What is CentOS

CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor.  CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendors redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork.)  CentOS is free.

CentOS is developed by a small but growing team of core developers.  In turn the core developers are supported by an active user community including system administrators, network administrators, enterprise users, managers, core Linux contributors and Linux enthusiasts from around the world.

CentOS has numerous advantages over some of the other clone projects including:  an active and growing user community, quickly rebuilt, tested, and QA'ed errata packages, an extensive mirror network, developers who are contactable and responsive, multiple free support avenues including IRC Chat, Mailing Lists, Forums, a dynamic FAQ.

The CentOS Project

The CentOS Project is the name of the Organization that produces CentOS. We are not a part of any other organization.

The CentOS Development Team

The group of people who build CentOS are known as the CentOS Development Team. The team includes:

CentOS-2 - John Newbigin

CentOS-3 - Lance Davis, Will Dinkel, Tru Huynh, Pasi Pirhonen, Seth Vidal, David Parsley

CentOS-4 - Johnny Hughes, Karanbir Singh, Pasi Pirhonen, Jim Perrin, David Parsley, Ralph Angenendt, Daniel de Kok

CentOS-5 - Johnny Hughes, Karanbir Singh, Jim Perrin, Ralph Angenendt, Daniel de Kok, Patrice Guay

Security, Web, Infrastructure - Donavan Nelson, Russ Herrold, Dag Wieers

Forum Administrators - Fabian Arrotin (arrfab), Akemi Yagi (toracat), Phil Perry (NedSlider)

Mirror Administration - Tru Huynh

QA Team Leader - Tim Verhoeven

CentOS Blogs

Planet CentOS developer blogs.

CentOS Users

CentOS users as a group are a community of open source contributors and users. Typical CentOS users are organizations and individuals that do not need strong commercial support in order to achieve successful operation.

CentOS : Community ENTerprise Operating System

CentOS 2, 3, 4 and 5 are built from publicly available open source SRPMS provided by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendors redistribution policies and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork).

CentOS-5

CentOS-5 is a freely distributable OS built from the source at:

ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/5Client/en/os/SRPMS

ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/5Server/en/os/SRPMS

Before building the OS, non-free packages are altered. Non-free packages would include those encumbered with a non-redistributable copyright or trademark.

CentOS-5 supports the x86 and x86_64 (AMD64 and Intel EMT64) architectures. Support for the ia64, ppc, and sparc architectures is in progress. Updates are distributed via YUM repositories.

CentOS-4

CentOS-4 is a freely distributable OS built from the source at:

ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/4/en/os/i386/SRPMS

Before building the OS, non-free packages are altered. Non-free packages would include those encumbered with a non-redistributable copyright or trademark.

CentOS-4 supports x86 (i586 and i686), x86_64 (AMD64 and Intel EMT64), ia64, ppc, alpha, sparc, s390, and s390x architectures (The ppc and sparc architectures are currently BETA). Updates are distributed via YUM repositories (i386 only updates are also available via apt).

CentOS-3

CentOS-3 is a freely distributable OS built from the source at:

ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/3/en/os/i386/SRPMS

Before building the OS, non-free packages are altered. Non-free packages would include those encumbered with a non-redistributable copyright or trademark.

CentOS-3 supports x86 (i586 and i686), x86_64 (AMD64 and Intel EMT64), ia64, s390 and s390x architectures. Updates are distributed via YUM repositories.

CentOS-2

CentOS-2 is a freely distributable OS built from the source at:

ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/2.1AS/en/os/i386/SRPMS/

Before building the OS, non-free packages are altered. Non-free packages would include those encumbered with a non-redistributable copyright or trademark.

CentOS-2 supports x86 CPUs. Updates are distributed via yum repositories.

CentOS 5 Releases

Purpose of CentOS

CentOS exists to provide a free enterprise class computing platform to anyone who wishes to use it. CentOS 2, 3, and 4 are built from publically available open source SRPMS provided by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendors redistribution policies and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork.). CentOS is designed for people who need an enterprise class OS without the cost or support of the prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor.

Neither the CentOS Project (we who build CentOS) nor any version of CentOS is affiliated with, produced by, or supported by the prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. Neither does our software contain the upstream vendor's product ... although it is built from the same open source SRPMS as the upstream enterprise products.

CentOS Goals

Our purpose is to provide stable Linux solutions for organizations and individuals who do not need strong commercial support to achieve successful operation.

To meet that overall goal, we strive to achieve:

* easy maintenance
* self hosting distribution (one that can build on itself)
* suitability for long term use in production environments
* friendly environment for users and package maintainers
* long-term support of the core
* active development
* community infrastructure
* open management
* open business model
* commercial support - offered by partner vendors

CentOS uses the original sources whenever possible. Under normal circumstances CentOS will NOT add patches to original upstream source packages. The vast majority of changes made will be made to comply with the upstream vendor's re-distribution policies concerning trademarked names or logos. Any other changes made will be spelled out in the Release Notes for the individual CentOS product.

       CentOS是一个企业级的Linux发行版，它是RHEL（Red Hat Enterprise Linux）源代码再编译的产物，而且在RHEL的基础上修正了不少已知的Bug，相对于其他Linux发行版，其稳定性值得信赖。另外，由于Fedora Core计划也归根于Red Hat体系，所以在绝大多数情况下，使用Fedora Core的用户，也同样能够对CentOS完成服务器的构建和维护工作。

       CentOS的最新版本为5.2， 其中包含了Apache-2.2, php-5.1.6, 核心已经是kernel-2.6.18, Gnome-2.16, KDE-3.5, OpenOffice.org-2.3, Evolution-2.12, Firefox-3.0, Thunderbird-2.0, MySQL-5.0, PostgreSQL-8.1.等软件，另外CentOS提供了免费升级工具yum，可以完全免费的及时安装、更新系统中的RPM包，而无需担心版权和授权等问题。

优点：企业级Linux中最为活跃的一个发行版，稳定性值得信赖，由于红帽的原因，技术资料比较多，可以参考借鉴。

官方站点：http://www.centos.org/