environment.