Answering the Call - Rocky Linux looks for a place in the enterprise

Rocky Linux emerges as a free alternative to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

- Joe Casad

The open source world is constantly evolving, and new Linux distributions tend to appear whenever there is a need for them. Rocky Linux [1] just appeared last year, partly in response to a shake-up in the enterprise Linux space, but, as is often the case in the open source world, change can lead to opportunity. Rocky is already finding its way into professional server rooms, workstations, and cloud instances.

What is Rocky Linux and where did it come from? The best way to tell the story is to start from the beginning.

A Bit of History

Once upon a time, a free and open source OS called Red Hat Linux served as a cornerstone for the Linux community. Although Red Hat the company was a for-profit business, Red Hat Linux was very much a community effort. Anyone could use it, and many volunteers around the world gave their time for testing, development, and help forums.

Then one day Red Hat (the company) announced that it would no longer provide a binary version of their flagship OS for free download. The binary version would instead require a subscription, which came at a cost and included some support services. If you’re wondering whether charging for Linux is consistent with Linux’s GNU General Public License (GPL), rest assured that it is. The GPL requires that the source code be made available if the program is modified – it doesn’t require the distributor to circulate the compiled, binary version for free. As long as Red Hat posted the source code somewhere for download, they were free to charge whatever they wanted for the binary version – and they charged every bit as much as Microsoft was charging for Windows at the time. (Why not, since Linux was better than Windows?)