IBM Red Hat RHEL source code is no longer free
In a release this week, IBM Red Hat says it is putting RHEL source code in the Red Hat Customer Portal (accessible via a subscription). The sole public repository for code releases will be CentOS Stream. “CentOS Stream will now be the sole repository for public RHEL-related source code releases. For Red Hat customers and partners, source code will remain available via the Red Hat Customer Portal.” (Source: IBM Red Hat).
CentOS Stream is not designed to be a stable production codebase. There have been numerous Linux distributions like Cloud Linux, Alma Linux and Rocky Linux, which have been using the RHEL source code and building their distributions to work as an alternative to CentOS. After the IBM and Red Hat announcement, the available source code will be CentOS Stream, which does not include any additional sections developed by the IBM Red Hat team. The CentOS Stream source codebase is no longer a downstream of RHEL.
RPM-based Linux distributions
The following are the most promising rpm-based Linux distributions.
DEB-based Linux distributions
The following are the most promising deb-based Linux distributions.
Other Linux package management systems
The most prominent alternative Linux package management systems are FlatPak and Snapcraft.
