AlmaLinux OS 10.0 released

[Posted May 27, 2025 by corbet]

Version 10 of the AlmaLinux OS distribution has been released.

The goal of AlmaLinux OS is to support our community, and AlmaLinux OS 10 is the best example of that yet. With an unwavering eye on maintaining compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), we have made small improvements to AlmaLinux OS 10 that target specific sections of our userbase.

See the release notes for details.

x86_64_v2

Posted May 28, 2025 18:42 UTC (Wed) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876) [Link] (7 responses)

Perhaps it is a small thing for now but this release shows the value in Alma building its own distribution from CentOS Stream instead of just recompiling the RHEL SRPMS like Rocky Linux does.

Alma is maintaining support for x86_64_v2. Rocky cannot really do the same. Rocky needs to be a "bug for bug" match for RHEL and so Rocky 10 requires x86-64-v3 just like real RHEL does.

Alma is also enabling frame pointers and SPICE by default as well as continuing to support device hardware that RHEL has dropped. I hope that Alma starts to gain recognition for the value in their approach vs Rocky. I know a lot of people still assume they are the same thing.

Alma will always be close to RHEL of course as ABI compatibility and even bug compatibility with RHEL is still a primary goal. However, they are now free to innovate and contribute. They are a true community distro.

Very cool.

x86_64_v2

Posted May 29, 2025 17:17 UTC (Thu) by jonathanspw (subscriber, #154835) [Link] (6 responses)

Howdy, Alma team member here.

To be clear, our default x86_64 build targets v3. Our v2 support is an additional architecture all on its own.

Best of both worlds. v3 people get v3 benefits, while v2 people aren't left out in the cold :)

x86_64_v2

Posted May 29, 2025 17:36 UTC (Thu) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876) [Link]

It had not occurred to me that I was leaving the impression that x86_64_v3 hardware could be less optimized or less RHEL compatible. Thank you for the clarification.

As a total outsider, I want to say how impressed I am with the Alma Project and how you have taken Red Hat policy as an opportunity to make the project even better. Really excellent work and a true role model for how to find strength in community. I wish you great success.

x86_64_v2

Posted May 29, 2025 18:53 UTC (Thu) by job (guest, #670) [Link] (4 responses)

I haven't kept up to date on the Red Hat front. It is guaranteed that CentOS is upstream of RHEL for the full lifecycle? Can I expect complete binary compatibilty, will I be able to take a kernel module from a vendor compiled against RHEL and use it on Alma and just expect it to work?

x86_64_v2

Posted May 29, 2025 18:57 UTC (Thu) by jonathanspw (subscriber, #154835) [Link]

Yes on all fronts.

x86_64_v2

Posted Jun 1, 2025 16:20 UTC (Sun) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876) [Link]

CentOS Stream (what CentOS is now) is constantly evolvolving. The "next" version of RHEL will be based off of it. However, CentOS Stream will evolve past any version of RHEL that has already been released. This is if you are using CentOS Stream directly.

Alma Linux creates their releases from CentOS Stream and uses a major version number to reflect ABI compatiblity with the RHEL release with the same version. Alma will then keep that release ABI compatible with the corresponding RHEL release. Alma packages will refelect the same verison numbers as RHEL packages. Any incompatibility with RHEL is considered a bug by Alma.

You can expect complete binary compatiblity between Alma and RHEL.

x86_64_v2

Posted Jun 8, 2025 9:28 UTC (Sun) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link] (1 responses)

One nit regarding kernel module compatibility. Since RHEL 9, the kernel ABI has only been kept stable throughout a minor release lifecycle. So if you built a kernel module against CentOS Stream 10 today, it will work in RHEL 10.1, but at some point the CentOS Stream 10 kernel will break ABI compatibility with what's in RHEL (10.0) and builds against it will produce modules that will only work with the kernel that will eventually be part of RHEL 10.1.

I guess at some point Red Hat decided that maintaining a stable kABI across the entire 10 year lifecycle of a major release was not worth the effort.

x86_64_v2

Posted Jun 12, 2025 23:53 UTC (Thu) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876) [Link]

Sure. But Alma will ensure ABI compatibility with the minor versions as well.