About one month later of RHEL 7 official release, the CentOS team has released the new CentOS-7/x86_64. As a “son” of RHEL7, based on CentOS official release note, there are many improvements and changes like:
- Kernel updated to 3.10.0
- Switch to systemd, firewalld and GRUB2
- XFS as default file system
- LVM-snapshots with ext4 and XFS
- iSCSI and FCoE in kernel space
- Gnome3
- In Place Upgrade from 6.5 to 7.0
- Support for Linux Containers (aka Docker)
- Support for PTPv2
- Support for 40G Ethernet Cards
- Supports installations in UEFI Secure Boot mode on compatible hardware
- Open VMware Tools and 3D graphics drivers out of the box
- OpenJDK-7 as default JDK
It’s also important to remember the birth of CentOS Variants.
A CentOS variant is a special edition of CentOS Linux that starts with the core distribution, then replaces or supplements a specific subset of packages
Variants are created and maintained from SID “Special Interest Group” and, simply, is a way to overcome the absence of proprietary RedHat package on CentOS 7. You will find more about variants and SIG here:
I would remind you that CentOS Linux is a community-supported distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by Red Hat for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Also, starting on 2014, Red Hat and the CentOS Project have joined forces to speed up open source innovation. Mattia