CentOS 5.2

Before everyone starts asking questions let's get this cleared up here :-) Upstream released version 5.2 of their Enterprise Linux distribution on the 21st. So I understand that you are all wanting to now when CentOS 5.2 will be released.

Well, looking back at 5.1 we see that upsteam released 5.1 on November 7th 2007. CentOS 5.1 was released on December 2th 2007. So there was a delay of 3,5 weeks before the release of CentOS 5.1

So when can we expect CentOS 5.2 then, well using the same 3,5 weeks we end up with a date of around June 14th 2008. This is of course a estimate it can be later or earlier.


For some background information, why does it take 3,5 weeks ? First we need to remove all the logos and trademarks of Upstream. Secondly we need to build everything from source and this for both i386 and x86_64. Then everything that gets build goes past the QA team that verify that everything works as it should. From all the build packages install media will be created and these also need to be tested by the QA team. For each release a set of release notes are created and these are translated in different languages (12 for 5.1). Finally all the packages and media need to be uploaded in distributed to the mirror network so you can download it .

So this is why it takes a couple of weeks for a CentOS release to come out and remember that all this is done by volunteers and we could always use some more. So if you have some spare time and are willing to help you can make yourself known in the centos-devel mailinglist.