Details are still scarce, but SUSE Liberty Linux is preparing a new distribution to replace CentOS Linux. The new distribution will be a remake of CentOS 8 by SUSE, aiming for almost perfect compatibility with RHEL 8.
Ever since Red Hat stopped it CentOS Linux and replaced it with CentOS Stream, RHEL-based distributions also changed. So until today we have the distributions SoulLinux and Rocky linux. So SUSE comes into play with its own redesign of the freely available Red Hat source code.
This particular distribution appeared instantly on the SUSE website overnight, and we do not yet have a trial version. But let's see what we know so far.
When released the Liberty Linux distribution will be equivalent to the current version of Red Hat - RHEL 8.5 - and compatible with packages from Red Hat EPEL repos.
SUSE develops the distribution using its own tools (Open Build Service). The new distribution's userland will be developed from Red Hat's official Source RPMs (SRPMs), with the exception of the kernel. The kernel will come from SUSE's enterprise SLE distribution, currently using version 15 SP3, but compiled using Red Hat compatible settings.
So the Liberty Linux distribution will be released with kernel 5.3.18. This is of course much newer than the 4.18 kernel that RHEL 8.5 uses. That's why the drivers and the kernel RHEL modules will almost certainly not work. But the SLE ones will work.
We should expect support for systems only files selected by Red Hat. This means XFS instead of Btrf which SUSE prefers. The new distribution will come only on the x86-64 architecture, with no support for POWER or Arm systems.