What is AlmaLinux OS?

AlmaLinux OS is a new distribution of the Linux operating system, also based on open source, derived from CentOS; and it will be one of its replacements based on the decision of Red Hat (its developer) to stop offering support for CentOS from December 31, 2021, where it will become a “steam” or development version for the corporate distribution Red HatEnterprise Linux (RHEL). RHEL is a paid distribution.

Red Hat announced in December 2020 the discontinuation of CentOS, which will survive as a brand and operating system under the company’s wing, but as a preview or test version of the new versions of Red Hat Enterprise (RHEL). CentOS, its clone at the binary level, fully compatible with RHEL and with its same update and development support time, will no longer exist. This is a movement that the “linuxera” community did not like, and that is why several sysadmins are choosing to use AlmaLinux OS .

Technically,  AlmaLinux is a standalone operating system, which is a fork of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as CentOS used to be. It’s completely free, with no license fees, and uses the traditional long-term support and upgrade model that the various original CentOS versions had. Although AlmaLinux OS was not created in an emergency due to this sudden change of its developer, due to the upcoming changes for CentOS, it prompted the completion and launch of this new distro. So… Welcome AlmaLinux!

CloudLinux took the baton

The continuation of CentOS called Alma Linux OS, will be carried forward by CloudLinux and its team of rockstars after several successes in the development of tools and operating systems, taking care of its development, financing and support, with the commitment to maintain update support. until the year 2029. This was extremely well received by CentOS users, who felt great relief upon reading this excellent news.

What are the characteristics of AlmaLinux

In theory nothing should change when it comes to CentOS management, and here we will name some of the favorite features of our community of Linux fans:

• It’s completely free and open source, with community support like CentOS was.
• It is ultra compatible with RHEL, so all the packages you use regularly will continue to work and be supported.
• It is developed, supported and financed by the CloudLinux team , a solid and growing company, which updates its own operating system which solves several problems for hosting providers.
• Support for control panels like cPanel , Plesk and CentOS Web Panel .
• It will have guaranteed support and updates until 2029.

What is the difference between AlmaLinux and CloudLinux

The first thing to know about this is that both AlmaLinux OS and CloudLinux will exist as operating systems independent of each other. Although both share the same starting point and team of developers, CloudLinux will continue to be the main product as its fork of Red Hat Enterprise, which while also paid, saw mass adoption by web hosting providers due to its stability and benefits for server management.

AlmaLinux OS will be a secondary product, free of charge, but not for that bad or neglected; and hundreds of Linux fans and thousands of Internet community members will be contributing new features and updates to keep this growing and continue to support it.