CentOS is an abbreviation for Community Enterprise Operating System. This is one of the leading Linux distributions for servers and it's recognized as one of the most reliable and secure Operating Systems on the market. CentOS is open-source software, so you'll be able to personalize it in whatever way you see fit, adding and removing packages or altering the code of any of them. It's also free to distribute and use, so you won't have to pay any license fees, which means that the overall price that you'll need to pay for a server making use of CentOS will be lower as compared to the price for a server working with an alternative OS. What makes CentOS stand out among other Linux releases is its huge developer community, which will help you discover the answer to any kind of question or problem you have. What's more, each version that's released officially is supported for ten years, which is much longer than with any other operating system. What this means is regular safety and stability updates which will provide a great software environment for your web applications in the long run.