[ Thanks to Lee Schlesinger for this link. ]
The new release was unexpectedly slow in arriving. In
2007, the CentOS project released CentOS 5 just 28 days after the
official release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. As a recompile of
the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) source code into a rebranded,
zero-cost Linux distribution, CentOS is dependent on Red Hat
releasing the source code before it can start its own release
cycle. But it took 242 days after the release of RHEL 6.0 before
the CentOS team released CentOS 6.0.Maturity and stability are two keys to a successful enterprise
Linux distribution. CentOS 6 uses version 2.6.32 of the Linux
kernel, which was released at the end of 2009. 2.6.32 is the
official enterprise-level Linux kernel, and although it isn’t
bleeding edge, it has been patched and maintained since its initial
release to fix bugs and enhance security while remaining
stable.