CERN, which operates the world's largest particle accelerator, is migrating over 2,200 industrial computers from CentOS to Debian. The organization used CentOS for roughly a decade but abandoned it after newer versions began requiring processors with support for modern instruction sets, rendering much of its aging hardware incompatible.
The computers primarily run the control infrastructure for the accelerators themselves. This migration represents a significant infrastructure overhaul for one of the world's most important scientific institutions, driven by compatibility constraints rather than dissatisfaction with CentOS as a platform. By switching to Debian, CERN can maintain support for older hardware while continuing to run a stable, production-grade Linux distribution across its critical systems.