CentOS 7 Comes on the Heels of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7

by Sean Michael Kerner

CentOS 7 takes the core open-source code from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and repackages it, removing all Red Hat trademarks.

English is the only language supported by CentOS and even within the English-speaking world, multiple regions are represented.

CentOS provides users with different installation profiles for the operating system based on the intended usage model.

The Docker container virtualization technology is part of CentOS 7, providing users with an optional alternative to the traditional virtual machine hypervisor model for virtualization.

For users who choose to install the GNOME desktop with CentOS 7, there is an integrated facility for online account access from Google and Facebook.

Instead of the GNOME Shell desktop, which is often the default choice for GNOME users on Red Hat’s community Fedora Linux, for CentOS 7 the GNOME Classic desktop environment is the default GNOME-based desktop.

One of the key differences in the GNOME Classic interface, in contrast with the typical GNOME Shell interface, is the inclusion of the Places navigation menu on the top of the user’s desktop.

GNOME Classic provides a hint of the GNOME Shell interface through the activities overview option. Instead of a top-down navigation system, users can also employ side navigation.

With RHEL 7, Red Hat changed the default file system from EXT4 to the more robust XFS, and CentOS has followed suit. XFS provides users with a file system that scales up to 500 terabytes.

As part of the CentOS 7 release, Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) is included instead of the mainline Firefox browser. The promise of the Firefox ESR is a browser that has a longer lifespan than the quick moving mainline of Firefox, which is updated every two months.

At the heart of CentOS 7 is a Linux 3.10 kernel. The Linux 3.10 kernel was released by Linux creator Linus Torvalds in July 2013 and was declared a long-term support kernel in August 2013.