The AlmaLinux project has introduced an update for the Kitten 10 distribution, which is based on the CentOS Stream 10 package base, serving as the foundation for the upcoming release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10. Kitten 10 is presented as a test distribution that allows users to explore the features being developed for RHEL 10 while adding its own modifications to CentOS Stream. Installation builds of the distribution have been created for the x86_64, x86_64_v2, aarch64, ppc64le, and s390x architectures.
The Kitten repository uses a continuous model for package updates. Installation builds are updated every three months. The Kitten repositories serve as the upstream for the AlmaLinux 10 branch — fixes and new features are first tested in the Kitten repositories before being transitioned to AlmaLinux. The Kitten repositories also serve as a platform for integration and collaboration with upstream projects, such as CentOS Stream and Fedora. The new build marks the transition to the Linux 6.12 kernel and adds packages with Qt 6.8, enabling the use of KDE from the EPEL repository.
Key Differences of Kitten from CentOS Stream:
- 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.
- Separate builds have been created for the second version of the x86-64 microarchitecture (x86-64-v2), which are maintained alongside the base x86-64 builds 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 ability to boot in UEFI Secure Boot mode for systems with Intel/AMD and ARM processors has been implemented.
- The delivery of server and client implementations of the SPICE protocol, which allows for remote work with desktops operating in a virtual environment managed by QEMU/KVM, has been continued. Unlike VNC and RDP protocols, in SPICE, screen content rendering and audio stream processing is performed on the client side, rather than on the server. 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.
- Support for over 150 hardware devices not supported in RHEL 10 has been resumed.
- 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).
Source: opennet.ru
