The AlmaLinux project has announced the testing of the beta version of the AlmaLinux 10.0 distribution, which is synchronized with the new branch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 and includes all proposed changes. The distribution is, as much as possible, binary-compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and can be used as a replacement for RHEL 10 and CentOS 10 Stream. Installation images have been prepared for x86_64, x86_64_v2, ARM64 (aarch64), IBM PowerPC (ppc64le), and IBM Z (s390x) architectures.
You can familiarize yourself with the new features of AlmaLinux 10 in the overview of changes proposed in RHEL 10-beta. The functionality of AlmaLinux 10 mirrors that of RHEL 10, except for the rebranding and the following differences:
- Separate builds have been created for the second version of the x86-64 microarchitecture (x86-64-v2), which are provided alongside the basic x86-64 builds that are optimized for the x86-64-v3 microarchitecture used in RHEL 10. The additional support for x86-64-v2 ensures compatibility with CPUs older than Intel Haswell and AMD Excavator, designed before 2013.
- 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.
- 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 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.
- RPM packages for Firefox and Thunderbird have been included in the repository (in CentOS Stream 10 and RHEL 10, it is suggested to install Firefox and Thunderbird from flatpak format packages).
- Support for 144 hardware devices that are not supported in RHEL 10 has been resumed. For example, the identifiers of older PCI devices have 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.
Source: opennet.ru
