CentOS 7 now available

The CentOS Project has announced the general availability of CentOS 7, the first release of the free Linux distro based on the source code for RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7. It is the first major release after the collaboration between the CentOS Project and Red Hat. CentOS 7 is built from the freely available RHEL 7 source code tree. The features closely resemble that of Red Hat’s latest operating system. Just like RHEL 7, it is now powered by version 3.10.0 of the Linux kernel, with a default file system. It is also the first version to include a management engine, systemd, dynamic firewall system called the firewalld, and the boot loader, GRUB2.

The default Java Development Kit has also been upgraded to OpenJDK 7, and the system now ships with open VMware tools and 3D graphics drivers, out-ofthe-box. Also, like RHEL 7, this is the version of CentOS that claims to offer an inplace upgrade path. Soon, users will be able to upgrade from CentOS 6.5 to CentOS 7 without reformatting their systems.

The CentOS team has launched a new build process, in which the entire distro is built from code hosted at the CentOS Project’s own Git repository. Source code packages (SRPMs) are created as a side effect of the build cycle, and will be hosted on the main CentOS download servers.

Disc images of CentOS 7, which include separate builds for the GNOME and KDE desktops, a live CD image and a network-installable version, are also now available.