After the controversial decision to radically change the focus of its CentOS distribution, ceasing to support its latest version, and replacing it with ‘CentOS Stream’, a ‘rolling release’ distribution. That provoked an angry reaction from the CentOS user community, who quickly began looking for alternatives that were capable of providing the same service, and that’s where AlmaLinux OS arrives.
AlmaLinux comes with the promise of an annual sponsorship from CloudLinux Inc. of one million dollars per year, with which they hope to continue offering a binary-compatible option with RHEL 8 and that facilitates an easy transition from CentOS and that in fact The first stable version of AlmaLinux OS is now available.
After users began looking for alternatives, AlmaLinux was the first to position itself in this nascent race that knows how it started, but not how it will end. In fact, as we collected in our special of alternatives to CentOS, there are not only different kinds, but exactly the same as CentOS was: many users and SMEs have everything they need in the free version of RHEL, and for the rest there is Oracle Linux, completely free and without limitations.
But here is AlmaLinux 8.3, the news of which is not necessary to comment because the version number says it all: it is what CentOS 8.3 should have been, which means that it is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3. Or rather, it is not based on RHEL 8.3: it is a binary clone of it and according to its developers, it is prepared to fill the CentOS gap on servers, on the desktop, in the cloud, in containers, etc.
The objective of CloudLinux would be to continue offering stable and reliable updates of the first version of AlmaLinux until 2029; that is, a support of 8 years, compared to the 10 promised (and now unfulfilled) so far by CentOS, of course this is not the only alternative but … many have opted for this and we can only wait to use it to know what you think each of the users of this distro.
Other reads:
OpenELEC – A Linux distro for Raspberry Pi
MX Linux, a distro dedicated to speed and easy use
What is CentOS and what is its function?
