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Following on the release of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 operating system, AlmaLinux OS 8.5 is now officially and generally available for download.
AlmaLinux OS 8.5 builds on the changes that Red Hat implemented in their Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 release, and also adds two new repositories, including ResilientStorage and Plus, as well as new OpenSCAP Security Guide profiles, including a new profile aligned with the Australian Cyber Security Centre Information Security Manual (ACSC ISM), a new STIG profile compatible with server with GUI installations, and a new French National Security Agency (ANSSI) high level profile.
On top of that, the Center for Internet Security (CIS) AlmaLinux profile has been reorganized into four different profiles, including Workstation Level 1, Workstation Level 2, Server Level 1, and Server Level 2, and the Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG) security profile has been updated to version V1R3.
Among other changes, AlmaLinux OS will now automatically choose the closest mirror when installing the operating system in network install mode.
Of course, under the hood you’ll find a lot of updated components, including GCC 11, LLVM 12.0.1, Rust 1.54.0, Go 1.16.7, PHP 7.4.19, Ruby 3.0, Node.js 16, Squid 4.15, Mutt 2.0.7, and nginx 1.20.
On top of all these changes, you’ll also find the many improvements and new features to containerized applications, new system roles, Network Time Security (NTS) support for NTP, support for OpenJDK 17, an enhanced Cockpit web console, and other changes from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5.
“As CentOS Linux comes to end of life this year, we aim to deliver the same high degree of quality, robustness, and timeliness end users would expect from a CentOS successor to provide a free and reliable, enterprise-grade Linux alternative,” said Jack Aboutboul, community manager for AlmaLinux.
You can download AlmaLinux OS 8.5 right now from the official website for 64-bit (x86_64) and ARM64 (AArch64) systems, including Raspberry Pi computers. Full, Minimal and Boot variants are available for download, but existing users can follow the upgrade instructions in the release notes to update their installations from AlmaLinux OS 8.4 to 8.5.
Since AlmaLinux OS aims to be a production-ready drop-in replacement for the CentOS Linux distribution, AlmaLinux’s ELevate project simplifies the migration between major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based distributions from the 7.x to the 8.x series, such as CentOS 7.x to any 8.x distribution of your choice.
Image credits: AlmaLinux (edited by Marius Nestor)
Last updated 2 years ago
