AlmaLinux OS 9.2 and Rocky Linux 9.2 Are Out Now as Free RHEL 9.2 Alternatives

Both RHEL/CentOS Stream alternatives are based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 release.
AlmaLinux OS 9.2

Following last week’s release of Red Hat’s Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 operating system, both AlmaLinux OS 9.2 and Rocky Linux 9.2 are now available for download as free alternatives to both RHEL and CentOS Stream 9.

Based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 release, both AlmaLinux OS 9.2 (codenamed “Turquoise Kodkod”) and Rocky Linux 9.2 bring pretty much the same new features and improvements implemented by Red Hat in their upstream release.

These include support for 64k page sizes for the ARM architecture, which allows the deployment of the operating system on more hardware and maximizes the performance of large data set workloads, expanded capabilities of system roles to let you automate even more management tasks, new Podman system role, and improvements to application streams.

Both AlmaLinux OS 9.2 and RockyLinux 9.2 comes with various security-related changes, such as a new rule for idle session termination to SCAP (Security Content Automation Protocol), updates the Clevis automated encryption framework to accept external tokens, and adds support for multiple CA files to Rsyslog’s TLS-encrypted logging.

In addition, the Rsyslog privileges have been limited to minimize security exposure, the fapolicyd framework was updated to provide filtering of the RPM database, and various security-oriented packages have been updated including OpenSSL 3.0.7, SELinux 3.5, OpenSCAP 1.3.7, SCAP Security Guide 0.1.66, and Keylime 6.5.2.

On top of that, AlmaLinux OS 9.2 comes with an updated AlmaLinux EV Code Sign Secure Boot certificate.

Rocky Linux 9.2 brings an updated Container Universal Base Image to be more similar to the upstream RHEL UBI images, enables Wayland by default for Aspeed GPUs, adds initial support for Intel ARC GPUs, improves support for Flatpak apps, updates the WireGuard VPN to work with SELinux, and adds the nfsrahead tool for setting the read_ahead_kb parameter on NFS mounts.

If you’re looking for a free alternative to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 or CentOS Stream 9 operating system series, you can download either AlmaLinux OS 9.2 or Rocky Linux 9.2 from their official websites by clicking on the respective links below. Installation images are provided for 64-bit (x86_64), AArch64 (ARM64), PowerPC 64-bit Little Endian (ppc64le), and IBM System z (s390x) architectures.

Last updated 11 months ago

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