After Red Hat, CentOS’s Linux parent company, announced it was shifting focus from CentOS Linux, the rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), to CentOS Stream, which tracks just ahead of a current RHEL release, many CentOS users were annoyed. CloudLinux, a company that had long made an eponymous RHEL clone for multi-tenant web and server hosting companies, announced it would create a new CentOS clone, AlmaLinux. It’s now available as a beta.
While Red Hat has extended a hand to disillusioned CentOS users with new free versions of RHEL for developers and small teams, other users are still looking for alternatives. That’s where AlmaLinux comes in.
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AlmaLinux is a binary compatible community RHEL server Linux fork. CloudLinux is backing AlmaLinux with a $1 million annual sponsorship. CloudLinux promises this first release based on RHEL 8.x will be supported until at least 2029. The new distro is based on a community-driven approach to fill the gap left by the CentOS stable release’s demise.
“As promised, the main development and maintenance were done by the CloudLinux team. And now we appeal to the community for its contributions,” said CloudLinux’s founder and CEO, Igor Seletskiy. “In the spirit of the community-driven initiative, we now require assistance with testing, documentation, support, and planning the future roadmap.”
Named after the Latin word for “soul,” AlmaLinux is being developed with collaboration from the Linux community via AlmaLinux’s GitHub page. The finalized source code will be available there once the stable release is released.
The AlmaLinux beta also comes with its own bug tracker. CloudLinux’s developers will work closely with bug tickets to make sure they can deliver a great stable release. Registered users can file bug reports that will be reviewed and prioritized by the engineering team.
Want to know more? The CloudLinux engineering team AlmaLinux frequently asked questions (FAQ) and technical details are available on the AlmaLinux Wiki.
To address questions after the first round of testing, CloudLinux will have a live AlmaLinux Q+A webinar on February 10 at 9 AM Pacific Time.
