Rocky Linux

Rocky Linux is a community enterprise operating system designed to be 100% bug-for-bug compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is considered to be "an unofficial continuation of CentOS".

Background
In December 2020, Red Hat unilaterally terminated CentOS development. Without Red Hat's assist, the CentOS project recently announced a shift in strategy for CentOS. Whereas previously CentOS existed as a downstream build of its upstream vendor (it receives patches and updates after the upstream vendor does), it will be shifting to an upstream build (testing patches and updates before inclusion in the upstream vendor). Additionally, support for CentOS 8 has been cut short, from 31 December 2029 to 31 December 2021.

While the downstream CentOS Linux distro will be discontinued at the end of 2021, development of the upstream CentOS Stream distro continues, and Rocky Linux is one of them. In response to Red Hat's action, CentOS founder, Gregory Kurtzer, created the Rocky Linux project as a successor to the original mission of CentOS.