Red Hat Launches RHEL Stream to Compete With the Rising Popularity of CentOS Stream

When Red Hat decided to kill the stable CentOS in favor of rolling release CentOS Stream, it created a sort of revolt.

The adamant sysadmins who preferred a decade old distribution instead of the goodness of the latest software and updates didn’t like this democratic decision of Red Hat. They foolishly looked for CentOS alternatives despite Red Hat repeatedly telling them that CentOS Stream is for their own good.

Red Hat started offering free RHEL licenses to small scale CentOS users with no intention of luring medium to big scale CentOS users into purchasing RHEL licenses.

But no one, not even the executives at Red Hat and Community members at CentOS had expected CentOS Stream to grow so fast in popularity.

Instead of moving to RHEL or any other CentOS alternatives like AlmaLinux or Rocky Linux, people actually opted to migrate their CentOS 8 servers to CentOS Stream. They even liked all the benefits of CentOS Stream that Red Hat team and CentOS board members pitched to CentOS users.

This rise in CentOS Stream gave birth to the idea of RHEL Stream. If CentOS Stream is good for CentOS users, then a rolling release RHEL Stream would be equally good for RHEL users. This simple fact resonated with the team and they decided to announce RHEL Stream.

Doe Joan, executive assistant project developer at Red Hat, cited another reason for the creation of RHEL Stream:

CentOS Stream tracks ahead of RHEL. As a competitive company, we need to keep Red Hat ahead of everyone and everything including CentOS Stream. This is why we decided to launch RHEL Stream that tracks ahead of CentOS Stream or any other development.

Doe Joan, Red Hat

You can get more detail about RHEL Stream in the official announcement post by clicking the link below.