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Rocky Linux
A free, community-governed, bug-for-bug rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, created after CentOS shifted away from being one.
Based on
RHEL
First released
2021
Package manager
DNF (.rpm)
Desktop environments
None (server-focused; GNOME available)
Rocky Linux was founded by Gregory Kurtzer, one of CentOS's original creators, directly in response to Red Hat's 2020 decision to turn CentOS into CentOS Stream (a rolling preview of RHEL rather than a downstream rebuild). It rebuilds RHEL's publicly available source RPMs into a byte-for-byte-compatible free distribution, aiming to be a drop-in replacement anywhere RHEL is used. Governance sits with the nonprofit Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation rather than a single company, addressing the governance-risk concern that pushed the community away from CentOS in the first place. It's now one of the two dominant RHEL-rebuild choices for production servers, alongside AlmaLinux.
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