The long awaited Rocky bhai has arrived now. The recent decisions made on CentOS was a disappointment for several developers, administrators and engineers across the world. Personally I started using Ubuntu server for new deployments and experiments after the announcement of CentOS End of Life.

The description of Rocky Linux by its creators is given below.

Rocky Linux is a community enterprise operating system designed to be 100% bug-for-bug compatible with America's top enterprise Linux distribution now that its downstream partner has shifted direction. It is under intensive development by the community.

This will be very useful for the developers across the world to develop their application and test it’s compatibility with RHEL in an RHEL like environment just like the way we do it in CentOS.

Now Rocky Linux is ready for use and it is available to download. The download link is given here. Currently it is available in two options, a full version (9 GB ) and a minimal version (1.8 GB).

Rocky Linux comes with an excellent documentation that helps developers and administrators. The documentation is detailed and helps anyone new to understand how to deal with the system. This is way better than the CentOS documentation.

The table of contents in the Rocky Linux documentation is given below.

  • OS Installation and Setup
  • Development and Packaging
  • Security
  • Daemons/Servers
  • System Maintenance and Administration
  • Virtualization
  • Containerization
  • Educational / Training
  • System Automation And Maintenance

Apart from the above documents, there are several user guides included in the Rocky Linux website. This is very helpful for developers and administrators to follow the installation from the official documentation rather than following a 3rd party guide.

Anyone who want to continue in CentOS like systems can continue with Rocky Linux. Ubuntu Server is also pretty good. It is up to every individual’s choice and customer requirement.

Overall it is a great start with a good vision. I am setting up my Rocky Linux system to explore more. There will be more articles in my blog related to Rocky Linux.

Advertisement