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The CentOS Project announced today the release and general availability of CentOS Linux 8.3 as the third maintenance update to the latest CentOS Linux 8 operating system series.
Six months in the works, CentOS Linux 8.3 is derived from the source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3, which means that it inherits most of its improvements, new features, bug fixes, and security updates.
Among these, there’s a new layer of security configurations, improved consistency and repeatability when configuring disk encryption and logging, as well as improved configuration of corporate networks and renewing of security certificates.
On top of that, this release makes it easier to migrate from CentOS Linux to CentOS Stream by implementing some changes to the Yum repo file and repoid, such as changing the name of some Yum repo files to /etc/yum.repos.d and updating the repoids to match them.
Therefore, the CentOS developers recommend that you compare any changes you’ve made to your local files in /etc, including the .repo files, with the .rpmnew files that are being generated before attempting to update your installation to CentOS Linux 8.3.
In addition, you should update the any scripts that you have which point repoids to use either the --enablerepo= or --disablerepo= flags.
The team also said that the CentOS Linux 8 series will reach end of life next year in 2021 and they will continue focus only on CentOS Stream, a continuously delivered distro that tracks just ahead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s development to bring you all the latest and greatest technologies.
“The future of the CentOS Project is CentOS Stream, and over the next year we’ll be shifting focus from CentOS Linux, the rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), to CentOS Stream,” said Rich Bowen.
CentOS Linux 8.3 is available for download right now from the official website for 64-bit (x86_64), ARM64 (AArch64), and PowerPC (ppc64le) architectures. However, these new installation images are here only for new deployments, so you won’t have to download hundreds of updates from the repositories after the installation.
If you’re using CentOS Linux 8.2 or a previous release, all you have to do is keep your installations up to date at all times and you will be running the latest version.
Additionally, CentOS Linux 8.3 is available for download as Vagrant and Generic Cloud images from here for cloud and virtual environments, as well as Amazon Machine Images (AMI) for Amazon Web Services (AWS) here.
Last updated 3 years ago
