Almalinux. How does It compare to Other Linux Distros?
As they say, every cloud has a silver lining. In light of the transition of CentOS to CentOS Stream, which was critically received by a large user community for the fact that the new form is not supposed to provide the benefits the original CentOS was valued for; many developers started to create analogs for the system, that would not only fill the gap for users that preferred CentOS but would allow to conveniently transition the projects intended for CentOS in a new environment fully compatible with it. One of the new and successful alternatives to CentOS is AlmaLinux, which can be applied in the same context as good old CentOS, including renting dedicated server. Today we are going to compare this new distribution to its common competitors to let you understand if it’s exactly what you need.
AlmaLinux as a replacement for CentOS
The main motivation for the creation of AlmaLinux was to replace CentOS. For this reason, the main feature included in this distro is binary compatibility with RHEL. That is, one can install any application intended for CentOS on AlmaLinux without any preliminary modification. In addition to that, AlmaLinux offers all the technical advantages that used to be associated with CentOS, like stability and reliability. Let’s now look closer into some of the features of the young OS that make it special:
Solid Financial Support
To develop and support any software successfully, one needs some sort of financing. Luckily, AlmaLinux gains solid financial support from various companies, such as Amazon, Microsoft, CloudLinux, Equinix, and AMD. The motivation behind that is the OS is a good replacement for CentOS, which is especially important for the development of promising cloud environments.
Large Community
Although the distro is pretty young, it has already gained a large community of supporters. An extensive team of developers currently develops it, which is a good sign for the constant improvement of the OS. Furthermore, the community of users is growing exponentially with an eye on the need to replace CentOS with something and the fact that AlmaLinux is becoming one of the major alternatives to CentOS.
Easy Migration
The migration from CentOS to AlmaLinux is not suppos to be hard. To stimulate this procedure even more, the developers of AlmaLinux have even introduced a special utility, almalinux-deploy, that lets you easily transition your CentOS installation to the new environment.
Both Desktop And Server Versions Available
AlmaLinux is available both as a server and as a desktop OS. This way, using the same OS on both instances will make the server management somehow easier from the technical side.
Is Broadly Involved In Cloud Solutions
Many providers of cloud infrastructure, such as Cloud Linux, Azure, and AWS, already use the recently created distribution.
Features of AlmaLinux
Let’s also have a look at some more common features that make up AlmaLinux as generally a good operating system.
Community-Driven Development: Like with CentOS, the community is actively engag in developing and supporting this system. The common goal to create a better OS for everyone and interest in the idea of free and open-source software is the fuel heats up the extensive collaboration of the community participants.
Long-Term Support (LTS): AlmaLinux is currently getting long-term support, meaning that you, as an organization, can coordinate your plans with the guarantees of the distro’s functioning in the future.
Ease of Use: Like CentOS, which was always praised for being practical and suitable for users with varying levels of technical savvy; they developed AlmaLinux to provide a similar user experience.
Package Management: Like CentOS and RHEL, we use YUM package manager on AlmaLinux in contrast to APT package manager involved in systems like Debian or Ubuntu.
Available Software Repositories: Software repositories available for AlmaLinux aren’t as rich as current ones for Ubuntu or Debian. However, the compatibility with RHEL packages will satisfy your needs in most cases.
Other CentOS Alternatives
The only CentOS alternative that is as widespread and commonly known as AlmaLinux is Rocky Linux. This distro developed with the same motivation, and for this offers a similar functionality and features as AlmaLinux. For now, however, AlmaLinux seen as more popular.
Conclusion
Despite the for many frustrating discontinuation of CentOS; its former users are not left with nothing. AlmaLinux is among the decent alternatives to the system; offering similar features and binary compatibility with RHEL, as well as long-term support. The history will show, which OS will eventually become the main substitution for the old good CentOS; but for now, we can see AlmaLinux as a pretty good one.
