How to migrate to CentOS stream in 3 simple steps?

CentOS 8 is no longer receiving updates from the official CentOS project.
So, how will you update your CentOS after Dec 31st, 2021?
You will have some options:

• Migrate to CentOS Stream
• Switch to other alternatives, like Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux or Oracle Linux for the Long Term Support they provide.
• Modify your repository configs to use the CentOS vault, which is a snapshot of the older trees that have been removed from the main CentOS servers as new point releases are released.
• Completely move to a different branch, like Debian, Arch or.. whatever you feel comfortable with.

What’s the difference between CentOS Linux and CentOS Stream?

CentOS Linux is a rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). As such, it is downsteam from RHEL. CentOS Linux release version numbers reflect the date of the RHEL release on which they are based. For example, CentOS 8.2105 is a rebuild of RHEL 8.3, which released in May of 2021.

CentOS Stream, on the other hand, is the upstream, public development branch for RHEL. Specifically, CentOS Stream 8 is the upstream for the next minor release of RHEL 8, CentOS Stream 9 for the next minor release of RHEL 9, and so on.

Guess which other distribution is an upstream from RHEL? Fedora, you guessed that right!

So, what’s the big deal with the downstream and mainstream?

In a single word: STABILITY

CentOS Linux, since 2004 got the updates from RHEL and implemented them into the latest distributions on CentOS.
CentOS also tracked with RHEL’s Product Lifecycle, with updates, patches, and security fixes being released a little while after they were initially released for RHEL. This made, practically, the CentOS identical to RHEL, and provided sysadmins and enterprises with an excellent testing platform that didn’t included additional costs for access to repositories.

Moving to upstream, CentOS became the testing ground for RedHat; updates and changes will be released continuously, with the inherent problems resulting from this.

You still want to migrate to CentOS Stream?

1. Let’s update to the latest release:

$ sudo dnf update -y

2.  Let’s check the OS version after update:

$ cat /etc/centos-release
CentOS Linux release 8.5.2111

3. Perform the migration to CentOS Stream:

dnf --disablerepo '*' --enablerepo extras swap centos-linux-repos centos-stream-repos
dnf distro-sync

Enjoy!