Looking for a CentOS Replacement? Start Here IT shops may be looking for a CentOS replacement in advance of its support sunsetting. Here are some alternative free Linux distros. Red Hat’s December 2020 announcement that it will do away with CentOS, its free-to-use downstream clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, caused a stir among IT shops in the estimated 2,500 companies that rely on CentOS to run production workloads, as well as for testing or development purposes. These include Northrup Gruman, Comcast, Verizon, Master Card, Indeed and many others. Red Hat, which gained control of CentOS in 2014, said it's replacing the distribution with the previously announced CentOS Streams, which sits upstream of RHEL as a constantly morphing, rolling-release distro instead of using traditional scheduled releases that enterprises prefer.