The AlmaLinux Focus Guide from ADMIN
Enterprise Linux, for and by the people who use it.
Thanks for picking up the AlmaLinux Focus Guide from ADMIN IT Infrastructure & Operations, published by Linux New Media. This page collects the links from every article in the guide, so you can pick up wherever you left off.
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What's in the guide
The articles themselves are in the guide. Each card below has a summary of one article, followed by links to the AlmaLinux projects, pages, and posts that article mentions.
Page 4 · A community-owned enterprise Linux solutionIntroducing AlmaLinux
If you're new to AlmaLinux, start here. Amy Pettle tells the story of how AlmaLinux OS got going when CentOS Linux ended, and why CloudLinux handed it to the nonprofit AlmaLinux OS Foundation shortly after the first release. You'll also learn how our board gets elected under the 2026 bylaws, and where to download AlmaLinux OS 10, 9, or 8.
Page 6 · RHEL compatibilityFriendly Fork
In June 2023, Red Hat restricted access to RHEL source code, and we had to decide what AlmaLinux would be next. We picked application binary interface (ABI) compatibility over 1:1, and this article explains what that means and where our code comes from now. It also covers what we've been able to do since, like shipping some security fixes before RHEL does. Our 2023 interview with benny Vasquez about the decision is in there too.
Page 8 · The AlmaLinux M&E SIGThat's Entertainment
For almost 20 years, Media & Entertainment (M&E) studios ran their pipelines on CentOS. When CentOS 7 reached end of life, they needed somewhere to go, and some of them came to us. People from NOX and SHED talk about why, including the glibc bug that caused problems for Houdini, which we fixed before RHEL did. The M&E SIG that grew out of it is now building an M&E ISO and a Creative Installer for smaller studios.
Page 10 · New in AlmaLinux OS 10.2Alternate Route
AlmaLinux OS 10.2 came out in May 2026 with a few things RHEL 10 doesn't have. There's an x86-64-v2 build (with EPEL packages) so older hardware keeps running, 32-bit i686 packages maintained by engineers from Arista and Meta, NVIDIA drivers that work with Secure Boot, and Btrfs. Many of these started as community proposals to the AlmaLinux Engineering Steering Committee (ALESCo), and a lot of them got their start in AlmaLinux OS Kitten.
Page 12 · The AlmaLinux Build SystemPackage Packer
Why build your own build system when Koji exists? Joe Casad asked our developers, and then he shows how the pieces fit together, from the Master Service and Pulp to the AlmaLinux Test System (ALTS). Every package gets signed and gets its own Software Bill of Materials (SBOM). The whole thing is free software, so you can point it at your own packages too.
Page 16 · The ELevate migration toolELevate to the Future
Still have a CentOS 7 server around? Rubén Llorente upgraded one to AlmaLinux 8 with ELevate and wrote down every step, including the pre-upgrade check that will probably fail the first time (that's expected) and how to get past it. Once you're on 8, ELevate can take you to 9 and then 10.
Freedom Fighter
benny Vasquez (Chair of the AlmaLinux OS Foundation) and Andrew Lukoshko (AlmaLinux OS Lead Architect) talked with Amy Pettle about where AlmaLinux came from and where it's going. They get into why a nonprofit owns AlmaLinux, how we decide when to differ from RHEL, and how we test with openQA and Testinfra. Andrew also tells the story of a storage controller fix we carried in our kernel until RHEL included it.
The community behind AlmaLinux
Run it
AlmaLinux OS is free to download and use. If you already run an Enterprise Linux system, ELevate can upgrade it in place.
Get AlmaLinux
Shape it
If you use AlmaLinux, you can join the AlmaLinux OS Foundation for free and vote for the board that guides the project. You can also come say hi in our chat and on our forums, or join a SIG.
Become a MemberA note from our chair
Thank you for picking up this guide. The projects in it, including AlmaLinux OS Kitten, ELevate, and our special interest groups (SIGs), exist because people who use AlmaLinux told us what they needed and then helped build it. I hope you find something here that's useful to you. When you do, I'd love for you to come tell us about it and help decide what we build next.
This guide exists because of the team at Linux New Media, especially Brian Osborn, Lori White, and the authors and editors who wrote and updated every article. Thank you for telling our community's story so carefully. AlmaLinux is made possible by our sponsor members, and by everyone who uses AlmaLinux and helps build it.
Have a question about anything in the guide? Email us at hello@almalinux.org, and we'll get back to you.
