When Red Hat announced that it was switching CentOS Linux from a stable Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) clone to a continuous Linux distribution, which would become the next small update to RHEL, many CentOS users were upset. Now, to appease some of these users, Red Hat is introducing free RHEL for small production workloads and free RHEL for customer development teams.
First, in place of CentOS Linux, Red Hat would like to remind developers that free RHEL has been around for a long time through the Red Hat Developer program. The terms of the offer previously limited its use to developers of a single machine. Red Hat will now expand this program so that the RHEL Individual Developer subscription can be used in production for up to 16 systems.
Yes, they mean production use and there is no problem. This is a free and self-sustaining RHEL offer. To get it, you only need to sign in with a free Red Hat account (or via single sign-on on GitHub, Twitter, Facebook and other accounts) to download RHEL and receive updates.
In a post announcing the program, Red Hat points out that: “Nothing else is needed. This is not a sales program and no sales representative will follow up. There will be an option in the subscription to easily upgrade to full support, but this is up for you. “
In addition, you can also use the expanded Red Hat Developer program to run RHEL on major public clouds, including AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. You must, of course, pay the usual hosting fees from your cloud provider. However, RHEL itself will be free for development workloads and small productions.
This updated individual developer subscription for RHEL will be available on February 1, 2021.
As for developers, Red Hat is also expanding its Developer program, making it easier for all of its development teams to join the program and enjoy its benefits. Thus, development teams can now be added to this program at no additional cost through their existing RHEL subscription.
This will help make RHEL more accessible as a development platform for your entire organization. Through this program, RHEL can also be deployed through Red Hat Cloud Access and can be accessed on major public clouds, including AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure, at no additional cost, except for the usual hosting fees charged by your cloud provider.
“What about me?”, You can ask. “I use CentOS Linux all the time and I don’t want to switch to CentOS Stream.” Red Hat understands that many CentOS users are on this boat. “We know that these programs do not meet all CentOS Linux use cases, so we have not completed providing more ways to obtain RHEL easily. We are working on a variety of additional programs for other use cases and plan to provide another update in the middle. of February. “
Obviously, this does not address what is probably the most important use case for CentOS: its use for hosting, web hosting and cloud providers as a free Linux distribution. CentOS, along with Ubuntu Linux, are the most popular free Linux distributions for companies that want a solid and well-documented Linux server that they can support themselves. CentOS users of these companies should look for other alternatives, such as the working clones of CentOS Linux Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux.
That said, Red Hat really wants to retain its CentOS users and turn them into RHEL customers. Therefore, the company’s announcement noted: “We want to make RHEL easier to use and we are removing many intervening barriers, working to keep up with the changing needs of Linux users, our customers and our partners. This requires that we continually examine our development and business models to meet these ever-changing needs, we believe that these new programs – and those that will follow – work toward that goal.
Finally, Red Hat stated, “This job is not over. We want to hear from you, whether or not your needs fit into one of the use cases described here.”
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