And official AlmaLinux Docker images as well: https://hub.docker.com/r/almalinux/almalinux

Thanks Shruggy!! I will download and test it.
I actually converted my daily driver from Fedora (tired of the hundreds of updates and error messages/crashes) and now I am running Debian 10. It works well. No crashes so far. The only difference I have noticed performance wise is booting up Gnome-boxes virtual machines. It takes longer than what it took on Fedora. Once it is booted up, everything works fine.

I saw this on AlmaLinux site: "CloudLinux has committed to supporting AlmaLinux OS until 2029, including stable and thoroughly tested updates and security patches."

What happens after 2029? Migrate to another distro?

CloudLinux are not saying they stop support in 2029, they are making a minimum promise - scroll up to "The CloudLinux Promise" and you'll find this clarified by "Patches and maintenance through at least 2029" and "with support until at least 2029".

(2029 was the original EOL of CentOS 8.)

I see.. I guess sometime in the future before 2029, AlmaLinux will release version 9 which will be supported until 2039?

Have you tried AlmaLinux yet?

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I'm sticking to CentOS 7 for the time being, and waiting for at least Rocky (ETA is end of this month) before deciding what to use.
(I was hoping CERN/Fermilab would bring SL back, but last I checked it looked like they were content to use Stream instead.)

Luckily, not having any CentOS 8 machines means I have more time before I need to make any choices/changes.


It's still Red Hat that control the timings, by when they release RHEL v9 - AlmaLinux v9 will no doubt be less than two months after whenever that happens, and whether they keep with 10 years support for every release remains to be seen.

I don't think they'll manage to release an RC by March 31 as stated in their latest Community Update. With only three weeks left, their Koji looks bad. By now, it should be constantly churning out new packages. Compare this to CentOS or Fedora (Fedora 34 beta releases between March 16, 2021 and March 23, 2021. Fedora 34 final release expected on April 20, 2021).

This commit says "Q2 2021" which seems more credible to me.

It looks like, based on their December update, the release was always planned for Q2, with March being intended as a release candidate.

I guess I'd been going off their wiki FAQ, which claims "current ETA for initial release is March 31" - I don't count an RC as an initial release.

Also, why is there both a wiki FAQ and a website FAQ with completely different questions.

The whole project seems a very disorganized mess. :/

ugh Unfortunately, I migrated all my servers to CentOS 8 in 2019 :/

I am really thinking of just switching to Debian once we get closer to CentOS 8 EOL. Hopefully by then Debian 11 will be released.

Besides, I was looking around in their Wiki, and found this:
A quick look into https://rocky.lowend.ninja/RockyDevel confirms they're currently not rebuilding modules. How it's supposed to be a one-to-one RHEL 8 clone unless they properly set up MBS, I don't know.

For comparison. RHEL 8 was released on 2019-05-07. CentOS had all packages rebuilt by the end of June. It took them another three months until the release of CentOS 8 on 2019-09-24.

With fully four (4 SO FAR) candidates that are planned to be fully RHEL compatible to replace CentOS it is beginning to look like a non-problem. To be clear, it is only a non-problem because of the dedication and initiative of the community members and sponsors!


Gotta love the Linux community. We might nit-pick the small stuff, but in the big stuff we have each others backs.

I hope RH appreciates that this effort will do a great deal to keep RHEL as the production enterprise solution of choice for companies and corporations that value being able to test and develop on a community supported platform before deploying for production onto RHEL, who may not qualify for free licenses.

I only count three that guarantee compatibility, require no registration, have made announcements, and have migration scripts available/planned.

In alphabetical order: AlmaLinux, Oracle Linux, Rocky Linux.

The non-contenders are:
* Asianux have made no announcement, and have no v8 release.
* ClearOS have made no announcement on the subject, (and appear to have spam on their official website).
* EuroLinux have a blog post, but it is a paid distro only.
* Scientific Linux have no plans to release a v8.
* Springdale Linux (aka PooeyAss) have made no announcement, and do not guarantee compatibility.

Today, koji.rockylinux.org started to build packages in earnest.

In other news, the release of AlmaLinux is going to be on Tuesday, March 30th, 2021.

That's interesting. AlmaLinux is going to have errata metadata available in dnf: a feature known to users of RHEL and Fedora, but woefully lacking from CentOS. For background information, see this longish thread at f.c.o.

There will be a live Q&A session with the Rocky Linux team coming Friday/Saturday. A good opportunity to officially postpone the release I guess.

In the latest build pass (2021-03-24) they didn't have any failed packages in BaseOS at last, but still quite a few in AppStream and PowerTools. And their situation with streams/modules builds is still horrible as well.