CentOS, the popular community-supported clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, reached Version 5.3 in March, some three months after its parent distribution, RHEL 5.3, began shipping.

CentOS is based on Red Hat's freely available Enterprise Linux source packages. The CentOS project strips trademarked logos and other branding from the packages before building them into a free, Linux-based operating system that boasts binary compatibility with its parent.