CentOS is one of the widely used operating systems nowadays as it offers full control over its highly customizable open-source packages. Due to its reliability and stability, CentOS become a popular choice among operating systems for servers. In every new OS release, it is obvious users expect performance improvements and new features in the new version over the old ones. CentOS officially released CentOS version 8.0 on 24th September 2019 and continues to releases updates and patches. Overall CentOS 7 and 8 are quite similar but CentOS 8 has more updated software and some newer features, major fixes, UI/UX improvements. As you know, CentOS 8 is a replica of RHEL 8 so it avails from its latest features.
Let’s check what are the new features and updates CentOS 8 offers to its users over CentOS 7.
Desktop Environment:
As you know, GNOME is the most popular environment in the latest distributions of Linux. In CentOS 8, the default GNOME Display Manager is Wayland, GNOME Shell version is 3.28. Wayland has several useful features including extended device support, stronger security model, improved multi-monitor handling, improved user interface (UI) scaling, etc. In CentOS 7, the default GNOME Display Manager is the X.Org server.
Software Management:
CentOS 8 arrives with the YUM package manager version v4.0.4, which is based on the DNF (Dandified YUM) technology. Uses YUM v4, distributed with RPM 4.14. CentOS 7 used YUM v3, distributed with RPM 4.11. The following are enhancements made on YUM v4: support of modular content, well-designed stable API for integration, and increased performance.
Networking:
The networking part of CentOS 8 has been renovated with two major updates.
1) CentOS 8 comes with the TCP Networking Stack version 4.16. It provides higher performances, more stability, and better scalability.
2) CentOS 7 uses iptables packet filtering framework. In CentOS 8, the iptables is replaced by the nftables framework as the default network packet filtering utility. The nftables framework is the picked change for the iptablesip6tables, ebtables, and arptables tools. The firewalld daemon now handles nftables as its default backend.
Programming Languages:
In CentOS 8, the following programming languages are available to use:
Python: Python 3.6 and limited support for Python 2.7
PHP: PHP 7.2 (PHP uses FastCGI Process Manager (FPM) by default)
Ruby: Ruby 2.5
Perl: Perl 5.26
Java: Both OpenJDK 11 and OpenJDK 8
In CentOS 7, the following programming languages are available to use:
Python: Python 2.7.5 and limited support for Python 2.7
PHP: PHP 5.4.16
Ruby: Ruby 2.0.0
Perl: Perl 5.16.3
Java: OpenJDK 8
Web servers, and Databases:
CentOS 8 includes Apache Server 2.4 and the introduced the Nginx 1.14. The Squid has been updated to version 4.4 and included Varnish Cache 6.0. In CentOS 7, only Apache Server 2.4 is available and Nginx is not available by default.
The database servers available with CentOS 8 are MariaDB 10.3, MySQL 8.0, PostgreSQL 10, PostgreSQL 9.6, and Redis 5. In CentOS 7, MySQL 5.5, MariaDB 5.5, PostgreSQL 9.2 are only available by default.
Kernel and OS:
The CentOS 8 is based on Fedora 28 and upstream kernel 4.18. The CentOS 7 is based on Fedora 19 and upstream kernel 3.10.
You can see the major changes and updates of CentOS 8 over Centos 7 from the above-specified information. CentOS 8 is introduced with significant upgrades compared to its initial versions.
What is your experience with CentOS 8 so far? Please do not hesitate to share your thoughts.
