Island in the Stream: AlmaLinux project issues first stable release of CentOS replacement

The AlmaLinux project, sponsored by CloudLinux, has issued its first stable release along with details of a new open-source foundation set up to manage the project. The AlmaLinux project, originally codenamed Lenix, was started soon after Red Hat informed the world that CentOS would be replaced by CentOS Stream. Both are …

[alain williams]

Will it have the Mate desktop ?

Part of the reason that I migrated to Debian was to dodge having to use Gnome 3. No: XFCE, better than Gnome 3, not as nice as Mate.

[amacater]

Re: Will it have the Mate desktop ?

As I understand it, the only supported desktop in the upstream distribution is now Gnome 3.

You can possibly pull in packages from EPEL for other desktops - but it looks as if MATE requires building from source - https://tylersguides.com/guides/install-mate-on-centos-8/ - or downloading from a repository put up by a Fedora user - https://wdawe.com/index.php/installing-mate-desktop-on-centos?blog=1

I remember your name from a long time ago: you'd have no problem with either but Debian "just works" for me and has done for about 25 years.

[Doctor Syntax]

"Will Red Hat be upset at the appearance of binary-compatible community builds of RHEL?"

Whether they're upset or not they shouldn't be surprised. They shouldn't be but they probably will despite it's being the obvious consequence.

[chasil]

Conversion scripts

CentOS can now be converted to the following peer distributions...

RHEL: https://access.redhat.com/articles/2360841

Oracle: https://github.com/oracle/centos2ol

Alma: https://github.com/AlmaLinux/almalinux-deploy

I doubt option 1 is exercised often.

[katrinab]

Re: Conversion scripts

And option 2 will be exercised even less often.

[chasil]

Oracle OS support

If we are being pragmatic, RedHat has terminated two major distributions, the original Red Hat Linux that ended at v9, and now CentOS v8.

Oracle ended OpenSolaris when Sun was acquired, and also terminated Oracle Linux 6 for SPARC after two beta releases.

Objectively, Oracle has supported their Linux offerings far more reliably than RedHat.

[mihares]

I don’t think at Red Hat anybody will be particularly surprised or miffed.

At IBM, however...

[Anonymous Coward]

In before Jake

Well, it is Linux.

[Steve Davies 3]

I'll give the release a try

I have the beta running on a NUC but I'm more interested in putting it on my 2012 Macbook Pro. CentOS 7 was fine but CentOS 8 missed out two vital packages so it will install but won't boot.

Having Mate would be the icing on the cake.

[sreynolds]

There is such a lack of innocation these days...

All distros are prettty much the same. There is no real innovation these days.

[Shadow Systems]

A question about Rocky...

If it has nightly builds & one turns out very badly, would that make it the Rocky Horrible Linux Showing? =-)p

*Runs away before someone drags me up on stage for another chorus line*

[rcxb]

Much has been lost

CentOS did some nice things beyond just repackaging RHEL. For example, the CentOS "plus" kernels included many drivers for hardware deprecated by RHEL. They also created alternate arch releases, such as CentOS-7 x86, which leveraged the i686 packages RHEL7 built for backwards compatibility on x86-64, but the CentOS community made it a full distro, having an installer that works, building kernels for 32-bit CPUs, etc.

I'm not sure I care about the latter, as CentOS-7 will be supported for many years, and it may be time to dump the old hardware once it hits EOL, but the former is tremendously useful.

IBM is really gambling with cutting off RHEL stable. EPEL packages (which make RHEL useful) really don't appear until after a RHEL release. It languished until the CentOS release came out, THEN there was community activity creating EPEL packages for everything. I'm sure IBM hopes forcing CentOS Stream on everyone will result in that community activity happening sooner, but it seems more likely EPEL package maintaners will ignore it as they did before, and wait for the stable spin-off of something free, before putting in the effort. If CloudLinux wants to really hurt IBM's OS, all they have to do is delay major releases, and any future attempt by RHEL/IBM to "help" improve things will be looked on with suspicion, if not summarily rejected.

[Ian Johnston]

Great. because what's really needed is more Linux distributions, and here are another three. This really does look as if it will be the year of Linux on the desktop.

[stiine]

I can't tell if that was sarcasm, or not.

[Phones Sheridan]

"figure out how we can keep Rocky Linux in the hands of the community."

Surely that's easy? Don't give a seat on the board to anyone from Red Hat.... IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon etc etc etc.

[A.P. Veening]

Nice in theory, but what about a board member accepting a lucrative job offer from Red Hat.... IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon etc etc etc?