CentOS is an enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from
sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American
supplier of Enterprise Linux. CentOS is fully compliant with the
policy of redistribution of upstream suppliers and aims to be 100%
binary compatible. (CentOS mainly changes packages to remove the image
of the upstream supplier and illustrations.)
CentOS has numerous advantages over some other clone projects
including: an active community of users and growing, quickly rebuilt,
tested and QA'ed errata packages, an extensive mirror network,
developers who are contactable and responsive, multiple channels,
including free support IRC chat, mailing lists, forums, a dynamic FAQ.
Commercial support is offered by a number of suppliers.
CentOS is developed by a small team, but more and more developers. In
return, the kernel developers are supported by an active user
community including system administrators, network administrators,
enterprise users, managers, core Linux contributors and Linux
enthusiasts worldwide.