CentOS 8 features

CentOS has been available since its launch in 2004. 15 years later on the 24th September 2019, we got a brand new version of the Iconic brand with the launch of CentOS 8 which promises to continue with the stability, efficiency and reliability that has been enjoyed all over the years.

New CentOS 8 features from upstream Release Notes

Desktop Environment

CentOS 8 GNOME shell runs on version 3.28
The GNOME session and the GNOME Display Manager use Wayland as their default display server, but the X.Org server is still available.

Networking Arena

The following new changes are in this area:

CentOS 8 comes with TCP networking stack version 4.16, which provides higher performances, better scalability, and more stability.
The networking stack has been upgraded to upstream version 4.18.
Default network packet filtering has been changed from Iptables to nftables as it provides a single framework for use by both IPv4 and IPv6 protocols.
Nftables is now the default backend for the firewall daemon.
There is support for IPVLAN virtual network drivers that enable network connectivity for multiple containers.
Network-Manager now supports single-root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) virtual functions (VF). It also allows some VFs attribute configuration, e.g. the MAC address, VLAN, the spoof checking the setting and allowed bitrate.

Software Management

The YUM package manager uses the DNF technology (YUM v4); an improvement from former version YUM v3. It provides support for modular content, increased performance, and a well-designed stable API for integration with tooling as well as ensuring security for installation of new software.

Yum command and its specific commands use similar to CentOS 7. CentOS 8 runs with RPM 4.14 out of the box that has added advancements compared to the previous RPM 4.11. Features on the later version include: