CentOS is an abbreviation for Community Enterprise Operating System. This is one of the top Linux releases for servers and it's regarded as one of the most dependable and secure Operating Systems available. CentOS is open-source software, so you can customize it in whatever way you see fit, adding and removing packages or changing the code of all of them. It's also free to distribute and use, so you won't need to pay any license fees, which means that the total price that you'll need to pay for a server running CentOS will be lower than the price for a server running an alternative OS. What makes CentOS stand out among other Linux releases is its huge developer society, which will help you get the reply to any question or problem you may have. What's even more, each version that is released officially is supported for a decade, that is is much longer than with any alternative operating system. What this means is routine security and stability updates which will provide a great software environment for all your web applications in the long run.