6 facts for CentOS users who are holding on

In 2020, it was announced that CentOS 7 would reach end of life (EoL) by July 2024. That date has been and gone, however the CentOS story is not over just yet. For anyone expecting a sheer drop in the number of CentOS users, the numbers reveal that 22% of enterprises remain on CentOS. 

We should perhaps temper our expectations here: CentOS 7’s end of life may be upon us, but many organizations are likely still figuring out their transitions to a new system. However, CentOS users must still face the fact that the longer they wait to migrate, the harder it will become to keep their CentOS estates secure and functional. It may seem tempting to hold on, but month by month and year by year, dependencies will begin to unravel, the manual patching workload will increase and incompatibility will begin to set in across your stack. 

This blog is for any reader who is still deciding which system to migrate to. We’ll be discussing the benefits that Ubuntu brings to the table as your new enterprise OS, why developers prefer Ubuntu and how it provides a stable landing zone for your migration.

Fact 1 – You now have a blueprint for a successful migration

Understandably, many of you may have doubts about migrating to a Debian-based system, and wanted to see how things panned out for those who already migrated. Now that end of life has officially occurred, you can learn from the organizations who have already migrated to Ubuntu.

The State of Open Source Report 2024 reports that 46% of surveyed enterprises are using Ubuntu, making it the #1 Linux distribution yet again and marking an increase from 26% in 2023. Whilst we cannot attribute the entire increase to just one factor, the corresponding decline in CentOS share and the approach of end of life will have undoubtedly had a hand. 

So, what does a successful migration to Ubuntu look like? Meet Pentera, a leader in Automated Security Validation. They selected Ubuntu due to the lack of maturity in the ecosystem for direct CentOS successors. Despite Ubuntu being Debian-based, it offered a production-ready, mature ecosystem, a consideration that outweighed initial concerns about compatibility. Due to Canonical’s preparation for migrations from CentOS, and the mature ecosystem that Ubuntu offered, the migration was seamless. Pentera migrated 80% of their deployment with only minor code modifications.

Fact 2 – Developers prefer Ubuntu

The Stack Overflow Developer Report 2024 ranked Ubuntu as the most popular Linux distribution amongst developers for professional use, outranking its next nearest neighbor (Debian) with 27.7% vs 9.1%. This is because Ubuntu has a vibrant community of developers who help Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, to provide them with the latest open source packages. 

For example, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS comes with over 30,000 open source packages such as Python, Ruby, Go, Java, Apache, Nginx, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Node.js, PHP and more. This integration frees developers from needing to manually integrate packages that do not belong to the ecosystem and offers a level of stability not found with OSes that lack widespread community support.

We listen carefully to our community when working on new releases. Ubuntu 24.04 LTS builds on user feedback by incorporating enhancement for WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), enablement of frame pointers by default and the introduction of LTS toolchains, which extend support to .NET releases for the entire lifecycle of the Ubuntu release.

Fact 3 – Ubuntu LTS is predictable, stable and secure

We know that when migrating, you want to make sure your landing zone is stable. With all the work that goes into a migration, you want to ensure that continual maintenance doesn’t become a burden. Ubuntu provides that stable landing zone.

A long term support (LTS) version of Ubuntu is released every two years, and all LTS releases benefit from five years of free security maintenance (which you can choose to extend to twelve years). To keep Ubuntu users secure, the Ubuntu Security Team applies thousands of security patches. 

Moreover, the team acts fast to leave no time for bad actors to exploit vulnerabilities: critical CVEs are patched in less than 24 hours on average. With the latest release – Ubuntu 24.04 LTS – all users get security updates for the operating system, as well as straightforward access to thousands of curated open source applications freely available until 2029.

Fact 4 – You can cover your whole open source dependency tree

With the recent announcement of “Everything LTS”, Canonical is extending long-term support to non-Ubuntu packages for up to 12 years. Customers can now engage Canonical to design a docker image that includes all of the open source dependencies needed for their application. 

You can now secure your entire open-source dependency tree and free your developers to focus less on maintenance, and more on delivery. By extending container support on top of RHEL, VMware and public cloud K8s, your transition to Ubuntu becomes even more seamless.

Fact 5 – Ubuntu has no mandatory subscriptions 

Ubuntu is freely available to download and use. Each Ubuntu instance comes with the same components, whether an Ubuntu Pro subscription is attached or not. Ubuntu Pro is an optional, per-machine subscription for enhanced compliance, extended security and 24/7 enterprise-grade support, with the option of extending long term support to 12 years.

As a result, users benefit from the consistent experience regardless of whether they use their Ubuntu machine for development purposes or is running workloads in production. Ubuntu Pro is free for personal use on up to 5 physical machines with unlimited VMs and containers on top – learn more here.

Fact 6 – Ubuntu harmonizes your stack

Canonical works to deliver a consistent, stable Ubuntu experience across the whole stack. Interoperability is at the heart of what Ubuntu is, allowing Ubuntu to act as a neutral layer that harmonizes your entire stack. 

As there is no “commercial distribution” of Ubuntu (see Fact #5), on workstations, in the data center, on the edge, and in clouds, you’ll find the same ecosystem, simple CLI setup and security patching. On public clouds specifically, Ubuntu is the #1 guest OS. It delivers the same great Ubuntu experience with a layer of seamless integration and many kernel-level, cloud-specific optimisations.

In terms of hardware, Canonical works directly with vendors such as Dell, Intel and NVIDIA to create optimized Ubuntu images for their hardware. By migrating from CentOS to Ubuntu, you’ll widen your horizons and gain optimization improvements thanks to years of hardware partnership. In a way, the end of life of CentOS 7 could signal an opportunity to reshape how you combine hardware and software to create solutions.

Conclusion

As time continues to pass since the CentOS end of life, we expect that the proportion of organizations using CentOS will drop steadily. As you consider your next move, we’d recommend you make use of the resources we’ve created to help you evaluate Ubuntu against alternatives for your migration, and take advantage of the migration guide we’ve created.

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