Rocky Linuxvs
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Red Hat Enterprise Linux: When an ISV support contract or an auditor requires the operating system to be the certified product itself
Rocky Linux
Community rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux that still targets bug-for-bug binary compatibility
As of 31 August 2026, Rocky Linux is free to use. The RHEL rebuild started by CentOS co-founder Gregory Kurtzer after Red Hat ended CentOS Linux. Softwr lists it under Operating Systems. Rocky Linux is made by Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation, available on x86-64, ARM64, ppc64le, s390x.
Overview
What Rocky Linux does
Rocky Linux is a free enterprise Linux distribution that rebuilds Red Hat Enterprise Linux from source, package for package. It exists because Red Hat announced in December 2020 that CentOS Linux 8 would be discontinued years early and replaced by CentOS Stream, which sits upstream of RHEL rather than downstream of it. Rocky is governed by the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation, a Delaware public benefit corporation, with CIQ as the main commercial sponsor. Releases track RHEL major versions on roughly a ten-year lifecycle: Rocky 9 is supported to 2032 and Rocky 10 to 2035. In June 2023 Red Hat moved RHEL source code behind its customer portal under terms that discourage redistribution. Rocky and AlmaLinux answered differently, and the difference is the whole decision. Rocky kept chasing one-to-one compatibility, obtaining sources from Red Hat Universal Base Image containers and from pay-per-use RHEL instances in public clouds, where the terms do not restrict redistribution. That matters commercially when third-party software is certified against specific RHEL package versions: Oracle Database, SAP workloads, EDA tools and scientific applications tend to check versions and behave identically on a true rebuild, where a distribution that only promises interface compatibility can drift. The buyers are HPC sites, universities, hosting providers and engineering teams that ran CentOS for a decade and cannot justify a per-socket subscription across thousands of nodes. The trade-off is that nobody is contractually on the hook. Your ISV support agreement names RHEL, not Rocky, so a vendor can decline to reproduce a fault on it, and an escalation ends with your own team unless you buy support from CIQ separately. Rocky also publishes after Red Hat rather than alongside it, so there is always a window where a fix is public upstream and not yet in your repositories.
What people use it for
- Replacing CentOS 7 or CentOS 8 fleets without moving to a per-socket subscription
- HPC and research clusters where node counts make commercial licensing impractical
- Hosting and managed service providers who need a RHEL-shaped platform at zero licence cost
- Development and test tiers that must match a RHEL production tier exactly
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Rocky Linux.
- Source access depends on routes Red Hat has not yet closed, so no procurement team can obtain a contractual guarantee that one-to-one parity will still exist in three years.
- Errata are published after Red Hat, so for critical fixes there is usually a short window, and for point releases a longer one, where a patch is public upstream and not yet available to you.
- No ISV certification: your Oracle, SAP or storage vendor contract names RHEL, and support staff can legitimately refuse to reproduce a fault on Rocky.
- Governance and the main commercial sponsor share leadership, which buyers who compare it against AlmaLinux's elected board find harder to assess for independence.
- There is no SLA and no phone number in the free product, so an outage escalation ends in community chat unless a CIQ contract is already in place.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Rocky Linux
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- Rocky LinuxvsDebian
Debian: A longer independent track record with no dependence on another vendor's source releases
- Rocky LinuxvsUbuntu
Ubuntu: Long-term support releases with paid support and hardening add-ons from a single vendor
Pricing
What Rocky Linux costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Rocky Linux
Free
- No subscription or registration
- Unlimited installations
- All architectures and images
- Community support via Mattermost and forums
- Paid support available separately from CIQ
Capabilities
Features
Binary compatibility
Rebuilt from RHEL sources with the goal that RHEL binaries and packages behave identically
Ten-year lifecycle
Each major release is maintained for about a decade, matching RHEL support windows
Peridot build system
The build infrastructure is itself open source, so a third party can reproduce the whole distribution
migrate2rocky
In-place conversion script for CentOS and other RHEL derivatives of the same major version
Secure Boot
Signed kernels and shim for UEFI Secure Boot on mainstream server hardware
Special interest groups
Cloud, HPC, storage and alternative architecture SIGs maintain images and extra packages
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Is Rocky Linux still binary compatible with RHEL after the 2023 source restrictions?
Yes, that remains the stated goal and the reason it takes sources from UBI containers and cloud instances instead of the customer portal. It is a goal maintained by effort, not by agreement, which is the risk you are accepting.
Can I move a CentOS 7 machine to Rocky in place?
Not directly to Rocky 9. The usual path is the ELevate project, which is maintained by AlmaLinux and can upgrade CentOS 7 to Rocky 8, then migrate2rocky and a second major upgrade from there. Many teams rebuild instead.
What does support cost?
Nothing for the distribution. Commercial support is sold by CIQ under separate contract, and pricing is quoted rather than published.
How does it differ from CentOS Stream?
CentOS Stream sits ahead of RHEL and receives changes before they ship in a RHEL release. Rocky sits behind it and reproduces what already shipped, which is what most CentOS users actually wanted.
Keep looking
Where to go from Rocky Linux
- Rocky Linux alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Rocky Linux pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Rocky Linux badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Operating Systems softwareThe full category
- Best Operating Systems softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Operating Systems software for
Compare Rocky Linux with
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- Ubuntu
- Debian
- AlmaLinux
- FreeBSD
- NixOS
- openSUSE
- Fedora
- Arch Linux
- Linux Mint
- Alpine Linux
- Manjaro
- OpenWrt
- Pop!_OS
- Qubes OS
Other Operating Systems software
Community-maintained Linux distribution and universal computing platform.
Free plan12 researched notesRHEL-compatible Linux from a non-profit foundation that chose interface compatibility over an exact rebuild
Open source12 researched notesLinux distribution where the whole machine is defined in one declarative configuration and every change can be rolled back
Open source12 researched notesTwo Linux distributions from one project: an automated-tested rolling release and a stable release built from SUSE Enterprise sources
Open source12 researched notesMinimal Linux distribution built on musl libc and BusyBox for containers and appliances
Open source9 researched notesArch-based Linux distribution with an installer and sane defaults
Open source9 researched notesLinux firmware replacement for routers and embedded network devices, with a package manager and writable filesystem
Open source12 researched notesUbuntu-based Linux distribution tuned for developers and GPU work
Open source9 researched notesSecurity-focused operating system that runs each activity in its own virtual machine
Open source12 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Rocky Linux, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Rocky Linux
Rocky Linux alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Rocky Linux pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare Rocky Linux
Put it head to head with anything we hold
Rocky Linux badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
Best Operating Systems software alternatives
RHEL-compatible Linux from a non-profit foundation that chose interface compatibility over an exact rebuild
Open source, no licence feeSecurity-focused operating system that runs each activity in its own virtual machine
Open source, no licence feeLinux firmware replacement for routers and embedded network devices, with a package manager and writable filesystem
Open source, no licence feeLinux distribution where the whole machine is defined in one declarative configuration and every change can be rolled back
Open source, no licence feeTwo Linux distributions from one project: an automated-tested rolling release and a stable release built from SUSE Enterprise sources
Open source, no licence feeMinimal Linux distribution built on musl libc and BusyBox for containers and appliances
Open source, no licence fee