Tag: CentOS Stream

AlmaLinux is a relatively new operating system meant to act as a CentOS replacement. How did AlmaLinux come to be? RedHat, the company that created and maintains RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), announced on December 8th, 2020, that CentOS would be repurposed to CentOS Stream. CentOS Stream now acts as an upstream testing platform where new and updated software will first be deployed and tested before being released to RHEL users. 

What is AlmaLinux? It is an open source 1:1 binary compatible fork of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The AlmaLinux foundation was founded by CloudLinux, which invested $1 million. They wanted to provide a long-term stable operating system (OS) version. AlmaLinux was first released in March of 2021 and has recently released another stable version, AlmaLinux 8.5.

CentOS Options

With the recent announcement by CentOS 8 regarding the switch from CentOS 8 to CentOS Stream, this commonly used Linux distribution is being relegated to a mid-stage development version of RHEL. In essence, CentOS 8 becomes an early rolling-release distro for RHEL. As CentOS moves from being a follow-up distribution to the stable version of RedHat, to be, in effect, a prerelease version of RHEL, many users are looking for alternatives to replace their current operating systems with a long-term stable platform apart from RHEL and IBM who owns RedHat.