CloudLinux's source stated that a new one called AlmaLinux will be created in the continuation of the CentOS 8 distribution . The company changed the original coined name to get away from the somewhat punning Lenix: Lenix Linux didn't look very readable.
CloudLinux plans to invest $ 1 million per year in the project. The company will become its main sponsor, providing developers and the necessary resources.
The founder of CloudLinux is an entrepreneur and native of Ukraine Igor Seletsky. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. The company's clients include major corporations and their subsidiaries, including Dell and IBM Softlayer.
What is known about the new AlmaLinux distribution
- The basis is the Red Hat Enterprise package base .
- Full binary compatibility with RHEL.
- Easy and transparent migration from CentOS 8.
- Supported updates until 2029.
- Free model for users.
- Decision making functions are delegated to the community, similar to the Fedora platform .
It is assumed that the first release of the new distribution will be available in the first quarter of this year.
Why do I need a new distribution? The CentOS 8 branch has one bottleneck: the end of support from the end of this year. It was removed prematurely, with many CentOS 8 users, including companies, counting on support from developers until 2029. Users could be saved by migrating to CentOS Stream, but it is not clear yet about its compatibility with RHEL.
In general, not everything is so bad with the original CentOS - for example, Facebook and Twitter continue to believe in the distribution. Companies set up a working group for Hyperscale... The goal is to create solutions for large infrastructures based on CentOS Stream and EPEL. The group will also conduct global testing of functional changes in the distribution to simplify the integration processes with other systems. Thus, it is planned to simplify the implementation of the COW (Copy-On-Write) mode in DNF and RPM.
What other alternatives are there for CentOS?
First, there is Oracle Linux . Oracle has been developing its own RHEL clone for 14 years. Its advantages:
- 100% compatible with RHEL at the binary level;
- designed for hybrid cloud;
- automatic Linux update without rebooting;
- optimized to run Oracle software.
Rocky Linux is a second alternative .
The system is completely community driven. Currently, 370 people are registered as volunteers. The creation of Rocky Linux is also driven by the transformation of CentOS. The project's developments are planned to be published under the BSD license. The release is scheduled for the second quarter of 2021. They plan to use Koji , Mock and MBS from Fedora Linux for build processes .
