Back in December 2020, Red Hat accounted that it will be discontinuing CentOS based on RedHat releases. Instead, it will now release CentOS Stream as the main CentOS distribution. So in short, there will not a CentOS 9 based on RHEL 9.
Instead, we will get a CentOS stream, which will serve as an upstream branch of RHEL. This has come as quite a shock for the CentOS community because a rolling release is not something that instills confidence in CentOS users. For many years CentOS has been known for its stability but with a rolling release, that might be an issue. CentOS users are already looking for alternate options, especially those using CentOS 6 as it has reached the end of life. Though users that are using CentOS 6 can migrate to CentOS 7 as the EOL for CentOS 7 is 30 June 2024.
Let’s look at how you can get ahead of the CentOS 8 wave and migrate to CentOS Stream.