June 2024: The Deadline for CentOS 7 & RHEL 7 Maintenance

In 2020, Red Hat (acquired by IBM in 2019) unilaterally announced the termination of CentOS Linux’s development. Consequently, updates for the CentOS Linux 8 series concluded in December 2021, and updates for the CentOS Linux 7 series are scheduled to end on June 30, 2024.

Coinciding with CentOS Linux 7, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (RHEL 7) is also slated to cease maintenance on the same date in 2024.

This means that approximately after June, both the CentOS Linux 7 and RHEL 7 series will no longer receive maintenance and updates. Developers and enterprises are thus advised to transition to alternative operating systems, as continuing to use an unsupported Linux distribution is inadvisable.

For the RHEL 7 series (currently version 7.9), Red Hat offers an Extended Life-cycle Support (ELS) subscription, which incurs additional maintenance costs. Red Hat recommends that enterprises migrate to the latest version of RHEL rather than continuing with an older version and subscribing to ELS.

Of course, the acquisition of Red Hat by IBM and the subsequent discontinuation of CentOS has been a source of disappointment for many enterprises and developers. Given these circumstances, it might be prudent to consider switching to other Linux distributions, such as Debian or Fedora.