CentOS is everywhere. It's widely used as a web server, among other things. It's huge in server environment.
See, CentOS had something nobody else had for free. It had legendary support lengths. CentOS 7, just to pick one at random, was supposed to be supported for like a decade.
That's not a typo - like a decade of updates and support.
Ubuntu has 9 months, unless you do a LTS, which traditionally has 3 years of support. Lately, you can opt for (and pay for - if you are doing commercial stuff or have more than 3 computers) extended support that brings it out to 5 years.
CentOS was supported for like time periods nearing a decade in length.
Anyhow, look to Springdale (used to be PUIAS) or Scientific Linux (just don't add the repos for the science stuff and it's binary compatible with RHEL). They're also working on Rocky Linux, but it'll be a new distro (with a ton of very, very big names behind it) and I'm not willing to suggest using a new distro (no matter how good) in production. If you can stretch out your CentOS use for a couple of years, then maybe Rocky will look for you.
Thanks for the clarification. Glad to see you moved over here. Always like seeing your weekly musician threads
Also, CentOS is usable as a desktop OS. It's usually in the 'workstation' class, where stability is the goal. It obviously doesn't get the latest and newest shiny versions of applications, but it gets security and bug fixes back-ported. The rock-solid stability and large support life made it a legendary distro. It's a goddamned shame that Red Hat is butchering it, but IBM owns Red Hat now and so I'd expect some stupid decisions from them.
I suspect they want to push more people into RHEL, with a paid support contract. That's my hunch, but it's just speculation. I have no way to confirm it and it's not like IBM lets me into the meetings that decide these things, regardless of how many shares I own. (I do own some of IBM's stock.)
I've lately been spending my time helping out on the various Linux forums. I even have started my own Linux site - which I'll likely start sharing soon. I'd all but ceased participation on Voat (except for the guitar thread). I'm not sure what will happen here with my activities on Poal. We shall see... Right now, I have some time-consuming Linux obligations, including testing the next version of an official Ubuntu flavor.
Well, regardless, it makes me happier than you know to see folks active in the Linux sub here. Voat's was decently active, and I was worried I've have to go to reddit for linux talk/news. That place makes my butthole itch just thinking about it
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