CentOS Successor Rocky Linux Gets $26M to Fund Push Into Enterprise Space

"CIQ has landed $26 million in funding to support its plans to expand the use of Rocky Linux in the enterprise space," reports ZDNet.Last year, Red Hat decided to stop supporting CentOS 8 and shifted focus to CentOS Stream. CentOS had some huge enterprise users, among them Disney, GoDaddy, RackSpace, Toyota, and Verizon. In response, Greg Kurtzer, one of CentOS's founders, kicked off Rocky Linux in December 2020.... Kurtzer says Rocky Linux adoption has been "massive", with monthly downloads of OS images typically 250,000, reaching 750,000 in a bumper month. "Within two months we had 10,000 developer and contributors trying to be part of this project...." The project has gained the support of Greg Kroah-Hartman, the maintainer of the main-line stable Linux kernel, to meet community demands for Rocky Linux to run on a more modern, optimized kernel, Kurtzer said. Kroah-Hartman is leading Rocky Linux special interest group (SIG) for the kernel to create an optional enhanced kernel for Rocky Linux. "He's working closely with us to make sure the kernel we use is blessed by him. He's in the loop as bugs come up and help us manage that kernel in Rocky Linux," says Kurtzer. "Moreover, today's news follows shortly after CIQ inked a major deal with Google to help support companies looking to deploy Rocky Linux on Google's cloud infrastructure," reports VentureBeat. Kurtzer tells the site that Rocky Linux "has been a rocket ship in terms of uptake across the enterprise and cloud."

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