'First of many new programs,' says biz, but it is no substitute for free CentOS Tim Anderson Wed 20 Jan 2021 // 20:04 UTC Share Copy Red Hat, which is killing CentOS Linux in favour of CentOS Stream, will extend its developer subscription to allow free production use of RHEL for up to 16 systems. CentOS Linux is a community build of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and therefore suitable for production use. CentOS Stream, which will remain available, is a preview build of what is likely to be in RHEL – great for testing but not ideal for production use. The popularity of CentOS, which drives 17.7 per cent of Linux-based web sites, according to W3Techs, has led to a strong public response to Red Hat's decision, including the forming of alternative free builds such as Rocky Linux and Project Lenix, which is now known as Alma Linux.