CentOS Linux
CentOS is a freely available Linux distribution which is based on Red Hat’s commercial Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) product. This rebuild project strives to be 100% binary compatible with the upstream product and, within its mainline and updates, not to vary from that goal. Additional software archives hold later versions of such packages, along with other Free and Open Source Software RPM based packages. CentOS stands for Community ENTerprise Operating System.
RHEL is largely composed of free and open source software, but is made available in a usable, binary form (such as on CD-ROM or DVD-ROM) only to paying subscribers. As required, Red Hat releases all source code for the product publicly under the terms of the GNU General Public License and other licenses. CentOS developers use that source code to create a final product which is very similar to RHEL and freely available for download and use by the public, but not maintained or supported by Red Hat. There are other distributions derived from RHEL’s source as well, but they have not attained the surrounding community which CentOS has built; CentOS is generally the one most current with Red Hat’s changes.
