With the end of 2021, CentOS 8 completed its functional life in its current form and began functioning as CentOS Stream, a development branch for Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®. This means that using CentOS, especially in production environments, has become hazardous. CentOS users no longer receive updates, and the proven, stable packages have been replaced with development, production-unproven ones.
This is the main and most important reason why hundreds of thousands of organizations have been forced to migrate to another stable distribution. In this situation, a good alternative to CentOS is EuroLinux.
Another reason for migrating from CentOS is the need for technical support. The decision on which vendor to choose or provide self-support is crucial and rational for a user.
The company EuroLinux is not only the producer of the software but also the provider of the technical support, which can be purchased at any convenient moment by the user. The support is provided by engineers and architects in English language. It also includes migration and installation support. You can learn more about EuroLinux support on the "Technical support" page.
Why migrate to EuroLinux?
EuroLinux vs CentOS
EuroLinux plays the role of a stable and mature fork of RHEL® in the same way that CentOS did before. Because it is built from RHEL® source code, it is 1:1 compatible with RHEL®, including full compatibility of the package names and versions. Therefore it provides the same functionality, performance and appearance. Only the branding (name) of the system changes. This is important for organizations with qualified technical staff. Administrators working on EuroLinux feel confident and comfortable because they don't have to learn another, new system.
Stable updates
Switching to EuroLinux guarantees the continuity of support for the migrated system in the form of stable updates and security patches. Updates for EuroLinux 8 will be provided until at least June 30, 2029, and for EuroLinux 9 no less than June 30, 2032.
Free and paid versions
EuroLinux 8 and 9 are available in free and paid versions, which include additional technical support. In both cases it is the same stable, secure and continuously updated operating system. The paid version offers access and support also for releases 6 and 7.
Simple migration
The migration process is simple, secure and reversible. It does not require a manual reinstallation of the system. The installed applications, data and configuration remain unchanged. This significantly reduces time-consuming regression testing and eliminates migration costs. Once the process is complete, the system will be receiving new updates from the EuroLinux repository.
The migration script provided is prepared by the same development team that compiles EuroLinux. This makes the migration process more refined and takes into account details familiar to architects. The provided script has gone through many tests to meet the expected high standards.
Professional support
Additionally, we provide professional migration assistance as part of the paid subscription. So far, the EuroLinux migration support has been used by entities in the public sector, finance, telecom, logistics, retail and research & development, as well as many IT companies.
No vendor lock-in
As a manufacturer we remain faithful to the idea of Open Source and we follow the principle of "no vendor lock-in". Therefore, we honour the customer's freedom in the choice of Linux distribution and support provider.
Clear terms
A great advantage is also a simple end-user license agreement (EULA).
Migration in a nutshell
The migration process is limited to running a bash script that swaps the existing CentOS repository for EuroLinux, and replaces all packages with the same ones, but from EuroLinux. Other (third-party) repositories remain unchanged. After the script completes, reboot the system. After booting, it will present itself as EuroLinux. The content of the script is transparent and publicly available on GitHub.
CentOS to EuroLinux migration guide
Resources:
migration script (along with a complete description of the script’s parameters) |
https://github.com/eurolinux/eurolinux-migration-scripts |
migration guide (supported distributions: CentOS, RHEL, Oracle, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux) |
https://en.euro-linux.com/eurolinux/migrating-to-eurolinux/ |
open documentation (English) |
https://docs.euro-linux.com/ |
Commands:
⌨️ sudo yum update ⌨️ git clone https://github.com/EuroLinux/eurolinux-migration-scripts.git ⌨️ cd eurolinux-migration-scripts ⌨️ sudo ./migrate2eurolinux.sh ⌨️ sudo reboot ⌨️ cat /etc/el-release