Imagine being able to install a private YouTube-like web application for a niche community on your unmanaged Linux server. After a few months you decide to publicize it for the world to see. With the click of a button anyone looking at videos on that same YouTube-like application installed elsewhere can see your videos, expanding your reach to viewers that would’ve never seen your content otherwise. That is the greatness of a federated application.

CentOS was the most popular operating system (OS) based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for server environments. Now it’s dead… sort of. In December 2021, Red Hat phased out CentOS and repurposed it into what is now known as CentOS Stream. Instead of being a stand-alone production OS, it became an upstream platform (read: development proving ground) to test updates before pushing stable changes to Enterprise Linux. This pivot worried the CentOS community enough to spark the birth of multiple distributions built for the sole purpose of replacing CentOS.

In addition to a CPU and a GPU, one of the most important pieces of computer hardware is the motherboard. If the CPU can be considered the computer’s brain, then the motherboard is the central nervous system of the computer. This crucial component connects all of the various computer hardware elements and allows them to communicate with each other. In this article, we will explore the purpose of motherboards and discuss a few common types of motherboards.