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The AlmaLinux OS team announced today the general availability of the first stable release of their drop-in replacement for CentOS Linux 8, forked from Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
About four months ago, when Red Hat announced that it’ll put an end to the CentOS Linux 8 operating system series at the end of 2021, focusing on CentOS Stream 8, several developers started working on CentOS Linux replacements.
One of these is AlmaLinux OS, developed by the creators of CloudLinux OS, a popular Linux distribution based on CentOS Linux and marketed to shared hosting providers. It aims to be a 1:1 binary compatible drop-in replacement for CentOS Linux that’s forever-free, open-source, and enterprise-ready, with a very long support timeframe.
“We are also announcing the formation of a non-profit organization that will take over responsibility for managing the AlmaLinux OS project going forward, and some of the board members that will steer that effort,” said the devs.
AlmaLinux OS is here for those who want a more recent and free version of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 operating system series to run on their servers, be it at home or in a small office. The AlmaLinux OS team says that you can also use it for general purpose computing, on cloud, in bare-metal installations, or in containers.
So, if you’re interested in trying out AlmaLinux OS, you can download version 8.3 right now from the official website. Three flavors are available, a full edition with everything you need to build a Linux-powered server, as well as minimal and boot images for those who like to customize their installations.
For now, AlmaLinux OS is supported only on 64-bit (x86_64) platforms, but the development team promises to offer support for ARM platforms as well in the near future.
Image credits: AlmaLinux OS
Last updated 3 years ago
