CentOS is a Linux distribution designed for professionals. This distro has always stood out for being a free version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, since it was based directly on it. However, at the end of last year Red Hat decided to change the development of CentOS, adopting a model of Rolling Release updates and using the users of this distro as guinea pigs, testing on them all the changes and new packages before taking them to the main system. The community, unhappy with this change, began to work on different alternatives, and one of the most advanced has been AlmaLinux .
CloudLinux developers were the first to offer an alternative to CentOS following Red Hat’s announcement of changing the upgrade model. This alternative, known as AlmaLinux, seeks to offer users an alternative that is as faithful as possible to RHEL but totally outside of Red Hat’s control . To do this, since this system is open source, the developers forked the latest version of Red Hat and started working from it.
AlmaLinux is now stable
Barely 4 months have passed since Red Hat announced the change in CentOS development, and we already have an alternative operating system that will perfectly allow us to forget about it. AlmaLinux reached beta users in early February. Now, a little less than two months later, its developers have finally considered that the system is finished, and that is why they have just announced the launch of its first stable version .
Some of the features that this distro will bring to the Linux ecosystem are:
- Red Hat is a 1: 1 copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
- It will use the same development cycle as Red Hat.
- Possibility of converting a CentOS distro to AlmaLinux in an instant, without losing data, programs or settings.
- Support, for now, until 2029. The intention is to keep updating this new distro until Red Hat abandons its system.
Download
Most likely, we do not have CentOS installed on our computer, so the first thing its developers offer us is the possibility of downloading the final AlmaLinux ISO . We can download this image of the system from the following link . We can choose between a boot image, a minimal one and a complete DVD, for 64-bit systems. And if we already have the Red Hat distro installed, here we will find the script with which to convert CentOS into AlmaLinux .
Red Hat itself will try to compete against this type of distros thanks to the new free plan for small workloads , up to 16 servers, and offering RHEL without limitations for OpenSource organizations. However, it is going to be complicated, since the community has not been happy with what has happened with CentOS, and it is very spiteful. Although time will show us if these RHEL-based alternatives eventually succeed.
CentoOS 8 will not reach users until the end of the year, at which time the new CentOS Stream update model will go live. However, the alternatives to this distro are beginning to see the light of day. Besides AlmaLinux, there are other similar projects in development right now. One of the most popular is Rocky Linux, started by the CentOS creators themselves. These seek to offer users an enterprise-grade distro with which to forget about Red Hat without giving up the features and support of this OS.
