I’ve been working with Linux for over two decades, and I’ve seen a lot of changes in that time. Some changes start small and grow to have a massive impact, like the birth of Ubuntu. Others have faded into obscurity. And some changes cause massive ripples through the industry. That’s what it felt like in December 2020 when Red Hat announced it would be discontinuing CentOS Linux in favor of CentOS Stream.

At the time, I was managing the Amazon Linux team. Like many others in the Linux community, I understood the implications immediately. CentOS wasn’t just a distribution; it was a cornerstone for thousands of systems—trusted precisely because it was a binary-compatible rebuild of RHEL. That trust doesn’t get rebuilt overnight.

Within days, Gregory Kurtzer, one of CentOS’s original co-founders, announced Rocky Linux. The idea was simple: restore what CentOS had represented—a stable, community-driven Enterprise Linux distribution, free to use, and free to trust (i.e., you’re not locked in, not paying for uncertainty, and not wondering what’s coming next—because you can see how the system is built, governed, and maintained). Named after another CentOS co-founder, Rocky McGaugh, Rocky Linux wasn’t just a reaction. It was a rallying point.

Within just a few months of Red Hat announcing the end of CentOS Linux, the Rocky Linux team delivered a working Release Candidate (April 2021) and then a full General Availability release (June 2021). For a brand-new distribution, especially one aiming for enterprise-grade stability and compatibility with RHEL, that’s a remarkable turnaround.

The fast release timeline wasn’t just a technical feat—it signaled intent, capability, and resolve. It told the community: We’re serious; we can execute at scale; we’re not going to let this gap linger.

It demonstrated that Rocky Linux was not some slow-moving, idealistic effort. It was a coordinated, professional-grade response to an urgent industry need—proof that the open-source community could self-organize and deliver under pressure.

The creation of Rocky Linux wasn’t just timely; it was essential. People wanted this: Developers, sysadmins, and businesses wanted a drop-in replacement—something stable, familiar, and compatible with RHEL. And people needed this: Countless production systems relied on CentOS’s consistency and lifecycle. The shift to CentOS Stream left those users without a viable, predictable alternative—especially for regulated industries, academic research, or enterprise IT where change management and support timelines matter.

So, when Rocky Linux 8.4 was officially released, it filled a real, immediate gap—something the community both demanded and depended on.

Fast forward a few years, and I’ve joined CIQ, the founding sponsor of Rocky Linux. My job is to help steer its engineering direction, but more importantly, to support the community that’s driving it forward. And that’s where things get interesting.

A lot of people assume Rocky Linux is just a “CentOS replacement.” That might’ve been true in its first few weeks. Today, it’s much more than that. It is a community that breeds innovation and strives to make Rocky Linux so much more than just another clone.

What sets Rocky Linux apart now isn’t just its stability or compatibility—it’s the energy and breadth of its community, particularly the Special Interest Groups, or SIGs. These groups are where innovation lives.

There’s a SIG for High Performance Computing (HPC), for cloud platforms, for alternative architectures like RISC-V and ARM, and even for advanced security hardening. These aren’t side projects or experimental forks. They’re part of the core vision—extensions of the base OS for real-world use cases. The SIG model lets contributors build, test, and release packages or images on their own timelines, with the infrastructure and tooling they need to move quickly without compromising quality.

The SIG/AltArch team pushes the limits of what’s possible on Raspberry Pi, Rockchips, and RISC-V boards like the HiFive Premier P550. These aren’t just proof-of-concept boards—they’re opening doors for serious development on next-gen architectures. It’s exciting to see that level of experimentation backed by real community infrastructure, not tucked away in a company lab. I cheer on the work that is being done to make RISC-V a main architecture in the upcoming Rocky Linux 10 release.

Likewise, the SIG/Cloud group has made it easier to run Rocky Linux on major cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, GCP, and Oracle. They’ve released images tailored for cloud-init, hybrid partitioning, and even containers like Toolbx. It’s not just about supporting the cloud—it’s about doing it right, with performance-optimized kernels and up-to-date tools that matter to operators and developers alike.

CIQ has led the way in SIG/Security. If you’re someone who cares about hardening systems, you’ll recognize tools like hardened_malloc, LKRG, and patched versions of glibc and openssh. These aren’t buzzwords. They’re battle-tested packages being maintained and distributed by people who take system integrity seriously.

All of this happens out in the open. Anyone can join a SIG. Anyone can contribute—code, docs, ideas, testing. That openness matters. I’ve worked in environments where a handful of engineers make decisions behind closed doors. That causes problems. Rocky Linux doesn’t work that way. Whether you’re an experienced kernel developer or someone running Linux on a Raspberry Pi at home, there’s a place for you here.

If you’re interested, I’d encourage you to explore the SIG wiki on wiki.rockylinux.org. Join a chat. Show up to a meeting. Ask questions. We’ve had contributors come in with a single kernel patch or test case and end up maintaining critical parts of the stack. That’s how this works. It’s not transactional—it’s relational. And that’s why it’s sustainable.

Rocky Linux doesn’t need to convince people it’s “enterprise-ready.” It already is. What we’re focused on now is where we go next—and how we bring others with us. That means more collaboration with upstreams like Fedora, better automation in the build and release process, and yes, more SIGs—fewer, perhaps, but deeper in impact.

I’ve been part of corporate Linux. I’ve built and released a distribution at global scale. But what drew me to Rocky Linux wasn’t just the engineering—it was the ethos. It is the potential to change the face of Enterprise Linux. It’s a project rooted in real need, guided by people who remember what CentOS meant, and driven forward by a community that’s not waiting for permission to build what’s next.

You don’t need to ask if you’re qualified to contribute. You just need to show up.