CentOS is Dead: CentOS 7 EOL June 2024, CentOS 8 EOL Dec 2021 — Your Migration Options

endoflife-ai Posted on May 30 • Originally published at endoflife.ai CentOS is Dead: CentOS 7 EOL June 2024, CentOS 8 EOL Dec 2021 — Your Migration Options # security # devops # linux # sysadmin CentOS was the backbone of enterprise Linux infrastructure for nearly two decades. Free. Stable. Binary-compatible with RHEL. The obvious choice for teams that wanted enterprise Linux without the enterprise price tag. It's now, definitively, dead. CentOS Linux 8 reached end of life December 31, 2021 CentOS Linux 7 reached end of life June 30, 2024 There are no supported CentOS Linux versions remaining. The Full CentOS EOL Timeline Version End of Life Status EOL Risk Score CentOS Linux 6 Nov 30, 2020 ❌ EOL 97 Critical CentOS Linux 7 Jun 30, 2024 ❌ EOL 85 Critical CentOS Linux 8 Dec 31, 2021 ❌ EOL 89 Critical CentOS Stream 8 May 31, 2024 ❌ EOL 82 Critical CentOS Stream 9 May 31, 2027 ✅ Supported 22 Low CentOS Stream 10 TBD ✅ Supported 10 Low CentOS 8: The Betrayal CentOS 8's EOL story is different from any other software EOL — and worse. Red Hat announced in December 2020 that CentOS Linux 8 would reach end of life on December 31, 2021 , cutting short what was originally a 10-year lifecycle. The announcement came less than 18 months after CentOS 8's initial release. Teams that had migrated to CentOS 8 to modernize their infrastructure found themselves holding an EOL operating system less than two years after deploying it. Many of those servers are still running today — over four years past EOL. EOL Risk Score for CentOS 8: 89 Critical CentOS 7: The Compounding EOL Problem CentOS 7 is a unique case study in layered EOL risk. The OS itself reached EOL June 30, 2024. But look at what else is EOL inside a default CentOS 7 install: Kernel 3.10 — EOL for years Python 2.7 — EOL since January 2020 OpenSSL 1.0.2 — EOL since December 2019 glibc 2.17 — outdated, no upstream patches Servers running CentOS 7 are EOL at the OS level, kernel level, runtime level, and cryptography librar