Goals
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This section organizes default design models for different major releases of CentOS Distribution.

Description
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In order to better understatand how this visual manifestation is organized, it is necessary to consider what The CentOS Distribution is and how it is released.

The CentOS Distribution
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The CentOS Distribution is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. The CentOS Distribution conforms fully with the upstream vendors redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (The CentOS Project mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork.)

The CentOS Distribution is developed by a small but growing team of core developers.  In turn the core developers are supported by an active user community including system administrators, network administrators, enterprise users, managers, core Linux contributors and Linux enthusiasts from around the world.

The CentOS Distribution Release Schema
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The upstream vendor has released 4 versions of their EL (Enterprise Linux) product that The CentOS Project rebuilds the freely available SRPMS for.  The upstream vendor releases security updates as required by circumstances. The CentOS Project releases rebuilds of security updates as soon as possible. Usually within 24 hours (our stated goal is with 72 hours, but we are usually much faster).

The upstream vendor also releases numbered update sets for major versions of their EL product from 2 to 4 times per year. There are new ISOs from the upstream vendor provided for these update sets.  Update sets will be completed as soon as possible after the upstream vendor releases their version ... generally within 2 weeks. The CentOS Project follows these conventions as well, so CentOS-3.9 correlates with EL 3 update 9 and CentOS-4.6 correlates with EL 4 update 6, CentOS-5.1 correlates to EL 5 update 1, etc.

One thing some people have problems understanding is that if you have any CentOS-3 product and update it, you will be updated to the latest CentOS-3.x version.

The same is true for CentOS-4 and CentOS-5. If you update any CentOS-4 product, you will be updated to the latest CentOS-4.x version, or to the latest CentOS-5.x version if you are updating a CentOS-5 system. This is exactly the same behavior as the upstream product.  Let's assume that the latest EL4 product is update 6. If you install the upstream original EL4 CDs (the ones before any update set) and upgrade via yum, you will have latest update set installed (EL4 update 6 in our example). Since all updates within a major release (CentOS-2, CentOS-3, CentOS-4, CentOS-5) always upgrade to the latest version when updates are performed (thus mimicking upstream behavior), only the latest version is maintained in each main tree on The CentOS Mirrors (http://mirrors.centos.org/).

There is a CentOS Vault (http://vault.centos.org/) containing old CentOS trees. This vault is a picture of the older tree when it was removed from the main tree, and does not receive updates. It should only be used for reference.

The CentOS Distribution visual style is controlled by image files. These image files are packaged inside The CentOS Distribution and made visible once such packages are installed and executed. The way to go for changing The CentOS Distribution visual style is changing all those image files to add the desired visual style first and later, repackage them to make them available inside the final iso files of CentOS Distribution.

Usage
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Sometimes, between major releases, image files inside packages can be added, removed or just get the name changed. In order to describe such variations, the design models directory structure is organized in the same way the variations are introduced (i.e., through The CentOS Distribution Release Schema).  So, each major release of The CentOS Distribution has its own design model directory structure.

When a new package/component is added to one or all the major releases of The CentOS Distribution, a design model directory structure for that component needs to be created. Later, it is filled up with related design models. Design models are created for each image file inside the component that need to be rebuilt in order to set the visual style and brand information correctly.

When a package is removed from one or all major releases of The CentOS Distribution, the design model directory structure releated to that package/component is no longer used.  However, it could be very useful for historical reasons.  Also, someone could feel motivation enough to keep himself documenting it or supporting it for whatever reason.

  * --- Removed(xref:Directories trunk Identity Models Themes Default Distro 5) ---.

See also
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  * --- Removed(ref:Directories trunk Identity Models Themes Default) ---.

  * Directories trunk Identity Models Themes.

  * Directories trunk Identity Images Themes.

  * Directories trunk Identity.

  * Directories trunk.