The release of the AlmaLinux 10.1 distribution has been announced, which is synchronized with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.1 and includes all changes proposed in this release. Installation images are prepared for the x86_64_v3, x86_64_v2, ARM64, ppc64le, and s390x architectures in the form of bootable (927 MB), minimal (1.4 GB), and full images (8.3 GB). Live builds with GNOME, KDE, MATE, and Xfce, as well as images for Raspberry Pi, containers, WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), and cloud platforms will be created later.
The distribution is binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux whenever possible and can be used as a replacement for RHEL 10.1 and CentOS 10 Stream. In addition to rebranding and the removal of RHEL-specific packages, the following differences from RHEL 10.1 are noted in AlmaLinux 10.1:
- Support for the Btrfs file system has been reinstated. The ability to partition drives using Btrfs in the installer has been added, ensuring the installation of the btrfs.ko kernel module. The btrfs-progs utility set has been returned, and work has been done to adapt the Btrfs storage management stack and check the functionality of the bcc, buildah, cockpit, ignition, libblockdev, libguestfs, osbuild, osbuild-composer, podman, pykickstart, python-blivet, skopeo, udisks2, and virt-v2v packages in Btrfs environments. Red Hat announced that Btrfs was deprecated in the RHEL 7.4 release (2017) and completely discontinued support for it in the RHEL 8 branch.
- By default, the CRB (CodeReady Builder) package repository is activated, which provides a collection of packages that are not offered by default in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, such as developer applications, additional libraries and bindings, as well as packages with debugging data, documentation, header files, static builds, and code examples (packages "-devel", "-example", "-doc", and "-static"). Among other things, the CRB includes libraries that are used as dependencies in packages from the EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) repository.
- Driver packages for NVIDIA drivers and CUDA stack have been formed. The drivers can be used in configurations with UEFI Secure Boot. Kernel modules from the official set of proprietary drivers provided by NVIDIA cannot be loaded in UEFI Secure Boot mode, as they are not signed with the distribution's digital signature. This limitation has been circumvented by using open-source kernel modules provided by NVIDIA, which form the basis for the custom package nvidia-open-kmod, including modules signed with AlmaLinux's digital signature. A separate package, almalinux-release-nvidia-driver, has been created with the configuration of the external repository supported by NVIDIA, from which CUDA drivers and proprietary NVIDIA driver components running in user space are loaded.
- Separate builds for the second version of the x86-64 microarchitecture (x86-64-v2) have been formed, running parallel to the basic x86-64 builds, which are optimized for the x86-64-v3 microarchitecture used in RHEL 10. Additional support for x86-64-v2 ensures compatibility with CPUs older than Intel Haswell and AMD Excavator, designed before 2013. Besides the standard repositories, x86-64-v2 builds have also been prepared for packages from the EPEL repository.
- Server and client implementations of the SPICE protocol have been reinstated, allowing for remote access to desktops operating in a virtual environment under QEMU/KVM. Unlike VNC and RDP protocols, in SPICE, screen content rendering and audio stream processing are handled on the client side, not on server. In RHEL, SPICE support was discontinued in release 9.0.
- The use of the %rbp processor register has been reinstated as the base pointer for the stack frame, containing return addresses and function variables (frame pointer). Using the frame pointer allows for the use of additional capabilities for system tracing and profiling in the distribution.
- The ability to use a hypervisor KVM on systems with IBM POWER processors has been implemented. In RHEL, such support was dropped in branch 9.0.
- The Synergy repository is supported, which hosts packages that differ from Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Currently, the Synergy repository has already published packages with the Pantheon desktop environment developed by the Elementary OS project, and the Warpinator utility, designed for encrypted file sharing between two computers.
- The ability to boot in UEFI Secure Boot mode for systems with Intel/AMD and ARM processors has been implemented.
- Support for over 150 hardware devices, previously unsupported in RHEL 10.1, has been resumed. For example, identifiers of older PCI devices have been returned in the drivers:
- aacraid — Dell PERC2, 2/SI, 3/SI, 3/DI, Adaptec Advanced Raid Products, HP NetRAID-4M, IBM ServeRAID & ICP SCSI
- be2iscsi — Emulex OneConnectOpen-iSCSI for BladeEngine 2 and 3
- be2net — Emulex BladeEngine 2 and 3 adapters *
- hpsa — HP Smart Array Controller
- lpfc — Emulex LightPulse Fibre Channel SCSI
- megaraid_sas — Broadcom MegaRAID SAS
- mlx4_core — Mellanox Gen2 and ConnectX-2
- mpt3sas — LSI MPT Fusion SAS 3.0
- mptsas — Fusion MPT SAS Host
- qla2xxx — QLogic Fibre Channel HBA
- qla4xxx — QLogic iSCSI HBA.
The AlmaLinux distribution was founded by CloudLinux in response to Red Hat's premature discontinuation of CentOS 8 support (the release of updates for CentOS 8 was halted at the end of 2021, not in 2029 as users had expected). The project is overseen by a separate non-profit organization, the AlmaLinux OS Foundation, which was created to develop it in a neutral environment with community participation and using a management model similar to that of the Fedora project. The distribution is free for all categories of users. All AlmaLinux developments are published under open licenses.
In addition to AlmaLinux, alternatives to the classic CentOS are also positioned as Rocky Linux (developed by the community under the guidance of the CentOS founder), Oracle Linux, SUSE Liberty Linux, and EuroLinux. Furthermore, Red Hat has provided the opportunity for free use of RHEL in organizations developing open-source software and in environments for individual developers with up to 16 virtual or physical systems.
Source: opennet.ru
