CentOS (/sɛnt.ɑːs/, from Community Enterprise Operating System) is a Linux distribution that attempts to provide a free, enterprise-class, community-supported computing platform which aims to be functionally compatible with its upstream source, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).[5][6] In January 2014, CentOS announced the official joining with Red Hat while staying independent from RHEL,[7] under a new CentOS governing board.[8][9]
The first CentOS release in May 2004, numbered as CentOS version 2, was forked from RHEL version 2.1AS.[1] Since the release of version 7.0, CentOS officially supports only the x86-64 architecture, while versions older than 7.0-1406 also support IA-32 with Physical Address Extension (PAE). As of December 2015[update], AltArch releases of CentOS 7 are available for the IA-32 architecture, Power architecture, and for the ARMv7hl and AArch64 variants of the ARM architecture.[