In the wake of a server software revolution, the CentOS Project was born with a philanthropic philosophy that offered a simple and effective operating system known as the Linux distribution. CentOS is easily one of the most popular Linux distributions in existence, yet it is still relatively unknown to many people. This article will tell you about the features and benefits of this OS.
What Is CentOS?
The CentOS operating system is an open-source operating system produced by Red Hat, which can run as a standalone OS or as part of RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), Scientific Linux, Oracle Enterprise Linux, and many other systems. Unlike other enterprise distributions of Linux, CentOS does not charge for a license and does not make money from hardware or services.
The CentOS project is a community-based project without many commercial sources. The project’s main purpose has been to provide a stable enterprise-class community supporting Linux distribution, complete with pre-built packages and easy customization through scripts.
CentOS Features
The CentOS VPS server system comes packed with the following features:
Desktop Environment
CentOS comes with a default GNOME desktop, a standard desktop in many Linux distributions. The default interface allows you to manage your system through the graphical user interface (GUI) and also from the terminal using command lines. Other desktop environments like LXDE, E17, and Cinnamon are also available via the CentOS repositories (the package management system).
Networking
CentOS Linux has been designed to run as a VPS server OS, and it is equipped with support for many network interfaces. The default networking protocol suite includes IPv4 and IPv6; other supported protocols include Appletalk, AX.25, Bluetooth, DHPC, DNS/DHCP, FTP, IP-IP Tunneling, IPsec (hardware accelerated), ISDN (including old ISDN versions), Juniper Networks SRP and PPPoE. CentOS also supports native IPv6 over Ethernet or PPP (at the kernel level) through the IPV6 module.
Software Management
The default installation of the CentOS Linux operating system is different from other enterprise Linux distributions such as Red Hat because it does not include any graphical package management tools such as PackageKit. However, the default installation CD comes with command line-based package managers such as YUM and APT.
Virtualization
CentOS has been designed to run on cloud environments using virtual machines and containers. CentOS supports both KVM QEMU and Xen virtualization technologies, but only in their 64-bit versions (both are available in the official CentOS repositories).
CentOS Stream
The CentOS stream is an online community where developers worldwide can come together to share and discuss various topics, including comments, suggestions, and bug reports on new rpm packages. The CentOS stream also provides official ISO downloads for the current version of CentOS Linux.
CentOS Benefits
CentOS Linux is a great operating system for many server environments. The reason behind this is that it delivers a complete package (including software management), with consistent updates and support, to a large user base that includes both home users and companies. Some of the benefits of using CentOS include:
Security
CentOS is a community-based product with security patches and updates. Major tasks undertaken by the CentOS developers include maintaining a set of strong security policies, maintaining the community code repository, keeping users’ data safe and secure, and working on improving security through vulnerabilities in the core codebase.
Extended Support
The CentOS project provides a long support life for its products. The project offers support via email, forums, FAQs, and knowledge base articles that provide step-by-step instructions on how to fix common problems encountered in running Linux. However, care must be exercised for post-merge upgrade issues to avoid losing data once the new kernel is installed.
Package Management
CentOS comes with its very own package management system, which organizes a vast array of resources via packages that can be installed from the Command Line Interface (CLI). CentOS is shipped with three package management systems: YUM, APT, and the newer DNF (from the Fedora project).
A Wealth Of Documentation
The CentOS project is rich in documentation and support. The project has published a large number of HTML documents, FAQs, how-to’s, and the user’s guide to help the users get started with CentOS. The user’s guide gives step-by-step instructions on how to install, configure and solve common problems. The documentation can be found in the wiki or PDF format.
Management Panel Support
CentOS provides a web-based management console that can be accessed using the “remote” command (a package installer in CentOS 7). In addition, the CentOS project provides a large number of modules for managing the system, such as NetworkManager, GNOME Display Manager, system, and many more to monitor system resources such as CPU, memory, and other hardware.
The Bottom Line
CentOS has been designed with enterprise servers in mind. It aims to be stable and reliable, which reduces the rate at which it needs updates from upstream projects.
This means that CentOS updates are fast and secure with no need for manual intervention (such as downloading, installing, and manually configuring updates). These benefits make CentOS a practical choice for users who need enterprise-grade Linux servers to run their websites or e-mail servers.