Alma Linux - Free Linux OS for the community, by the community

Alma Linux – Free Linux OS for the community, by the community

An Open Source, community owned and governed, forever-free enterprise Linux distribution, focused on long-term stability, providing a robust production-grade platform. AlmaLinux OS is 1:1 binary compatible with RHEL® and pre-Stream CentOS.

AlmaLinux is a free and open source Linux distribution, created originally by CloudLinux to provide a community-supported, production-grade enterprise operating system that is binary-compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The first stable release of AlmaLinux was published on March 30, 2021.

Package manager: RPM
License: GPLv2 and others
Developer: The AlmaLinux OS Foundation
Platforms: x86-64 AArch64
Default user interface: GNOME Shell, Bash
OS family: Linux (Unix-like)
Source model: Open source

Repositories

A repository stores software packages on a remote server that are used for installing and updating on Linux systems.

Any repository that is intended for RHEL or CentOS can be used in AlmaLinux. As a part of the project, besides AlmaLinux repositories, you may also use CentOS SIGs, EPEL, and the ELRepo Project repositories with the following instructions:

AlmaLinux – AlmaLinux repositories.
CentOS SIG – CentOS SIG’s repositories.
Extras – Extra repositories such as EPEL and the ELRepo Project.

Alma means soul in Spanish and other Latin languages. Looking back, it is easy to see that Linux is as popular and pervasive as it is thanks to the efforts of a passionate, diverse developer community. This community is the soul of Linux, and everyone that relies on a Linux distribution is indebted to the efforts of the Linux community. That is why we called our new distribution AlmaLinux OS.

AlmaLinux OS is an opportunity for us to channel our expertise in RHEL into a Linux distribution that serves the broader community. Furthermore, we are including the Linux community right from the inception of AlmaLinux OS. Moving forward, community members will be on the governing board for the AlmaLinux OS project and involved in key decisions too. Finally, AlmaLinux OS will always be free and open source. The community can pick up and continue to develop AlmaLinux OS at any time.

Production-ready – AlmaLinux OS is an enterprise-grade server OS and a stable Linux distribution with regular releases that come with a long support windows. You can rely on AlmaLinux OS to run any and every critical workloads.
Fully supported, always free – AlmaLinux OS Foundation members, sponsors and partners back the AlmaLinux OS with investments and long support commitments to ensure the distribution is free of limitations, fees and charges.
Effortless to switch to – Switching distributions is usually costly and time-consuming, but that’s not the case when switching from CentOS and other RHEL® derivatives to AlmaLinux OS. Switching is easy