The latest stable release of the Almalinux distribution, version 9.5, has been announced. This release is synchronized with the new release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.5 and includes all proposed changes. Installation images have been prepared for architectures x86_64, ARM64, PPC64le, and S390X in the form of boot (1 GB), minimal (2 GB), and a complete image (10 GB). Live assemblies with Gnome, KDE, Mate, and XFCE, as well as images for raspberry pi, containers, WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), and cloud platforms will be formed later. (Available here)
The Almalinux distribution aims to be binary-compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and can be used as a replacement for Rhel 9.5 and CentOS 9 Stream. The changes in this release mainly focus on rebranding and the removal of packets specific to Rhel, such as redhat-*, onsights-callient, subscription-manager-migration*, kpatch*, kmod-realhat-*, rhc, spice*, and virtio-win. Additionally, the Synergy repository is available for use, providing a different experience from Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Packages with the Pantheon user environment, Elementary OS project, and Warpinator utility for encrypted file exchange between computers are already available in the Synergy repository. (More details here)
Almalinux is based on Cloudlinux and was developed in response to the premature end of support for CentOS 8 by Red Hat. The project is overseen by the Almalinux OS Foundation, a non-profit organization created to develop the distribution on a neutral platform with community involvement, following a management model similar to the Fedora project. The distribution is free for all users, and all of Almalinux’s achievements are published under free licenses. (Github repository can be found here)
In addition to Almalinux, alternatives to traditional CentOS include Rocky Linux (developed by a community under the guidance of the CentOS founder), Oracle Linux, SUSE Linux, and Eurolinux. Red Hat also offers the option of free use of Rhel for organizations developing open source software and for individual developers on up to 16 virtual or physical systems. (For more information on free