Users have been advised to upgrade as soon as possible

Oct 31, 2014 15:51 GMT  ·  By

Johnny Hughes has revealed that CentOS 6.6, the next version of the famous modular Linux distribution, is now available for download for both the 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.

CentOS 6.6 is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution that is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and that means that whenever RHEL gets an update, CentOS is sure to follow. Despite the fact that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is actually a commercial distribution, it's possible to still build other operating systems that are based on it. CentOS is probably the most successful one that uses RHEL, but you have to keep in mind that Red Hat actually uses Fedora as a test bed.

CentOS is mostly used for servers and other similar purposes, but that doesn't mean that there are no desktop users out there. The developers have explained that this latest release is a very important one and that users should really upgrade as soon as possible.

Upgrading to CentOS 6.6 is highly recommended

If you already have this Linux distribution installed, then all you have to do is to perform the upgrade, which is a fully supported procedure. On the other hand, if you have an older system, like CentOS 2.1, CentOS 3.x, CentOS 4.x, or CentOS 5.x it's much better to perform a fresh install, followed by the yum update in a terminal.

"CentOS-6.6 is based on source code released by Red Hat, Inc. for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. All upstream variants have been placed into one combined repository to make it easier for end users. Workstation, server, and minimal installs can all be done from our combined repository."

"All updates since the upstream 6.6 release are also on the CentOS-6.6 mirrors as zero day updates. When installing CentOS-6.6 (or any other version) from any of our media, you should always run 'yum update' after the install. Users consuming our centos-cr repositories will already be running all the packages that make up CentOS-6.6 as of one week ago and will notice only the centos-release rpm update today," wrote the developers in the announcement.

The devs have also explained that a number of packages have been deprecated, OpenJDK 8 has been added as a technology preview, the OpenvSwitch module has been added to the kernel, and keepalived and haproxy are supported by the new CentOS version.

You can check the complete list of changes and new features in the official announcement. You can download CentOS 6.6 right now from Softpedia or you can update your system on a regular basis and all the packages will be in place.