Kurtser gregory (founder of the CentOS project) at the end of last year I talk about creating an initiative to create a new Linux distribution "Rocky the Linux", able to take the place of the classic CentOS, announced the creation of a new trading company «Ctrl IQ».
For those who still do not know by Rocky Linux let me update you a bit of the matter, since the creation of this Linux distribution by Kurtser Gregory part of the Red Hat team's decision to kill CentOS (the Linux distribution dedicated to servers and workstations).
In his statement, the Red Hat representative said "that during the next year they will move from CentOS to CentOS Stream, which comes just before a new version by RHEL."
CentOS Stream will continue to serve as an upstream (development) branch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The company adds “that at the end of CentOS Linux 8 (rebuilding RHEL 8) your best option will be to migrate to CentOS Stream 8, which is a small delta of CentOS Linux 8, and has regular updates like traditional versions of CentOS Linux ( If you want to know more about it, you can consult the publication we make in the following link)
Faced with this statement, the founder of the distribution, Gregory Kurtzer, disclosed that due to discussions about Red Hat's transformation of the stable CentOS platform into a continuous "CentOS Stream" test distribution, announced its intention to create a new rebuild of RHEL and invited other developers to join this initiative.
The Rocky Linux project, which aims to create a new free version of RHEL that can replace the classic CentOS.
And now with the whole project underway, as part of the first tranche of investments, the company has already received $ 4 million from IAG Capital Partners' manufacturer of storage systems and venture capital funds, OpenDrives Inc.
About this startup and that perhaps many of the community may be concerned about how it is handled, mention is made that Ctrl IQ will only focus on sponsoring Rocky Linux development and providing legal support for the project, as well as supplying a Rocky Linux-based technology stack for high-performance business computing.
It should be noted that the distribution of Rocky Linux will be developed independently of the Ctrl IQ company under community control.
Ctrl IQ will not control the project, will only act as one of the sponsors, covering the costs and providing legal support.
The components underlying the Ctrl IQ technology stack were originally developed for use with CentOS, but a change in Red Hat policy regarding this distribution forced an alternative, which was the creation of the Rocky Linux distribution.
The software stack which is being developed in Ctrl IQ will aim to provide tools to orchestrate infrastructure elements spanning different systems, clusters, and cloud architectures. The stack consists of the following components:
- Rocky Linux distribution.
- Warewulf Systems Management Toolkit, originally developed to manage large Linux-based compute clusters.
- Computing Stacks Ctrl Computing Stacks, designed for use in areas that require high computing power, such as machine learning, scientific computing, and high-performance computing.
- Fuzzball platform to orchestrate work and data flows in local server infrastructures.
- Ctrl IQ Cloud platform to launch and orchestrate workflows and services across multiple cloud systems.
In addition, It can be seen that the release candidate for the first Rocky Linux release is scheduled for March 31st.
On February 28, it is planned to open access to the repository of experimental packages and start testing the installer.
On January 31, the completion of the deployment works for the assembly infrastructure and the automatic packaging system for packages was scheduled.