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Rocky Linux is a CentOS clone created by Gregory Kurtzer, the founder of CentOS. Kurtzer announced the Rocky Linux project hours after the RHEL development team announced support for CentOS 8 ended on December 31, 2021. The downstream, binary-compatible build based on RHEL released on June 21, 2021. Kurtzer named the distro after his late CentOS co-founder, tweeting, “Thinking back to early CentOS… My co-founder Rocky McGaugh. He is no longer with us, so as a H/T to him, who never got to see the success that CentOS came to be, I introduce to you… Rocky Linux.”