Redhat Memes

When Red Hat pulled the plug on CentOS and pivoted to CentOS Stream, the entire sysadmin community collectively lost their minds. This protest sign captures that rage perfectly—you literally can't spell "hatred" without "Red Hat." For context: CentOS was the free, community-supported version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux that powered half the internet's servers. Then Red Hat decided to kill it off in favor of CentOS Stream (a rolling release that's more of a beta testing ground for RHEL). Thousands of production servers suddenly needed migration plans, and DevOps teams everywhere added "find CentOS alternative" to their 2021 roadmaps. The wordplay here is chef's kiss—taking your corporate betrayal to the streets with a sign that's both clever and seething with justified anger. Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux thank you for your service, angry sign person.

The sign makes a brilliant wordplay on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), one of the most popular enterprise Linux distributions. "Can't spell HATRED without REDHAT" is a savage burn that sysadmins who've battled RHEL licensing or compatibility issues will feel in their souls. The irony is delicious—a system designed to be reliable and enterprise-grade being associated with pure frustration. Anyone who's ever spent 3 hours trying to install a package that worked perfectly on Ubuntu knows this special kind of pain. It's the computing equivalent of stepping on a LEGO while barefoot.