I think I will stay with Debian for the next 10 years. I did lot of distro hopping before and am tired of being distracted by new and shiny distros, just want to get my work done :)
Here's the comment I was looking for... Debian based distros for me as well. I've always been a little annoyed when I've had to use/support RH based stuff. Seems like when people in fancy suits make the call, it's always RH stuff because "enterprise"...
I tried Debian, but it was such a moving target, that after having my laptop down for a while because the battery went bad, I ran updates and the OS pretty much ate itself. That's not usable for me, even though I was able to easily recover all my data. I run mostly Linux Mint anymore, after Ubuntu went with Gnome. Servers are all Ubuntu
I think Alma derives from the Latin _Alma Mater_ (the nurturing mother). In German this is a common idiom in academic circles to refer to the university where you studied and graduated.
Its meant to be a server distro but you can run it as a desktop. Its supported for a decade so its basically a LTS Fedora but it won’t have the bleeding edge aspect associated with Fedora.
I had a long OS hopping. The best experience for me was Alma Linux. Due to the lack of support for Fusion 360 I stick to Windows until my next pc purchase. That will be tuxedo
Just to be clear, while CERN and Fermilab have made that announcement about AlmaLinux as the plan going forward, what is actually running at CERN and Fermilab is mainly still CentOS 7, and some AlmaLinux 9 installs are starting in the new year.
The shop I work at used CentOS for everything except production. We used RHEL production. We switched to Ubuntu for everything after RedHat killed CentOS and haven't looked back.
A fun thing is that, in the visual effects industry, Linux is actually the standard too! Most studios used CentOS, but Rocky Linux seems to be the more popular replacement there. Though the popularity of real time stuff with unreal engine and the like has made some switch to windows…
The Visual Effects Society Technology Committee has made strides to convince developers to support linux better, and have actively pushed at least epic games to support Linux better. Other observers of this committee include Canonical, CIQ, CloudLinux, Red Hat, Autodesk, SideFX and Foundry (Adobe is notably absent… of course)
Yes, I read their 2021 report. Quite an eye-opener. Seems Adobe’s refusal to offer its products for Linux is more of a nuisance than an actual show-stopper.
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 the thing is, adobe’s stuff isn’t industry standard for film. The only adobe thing that is truly industry standard is probably photoshop, but vfx houses don’t necessarily work with photoshop a lot. (Adobe does now own the substance suite of apps which are industry standard but they are available on linux)
@@binchamers Photoshop has trouble with image formats like EXR with more than 16 bits per pixel component. Something like GIMP, with its integrated GEGL pixel engine, works better with that.
I don't know much about the visual effects industries (I'm a database admin i use Linux every day). Why is Linux industry standard there too? Is it because of like render servers and Nas for footage have better support with Linux than a windows ecosystem?
Will stick to my Mint Mate, but it's good to see that the Linux community is keeping the good work going. Have fun, CERN, and thanks again for the HTML.
I find it very odd to show some gnome desktop features as "this is AlmaLinux". The history is interesting, but the end is just odd. For a distro like this, I'd be interested in how they ensure stability (is it just transferred from RHEL?), How up-to-date packages usually are, how long it takes security patches to arrive. Basically what should set this distro apart as a stable distro.
I believe the Centos clone they used was called Scientific Linux wasn't it? I used that for a while until IBM blew up Centos. I think AlmaLinux will be given a tryout.
gary, maybe you can look into why videos in this tube have so poor volume levels. some have to be reduced so much while others have to maxed but with not much help.
Thanks for this. I've been wondering what the CentOS image is, on the shelf beside my current desk. Clears things up. Won't be trying Alma mainly because I've got only a little clue about home server.
When RH screwed up CentOS, we had a choice, I tried Oracle, but found it to be a bit too wonky. Then Rocky and Alma came along. Remembering that Kurtzer abandoned CentOS, I figure it's only a matter of time before he abandons Rocky, so I chose to go with Alma.
Why don't you? We do! We've switched our server OS of choice from CentOS 7.x to Alma 9 at the University I work for. I've built a fair few recently. :-)
My organization is in the middle of a migration from CentOS 7 to Ubuntu because of the CentOS Stream changes. I kinda wish we had known about this earlier but I don't think management would've gone for something so new.
Same where I work. For new VMs they other go with good RHEL if the client pays for the license or Ubuntu. I asked one of the senior sysadmins (I'm a junior) responsible for these decisions why they decided to go for Ubuntu instead or rocky and alma and they told me it's still to early to tell if the people behind those distros will maintain them as expected. Possibly in the future once they've proven themselves to be reliable they might switch back.
Yes, we had converted to centos a while ago, though we still run a couple of fedora 13 servers. When they announced the change to stream, we tried it and was not really happy, if I remember right we had issues with something as simple as ethernet, so we set up some test servers using rocky and it worked very well. That being said, based on this news, we will setup some servers to use alma and check it out.
I find the premise of this video slightly misleading - I'm a professional Linux systems administrator / systems engineer who is dealing with replacing CentOS in my company's environment (among many other things - the work of a sysadmin never ends) and the thing I take a bit of issue with is the "good enough for them, good enough for me" reasoning. From a professional perspective, the thing that is going to determine what OS you're going to use to replace one that currently deployed in a production environment is how painlessly that OS is going to be to actually deploy in a stable fashion. For example, lets say I have a CentOS 7 machine running a pretty normal LEMP stack - then the Alma vs. Rocky question doesn't matter that much because either will fill that role pretty easily. If I'm tied to a particular version of a library to run some old code though, then it's going to depend on which has an available backported version in their repos. The one to go with is whatever suits your usecase best. it's also worth noting that as IT increasingly pivots towards containerization, the question of which distro to use becomes increasingly irrelevant. Speaking from a personal perspective though, (i.e. personal desktop use) you should go with whatever you feel most comfortable with that supports your hardware and usage. I personally run KDE Neon on my Thinkpad because I prefer KDE as my window manager / desktop environment and with it being rooted in Ubuntu, my hardware is easy to deal with (like docking stations and the fingerprint reader built into the lappy)
I'm a semi-retired software developer. Back when I used to spin up servers for various companies, I'd run CentOS on servers and Debian on my personal laptop. A long time ago, I also used to run Debian on servers, but I remember hitting an issue a long time ago when I compiled MySQL sources on a Debian server, and there was a bug in some version that only emerged when it was used with the existing library versions on Debian stable at the time. It took me a while to figure out why it was happening in a server environment, but I eventually found that I could consistently reproduce the bug when compiled on Debian stable but NOT on CentOS or RHEL. At that point, I started to use CentOS on servers (I had used RHEL on servers at some deep-pocketed companies in the past that paid for support), I learned enough RPM to be able to build my own RPMs for certain specific software deployments, and I found CentOS to be reliable and predictable for server installations. I continued to run Debian on my laptop because I use various niche desktop/workstation productivity apps that are available in Debian's repos but not other distros' repos. When I need to compile specific versions of software from source, it's easy enough for me to do on either Debian or RH-flavored distros. I think I've been running Debian on my personal computer for almost 20 years now! Once every couple years, I have to help a friend or family member with something on their personal MacOS or Windows machine, and they feel totally foreign to me these days. Next time I need to run a critical server setup, I'll probably take a look at AlmaLinux to see if it has enough of the packages that I need to install all the major dependencies for anything that I might want to compile. I've found that compiling server software-- web servers, database servers, etc -- is generally easy-enough on RH-flavored distros as long as they don't have dependencies on loads of libraries that aren't available in the RH repos. Installing a few libraries from source is fine, but when you have to install > 6 libraries from source to install some piece of server software, it becomes tedious. So hopefully AlmaLinux has enough libraries to allow you to compile, for example, a recent stable version of nginx or postgres without too much fuss.
So, what's the benefit of Alma versus Fedora? The latest Fedora Workstation was a little heavy on resource usage, running services, what is pre-installed like Cubes. My media driver "gloss distro" is LinuxMint Cinnamon, but I use Manjaro for programming, both with btrfs. I'm curious now, because dnf seems pretty rock solid. I just didn't like Fedora overhead.
I'll be sticking with Debian based distros. I hardly ever have to delve into Linux, so I know just enough to be dangerous and get what I need done. I haven't used CentOS in over a decade, and honestly can't be bothered to relearn all the basic commands and syntaxes that differ in RHEL compared to Debian. I abandoned RHEL based distros back when they still couldn't decide on a common front-end command for the package manager....
Let them contribute to Linux, they have been Linux users for a long time but we haven't seen any solid contributions up to this point. I am sure they have some cutting edge internal software in their hands.
The fact that the video starts with an eloquently explained history of RHEL and CentOS for the context of the existence of Alma Linux, only for it to end with, "Oh look, GNOME", kinda feels like a troll.
@@GaryExplains I was hoping for more of a "Fedora vs Alma" thing, like how are they different, and what unique kernel features do they each ship with? Is one more compatible with Intel graphics, or something. Up until the end, I really liked it, I just wanted more, "Why should you use this?" at the conclusion. I find the CentOS situation really interesting, and I'm glad CentOS users are getting what they need, so it's good to see people making videos and talking about it.
@@GaryExplains @Gary Explains It's easier to decide between things like Arch and Debian based distros than between multiple distros based on the same thing. All of my RHEL experience comes exclusively from Fedora, so I know little about the bigger culture, as opposed to Debian and Arch, which are kind of the Disney and Warner Bros. of Linux, and subsequently hog the spotlight. If you were to make a video about comparing RHEL based distros, then I'm all on board for it. I'm gonna subscribe to your channel to see what you come out with next.
I used RH all the way until it was no longer free...something like RH9 or so...then started using Debian...fell in love with it...plus I saw a huge benefit to not having a Corporate entity driving the project...so I still use Debian or Mint in my personal life! CentOS was just a bit of hobby stuff...but ultimately came back to Debian! I think I will give Alma a try since I have a Proxmox instance...might be fun! :-)
When I went from CentOS to Rocky it was okay but Zoom was buggy for a while (on Mate desktop), it is okay now. I also work at a National Accelerator Laboratory (not Fermi (Fermi has a better cafeteria)), we were using Scientific Linux, but in my group, we are using RedHat.
Alma Linux is rock solid with stable packages. This make it great for web hosting. I run docker and game servers on my server and for that I some application require newer packages. My go to Server distribution is ubuntu. For desktop Arch Based distros are the best. Manjaro for example gives all the benefits of Arch and has packages more stable than arch.
I used centos for everything until stream happened. I switched to Ubuntu and it's getting me by but I miss the boot speed and simplicity of red hat based Linux. Apt looks messy compared to dnf too
Why don't I? Because the VST plugins i like dont natively run enough on linux, and i refuse to switch to linux just to run windows software under wine.
I don't know which Linux distro is most stable, but seeing that AlmaLinux seems to have such a tumultuous recent history I would prefer something that doesn't just 'clone' from others and try to cater to the masses. I wonder why Debian wasn't selected.
@Write_me413 Not much to talk about from my side. I've been with Debian for almost a quarter of a century and over the years I've been able to run it on all sorts of hardware as well as VMs. I successfully ran it on Sparc, Intel and ARM, from tiny ARM powered NAS boxes to multi-cpu XEON machines. I started with RedHat6.2 and a bit of Suse but once I discovered apt on Debian I never looked back. To see them being used as the source for many other distributions is an endorsement we shouldn't overlook.
Thank you! I just installes almalinux9 for my wsl, so easy! I tried sudo yum install firefox and, although I could start firefox, there were error messages, which does not seem goo for a "rock stable distro" Are wsl versions of Microsoft modified to become compatible with wsl, which could affect their solidity? I was using ubuntu (and sometimes opensuse) , why should I prefer alma?
That's pretty easy to answer: Because, I am not a nuclear scientist. Generally speaking all Linux distributions work exactly the same. They have the same base to run for everything under Linux. What can run in Alma Linux can work elsewhere. Unless Alma Linux was designed and supported for other use cases and have UVP to other non scientific use cases, there's no point of comparing or choosing it over other distributions.
@@GaryExplains Yes. I think the difference is what applications bundled on various distros, like the desktop environment, proprietary codecs and support etc. Whereas the Linux kernel are all the same Linux kernel. This is what I mean. Cheers...
@@akogepayo Well, no they aren't all the same Linux kernel. First there are different versions of the kernel, some bleeding edge, some stable, some long term support. Second, many distro uses customized kernels with backported features or special fixes, which aren't part of the mainline kernel.
@@GaryExplains it's not really integrated. For instance Almalinux comes with cockpit and if you use docker instead of podman you cannot really manage your containers from here so basically you need to rely on other tools like portainer or yacht. Something that does not happen with proxmox for instance
going off the thumbnail and name of this video alone that has triggered a response in me. why i don't use it? because i am a gamer who just wants to game, watch my videos on VLC and surf the web, i don't want to type in some command line to install my games or programs, nor do i want to debug the code as to why some game is not working or playing, and those are just the reasons thats on the surface of my brains memory, i can dig deeper for more reasons on why i have disagreements with linux, but being currently mentally drained and not willing to dig for anymore at this time, i will end my comment and say, good day and happy new year.
The difference is of course is that Scientific Linux was basically built by the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. That took time, money, and effort. So they switched to CentOS and now with the demise of CentOS to AlmaLinux. So Scientific Linux and AlmaLinux aren't connected and the reason Scientific Linux was dropped has nothing to do with AlmaLinux.
@@DIEmicrosoft Still using Slackware (SLW).. FYI, SLW is the only distribution still carries up-to-date 32-bit packages. If still have old PC/laptop Slackware is pretty much only option for Linux. Cheers,.
Might as well just use CentOS stream, or just use RHEL directly. For the later, the licensing is relaxed for smaller orgs or larger academic institutions, and for the former it's probably better than RHEL as it's THE upstream. So it's kinda pointless.
@@GaryExplains Probably. And I'll reiterate what I'm saying, using a downstream EL distro is pointless. That is because RHEL is itself a downstream distro, and it's free for the big scientific institutes. Using Cent Stream or RHEL is better in every conceivable way.
Because any flavor of Linux continues to suffer from lack of hardware support /drivers as it has since it's inception and hence why the masses still haven't migrated over to it.
Ah, I understand. Yes, specialist hardware needs support from the manufacturer. Just like if you used a Mac you need to check if the manufacturer provides a driver. Windows seems to be the default OS for such devices.
@@GaryExplains : Exactly, either Windows or Mac. Linux needs to convince these various manufacturers that it's worthwhile for them to invest their time to supply their drivers to the Linux community. This situation has existed for a long time and I'm not seeing any indications it will be rectified anytime soon. :(
It isn't quite a "free" operating system owned by the people for the people. But ignoring that, the service industry around a distribution like RHEL is huge.
I haven't tried, but I understand it is quite simple on an Intel Mac. Just flash a USB stick and press whatever magic key combination is required to get the Mac to boot from the USB. Since those Macs can run Windows, then Linux shouldn't be a problem.
Makes sense....its literally a clone of CentOS that has nothing to do with the foolishness that CentOS is going on with now (CentOS STREAM>....seriously!?)...
Ive been using Ubuntu since 2008, with a splash of arch for certian projects at times. I have had a few CentOS VPS instances over the years and have always found guides and tutorial seem to prefer giving instructions for Debain based systems, this makes anything with apt a solid win over anything yum. I can understand thats going to be less of an issue at CERN and Fermilab considering they run lots of custom in-house software, but to just get something to work on at home, ubuntu cant be beat.
What's great about alma linux is was created by a "Cloud Linux" they were already doing the rebuilding of packages of RHEL for the paid operation system. So they know what they are doing. It's great that they are now doing the same for free for the community.
The paid version is for those who want handholding. Redhat offers its distro to developers for free but will be happy to sell you their paid support if you really need it.
Gary: Being retired I can well afford to stay with MINT as it has been very good to us. Whatever makes you happy is all good, so long as it is GNU Linux, grin.
We had been using Centos for all our web servers and supporting services (db/caching etc) since 2008, but have started switching away since they made that change. Now mainly using Debian now these days
I think I will stay with Debian for the next 10 years. I did lot of distro hopping before and am tired of being distracted by new and shiny distros, just want to get my work done :)
Same, but I'll try this one
Here's the comment I was looking for... Debian based distros for me as well. I've always been a little annoyed when I've had to use/support RH based stuff. Seems like when people in fancy suits make the call, it's always RH stuff because "enterprise"...
@@ryanchowdhary965 now we almost have to...
I tried Debian, but it was such a moving target, that after having my laptop down for a while because the battery went bad, I ran updates and the OS pretty much ate itself. That's not usable for me, even though I was able to easily recover all my data. I run mostly Linux Mint anymore, after Ubuntu went with Gnome. Servers are all Ubuntu
I have using Debian since 2005.
Just a fun fact: in our language (Hungarian) ALMA means APPLE (the fruit)
Same in Turkish; Apple Linux :)
I think Alma derives from the Latin _Alma Mater_ (the nurturing mother).
In German this is a common idiom in academic circles to refer to the university where you studied and graduated.
..and in Portuguese and Spanish, "alma" means "soul".
In Latvian it’s a name given to girls.
@@usptact in Spanish speaking countries too...
Pretty sure Alma Linux is a rock solid stable distro, but as desktop user, I prefer using fedora for the leading edge software.
hehe funny choice of words since the most popular alternative for Almalinux is Rocky Linux
Same. I'm using Fedora as my daily driver and Alma linux for my server setup
I find fedora stable enough. I particularly like the part where it doesn't get in my way in the name of stability
Its meant to be a server distro but you can run it as a desktop. Its supported for a decade so its basically a LTS Fedora but it won’t have the bleeding edge aspect associated with Fedora.
I had a long OS hopping.
The best experience for me was Alma Linux.
Due to the lack of support for Fusion 360 I stick to Windows until my next pc purchase.
That will be tuxedo
Just to be clear, while CERN and Fermilab have made that announcement about AlmaLinux as the plan going forward, what is actually running at CERN and Fermilab is mainly still CentOS 7, and some AlmaLinux 9 installs are starting in the new year.
And they will probably use Alma's ELevate-leapp tool to migrate those systems from CentOS-7 to AlmaLinux-8
The shop I work at used CentOS for everything except production. We used RHEL production. We switched to Ubuntu for everything after RedHat killed CentOS and haven't looked back.
One of my cousins is a nuclear physicist, studying neutrinos. Last I heard he was using Red Hat.
I run openSUSE, but used Red Hat several years ago.
I've been a CentOS user historically but have been out of the game for a couple years so I didn't know about any of this. Thanks for the info.
A fun thing is that, in the visual effects industry, Linux is actually the standard too! Most studios used CentOS, but Rocky Linux seems to be the more popular replacement there. Though the popularity of real time stuff with unreal engine and the like has made some switch to windows…
The Visual Effects Society Technology Committee has made strides to convince developers to support linux better, and have actively pushed at least epic games to support Linux better. Other observers of this committee include Canonical, CIQ, CloudLinux, Red Hat, Autodesk, SideFX and Foundry (Adobe is notably absent… of course)
Yes, I read their 2021 report. Quite an eye-opener. Seems Adobe’s refusal to offer its products for Linux is more of a nuisance than an actual show-stopper.
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 the thing is, adobe’s stuff isn’t industry standard for film. The only adobe thing that is truly industry standard is probably photoshop, but vfx houses don’t necessarily work with photoshop a lot. (Adobe does now own the substance suite of apps which are industry standard but they are available on linux)
@@binchamers Photoshop has trouble with image formats like EXR with more than 16 bits per pixel component. Something like GIMP, with its integrated GEGL pixel engine, works better with that.
I don't know much about the visual effects industries (I'm a database admin i use Linux every day). Why is Linux industry standard there too? Is it because of like render servers and Nas for footage have better support with Linux than a windows ecosystem?
I am using Alma on home servers, and it's awesome.
Will stick to my Mint Mate, but it's good to see that the Linux community is keeping the good work going. Have fun, CERN, and thanks again for the HTML.
I find it very odd to show some gnome desktop features as "this is AlmaLinux".
The history is interesting, but the end is just odd.
For a distro like this, I'd be interested in how they ensure stability (is it just transferred from RHEL?), How up-to-date packages usually are, how long it takes security patches to arrive. Basically what should set this distro apart as a stable distro.
Yes, that is the main thing, the stability is the same as RHEL, plus the updates are the same as RHEL. In other words a working and viable RHEL clone.
For servers I went with FreeBSD. Just many more options and the ZFS format option.
Does it run on RISC-V yet?
I believe the Centos clone they used was called Scientific Linux wasn't it? I used that for a while until IBM blew up Centos. I think AlmaLinux will be given a tryout.
I have been really pleased with openSUSE for the last few years but may give this a try on a spare laptop.
gary, maybe you can look into why videos in this tube have so poor volume levels. some have to be reduced so much while others have to maxed but with not much help.
One of my own personal rules, never use anything with "Alma" in it's name, that is why... plus, I use bsd....
GARY!!!
GOOD MORNING PROFESSOR!
GOOD MORNING FELLOW CLASSMATES!
STAY SAFE OUT THERE EVERYONE!
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!
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But what was the criteria that both institucions use to select AlmaLunux over the others Centos forks?
you didn't really show what AlmaLinux was capable of. You only showed the Gnome DE... :(
I have switched a lot of my CentOS boxes over to RockyLinux. The switch has been mostly painless.
Have you reviewed any OpenMV boards or the m5 Stacks? My M5StickC PLUS has replaced everything for making prototypes.
To answer your question - because it's one of the few distros that doesn't have btrfs support.
Thanks for this. I've been wondering what the CentOS image is, on the shelf beside my current desk. Clears things up. Won't be trying Alma mainly because I've got only a little clue about home server.
When RH screwed up CentOS, we had a choice, I tried Oracle, but found it to be a bit too wonky. Then Rocky and Alma came along. Remembering that Kurtzer abandoned CentOS, I figure it's only a matter of time before he abandons Rocky, so I chose to go with Alma.
Also almalinux has actual company behind it
Thanks for the update! Another good 'un, Prof!
Why don't you? We do! We've switched our server OS of choice from CentOS 7.x to Alma 9 at the University I work for. I've built a fair few recently. :-)
We’re in the process of going to Alma. Was shocked by what happened to CentOS. I run Arch at home but at work I calm down and run Alma.
My organization is in the middle of a migration from CentOS 7 to Ubuntu because of the CentOS Stream changes. I kinda wish we had known about this earlier but I don't think management would've gone for something so new.
I would agree. Plus I expect new bugs.
Same where I work. For new VMs they other go with good RHEL if the client pays for the license or Ubuntu. I asked one of the senior sysadmins (I'm a junior) responsible for these decisions why they decided to go for Ubuntu instead or rocky and alma and they told me it's still to early to tell if the people behind those distros will maintain them as expected. Possibly in the future once they've proven themselves to be reliable they might switch back.
Yes, we had converted to centos a while ago, though we still run a couple of fedora 13 servers. When they announced the change to stream, we tried it and was not really happy, if I remember right we had issues with something as simple as ethernet, so we set up some test servers using rocky and it worked very well. That being said, based on this news, we will setup some servers to use alma and check it out.
Rocky linux appears to be a lot more popular. If they are both bug compatible with RHEL what's left to distinguish them?
I find the premise of this video slightly misleading - I'm a professional Linux systems administrator / systems engineer who is dealing with replacing CentOS in my company's environment (among many other things - the work of a sysadmin never ends) and the thing I take a bit of issue with is the "good enough for them, good enough for me" reasoning. From a professional perspective, the thing that is going to determine what OS you're going to use to replace one that currently deployed in a production environment is how painlessly that OS is going to be to actually deploy in a stable fashion. For example, lets say I have a CentOS 7 machine running a pretty normal LEMP stack - then the Alma vs. Rocky question doesn't matter that much because either will fill that role pretty easily. If I'm tied to a particular version of a library to run some old code though, then it's going to depend on which has an available backported version in their repos. The one to go with is whatever suits your usecase best.
it's also worth noting that as IT increasingly pivots towards containerization, the question of which distro to use becomes increasingly irrelevant.
Speaking from a personal perspective though, (i.e. personal desktop use) you should go with whatever you feel most comfortable with that supports your hardware and usage. I personally run KDE Neon on my Thinkpad because I prefer KDE as my window manager / desktop environment and with it being rooted in Ubuntu, my hardware is easy to deal with (like docking stations and the fingerprint reader built into the lappy)
🤦♂️
I’m curious what made them choose Alma over Rocky. I’m still deciding between the two
I'm a semi-retired software developer. Back when I used to spin up servers for various companies, I'd run CentOS on servers and Debian on my personal laptop. A long time ago, I also used to run Debian on servers, but I remember hitting an issue a long time ago when I compiled MySQL sources on a Debian server, and there was a bug in some version that only emerged when it was used with the existing library versions on Debian stable at the time. It took me a while to figure out why it was happening in a server environment, but I eventually found that I could consistently reproduce the bug when compiled on Debian stable but NOT on CentOS or RHEL. At that point, I started to use CentOS on servers (I had used RHEL on servers at some deep-pocketed companies in the past that paid for support), I learned enough RPM to be able to build my own RPMs for certain specific software deployments, and I found CentOS to be reliable and predictable for server installations.
I continued to run Debian on my laptop because I use various niche desktop/workstation productivity apps that are available in Debian's repos but not other distros' repos. When I need to compile specific versions of software from source, it's easy enough for me to do on either Debian or RH-flavored distros. I think I've been running Debian on my personal computer for almost 20 years now! Once every couple years, I have to help a friend or family member with something on their personal MacOS or Windows machine, and they feel totally foreign to me these days.
Next time I need to run a critical server setup, I'll probably take a look at AlmaLinux to see if it has enough of the packages that I need to install all the major dependencies for anything that I might want to compile. I've found that compiling server software-- web servers, database servers, etc -- is generally easy-enough on RH-flavored distros as long as they don't have dependencies on loads of libraries that aren't available in the RH repos. Installing a few libraries from source is fine, but when you have to install > 6 libraries from source to install some piece of server software, it becomes tedious. So hopefully AlmaLinux has enough libraries to allow you to compile, for example, a recent stable version of nginx or postgres without too much fuss.
Will they still use alma after rhel changes?
Probably because most people do not have 8 hours everyday to spend trying to get Linux to behave.
Scientists do?
@@AClarke2007
I did not know everyone were a scientist.
So, what's the benefit of Alma versus Fedora? The latest Fedora Workstation was a little heavy on resource usage, running services, what is pre-installed like Cubes. My media driver "gloss distro" is LinuxMint Cinnamon, but I use Manjaro for programming, both with btrfs. I'm curious now, because dnf seems pretty rock solid. I just didn't like Fedora overhead.
Cern has theit own OS I think it is called CernOS or somehting like that with all the CERN tools like ROOT preinstalled. (Worked there last year)
Because in a lot of ways, they're going to be focused on science packages, and less so on other things other users are interested in.
I thought that AlmaLinux only worked on Super Computers such as the Cray, well thanks for information.
I'll be sticking with Debian based distros. I hardly ever have to delve into Linux, so I know just enough to be dangerous and get what I need done. I haven't used CentOS in over a decade, and honestly can't be bothered to relearn all the basic commands and syntaxes that differ in RHEL compared to Debian. I abandoned RHEL based distros back when they still couldn't decide on a common front-end command for the package manager....
Let them contribute to Linux, they have been Linux users for a long time but we haven't seen any solid contributions up to this point. I am sure they have some cutting edge internal software in their hands.
You are missing your mastadon profile in the description
What is Alma linux?
The fact that the video starts with an eloquently explained history of RHEL and CentOS for the context of the existence of Alma Linux, only for it to end with, "Oh look, GNOME", kinda feels like a troll.
Sorry you feel like that. My goal was to add something visual after all the data and history.
@@GaryExplains I was hoping for more of a "Fedora vs Alma" thing, like how are they different, and what unique kernel features do they each ship with? Is one more compatible with Intel graphics, or something. Up until the end, I really liked it, I just wanted more, "Why should you use this?" at the conclusion. I find the CentOS situation really interesting, and I'm glad CentOS users are getting what they need, so it's good to see people making videos and talking about it.
Fedora vs Alma vs Rocky could be an interesting video, but certainly a separate video, it wouldn't have fitted in this one.
@@GaryExplains @Gary Explains It's easier to decide between things like Arch and Debian based distros than between multiple distros based on the same thing. All of my RHEL experience comes exclusively from Fedora, so I know little about the bigger culture, as opposed to Debian and Arch, which are kind of the Disney and Warner Bros. of Linux, and subsequently hog the spotlight. If you were to make a video about comparing RHEL based distros, then I'm all on board for it. I'm gonna subscribe to your channel to see what you come out with next.
I used RH all the way until it was no longer free...something like RH9 or so...then started using Debian...fell in love with it...plus I saw a huge benefit to not having a Corporate entity driving the project...so I still use Debian or Mint in my personal life! CentOS was just a bit of hobby stuff...but ultimately came back to Debian! I think I will give Alma a try since I have a Proxmox instance...might be fun! :-)
I've been using Ubuntu and Mint for the past several years. Why have I not heard of this distro before?
When I went from CentOS to Rocky it was okay but Zoom was buggy for a while (on Mate desktop), it is okay now. I also work at a National Accelerator Laboratory (not Fermi (Fermi has a better cafeteria)), we were using Scientific Linux, but in my group, we are using RedHat.
Alma Linux is rock solid with stable packages. This make it great for web hosting.
I run docker and game servers on my server and for that I some application require newer packages. My go to Server distribution is ubuntu.
For desktop Arch Based distros are the best.
Manjaro for example gives all the benefits of Arch and has packages more stable than arch.
I used centos for everything until stream happened. I switched to Ubuntu and it's getting me by but I miss the boot speed and simplicity of red hat based Linux. Apt looks messy compared to dnf too
Why don't I? Because the VST plugins i like dont natively run enough on linux, and i refuse to switch to linux just to run windows software under wine.
I don't know which Linux distro is most stable, but seeing that AlmaLinux seems to have such a tumultuous recent history I would prefer something that doesn't just 'clone' from others and try to cater to the masses. I wonder why Debian wasn't selected.
@Write_me413 Not much to talk about from my side. I've been with Debian for almost a quarter of a century and over the years I've been able to run it on all sorts of hardware as well as VMs. I successfully ran it on Sparc, Intel and ARM, from tiny ARM powered NAS boxes to multi-cpu XEON machines. I started with RedHat6.2 and a bit of Suse but once I discovered apt on Debian I never looked back. To see them being used as the source for many other distributions is an endorsement we shouldn't overlook.
The most important question: how does it stack up in gaming against Steam OS3 and its Proton?
If you did use centos, alma or rocky is the clear way forward. if you didn't find reason to centos, then that wouldn't change with alma and rocky.
Thank you! I just installes almalinux9 for my wsl, so easy!
I tried sudo yum install firefox and, although I could start firefox, there were error messages, which does not seem goo for a "rock stable distro"
Are wsl versions of Microsoft modified to become compatible with wsl, which could affect their solidity?
I was using ubuntu (and sometimes opensuse) , why should I prefer alma?
Running GUI under WSL needs some configuration. I have a video about it on this channel. It has nothing to do with Alma.
WSL seems to have some Microsoft-specific quirks that you don’t get on a genuine Linux distro.
It would be interesting to know, WHY they chose Alma over Rocky
That's pretty easy to answer: Because, I am not a nuclear scientist. Generally speaking all Linux distributions work exactly the same. They have the same base to run for everything under Linux. What can run in Alma Linux can work elsewhere. Unless Alma Linux was designed and supported for other use cases and have UVP to other non scientific use cases, there's no point of comparing or choosing it over other distributions.
No, I don't think that all Linux distros work the same. If they did then there wouldn't be so many distros to choose from.
@@GaryExplains Yes. I think the difference is what applications bundled on various distros, like the desktop environment, proprietary codecs and support etc. Whereas the Linux kernel are all the same Linux kernel. This is what I mean. Cheers...
@@akogepayo Well, no they aren't all the same Linux kernel. First there are different versions of the kernel, some bleeding edge, some stable, some long term support. Second, many distro uses customized kernels with backported features or special fixes, which aren't part of the mainline kernel.
Disappointed when CentOS was sunset. Not using CentOS stream. Using AlmaLimux.
Was a reason given why one should use AlmaLinux?
Because it is stable and supported long term and is a clone of RHEL.
Almalinux doesn't have docker, it has podman, and traefik doesn't quite work as well with podman as it does with docker. But I can say I tried.
And you can't install docker?
@@GaryExplains it's not really integrated. For instance Almalinux comes with cockpit and if you use docker instead of podman you cannot really manage your containers from here so basically you need to rely on other tools like portainer or yacht. Something that does not happen with proxmox for instance
Bacause it is worthless for gaming and peripheral hardware support.
Camera software, printer driver, scanner driver, GPS routing software.
Who is Beetah?
Eh?
They are using Scientific Linux before, which was based on CentOS.
I think you will find that Scientific Linux was based on RHEL not CentOS.
Woohoo! Loonix!
going off the thumbnail and name of this video alone that has triggered a response in me. why i don't use it?
because i am a gamer who just wants to game, watch my videos on VLC and surf the web, i don't want to type in some command line to install my games or programs, nor do i want to debug the code as to why some game is not working or playing,
and those are just the reasons thats on the surface of my brains memory, i can dig deeper for more reasons on why i have disagreements with linux, but being currently mentally drained and not willing to dig for anymore at this time, i will end my comment and say,
good day and happy new year.
I looked at this, decide Dragonized Garuda was better for me
I like pop!_os from System76, Ubuntu based....
I would if LXQt was the default desktop environment. GNOME is too resource hungry.
Alma means apple in Hungarian
Because the used to use Scientific Linux and then dropped so I am a little leery of it as yet.
The difference is of course is that Scientific Linux was basically built by the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. That took time, money, and effort. So they switched to CentOS and now with the demise of CentOS to AlmaLinux. So Scientific Linux and AlmaLinux aren't connected and the reason Scientific Linux was dropped has nothing to do with AlmaLinux.
Linux is absolutely amazing. Made my living for years out of Linux. The only killer is systemd. Hate it. Switched to FreeBSD.
Slackware uses SysV. Been using it at least 20 years. Excellent OS. Very unixy.
@@DIEmicrosoft Still using Slackware (SLW).. FYI, SLW is the only distribution still carries up-to-date 32-bit packages. If still have old PC/laptop Slackware is pretty much only option for Linux. Cheers,.
Why should I .
Iam fine with Mint/Win 10 dual system.
BTRFS
I don't trust the code that IBM might cram into that operating system. And I don't mean that the code can be exactly bad..
So what?
Might as well just use CentOS stream, or just use RHEL directly. For the later, the licensing is relaxed for smaller orgs or larger academic institutions, and for the former it's probably better than RHEL as it's THE upstream. So it's kinda pointless.
Did you skip the bit in the video where I said that overall people don't want to run CentOS Stream?
@@GaryExplains Probably. And I'll reiterate what I'm saying, using a downstream EL distro is pointless. That is because RHEL is itself a downstream distro, and it's free for the big scientific institutes. Using Cent Stream or RHEL is better in every conceivable way.
RHEL is itself a downstream distro???
Because any flavor of Linux continues to suffer from lack of hardware support /drivers as it has since it's inception and hence why the masses still haven't migrated over to it.
Really? What hardware is unsupported?
@@GaryExplains : A lot, for instance my UAD Apollo Solo USB audio interface.
Ah, I understand. Yes, specialist hardware needs support from the manufacturer. Just like if you used a Mac you need to check if the manufacturer provides a driver. Windows seems to be the default OS for such devices.
@@GaryExplains : Exactly, either Windows or Mac. Linux needs to convince these various manufacturers that it's worthwhile for them to invest their time to supply their drivers to the Linux community. This situation has existed for a long time and I'm not seeing any indications it will be rectified anytime soon. :(
Office
And
Accounting software
Don't work on Linux
Normally
So people in general stay away from Linux
And close to windows
You mean Microsoft Office and accountancy software written for Windows?
Simple answer: i don't have an accelerator at home ...
Because I use OpenBSD.
rocky Linux, cuz I'm hipster like that
I dont use systemd
I`m confused as to why IBM (International Business Machines) would want to buy a "free" operating system owned by the people for the people.
It isn't quite a "free" operating system owned by the people for the people. But ignoring that, the service industry around a distribution like RHEL is huge.
Because i'm not CERN or Fermilab?
Because I'm not running a server
Because I don't have a supercomputer
Yeah, no. I'm sure it's great and all, but I'll just stick with POP!_OS for my desktop and Debian for my servers.
debian is best
Any particular reason you think that?
Because I need to print documents. And Linux doesn't do that.
Linux doesn't print documents. First I have heard of it.
I use Ubuntu because I am doing something useful with my time.
Is there a good way to put red hat on to an Apple machine?
Or Alma?
I haven't tried, but I understand it is quite simple on an Intel Mac. Just flash a USB stick and press whatever magic key combination is required to get the Mac to boot from the USB. Since those Macs can run Windows, then Linux shouldn't be a problem.
Makes sense....its literally a clone of CentOS that has nothing to do with the foolishness that CentOS is going on with now (CentOS STREAM>....seriously!?)...
Cause there's Arch
Ive been using Ubuntu since 2008, with a splash of arch for certian projects at times. I have had a few CentOS VPS instances over the years and have always found guides and tutorial seem to prefer giving instructions for Debain based systems, this makes anything with apt a solid win over anything yum. I can understand thats going to be less of an issue at CERN and Fermilab considering they run lots of custom in-house software, but to just get something to work on at home, ubuntu cant be beat.
What's great about alma linux is was created by a "Cloud Linux" they were already doing the rebuilding of packages of RHEL for the paid operation system. So they know what they are doing.
It's great that they are now doing the same for free for the community.
The paid version is for those who want handholding. Redhat offers its distro to developers for free but will be happy to sell you their paid support if you really need it.
Gary: Being retired I can well afford to stay with MINT as it has been very good to us. Whatever makes you happy is all good, so long as it is GNU Linux, grin.
I use fedora in day to day usage... it's pretty smooth before that i was with manjaro but not sure how but it gets broken with new updates 😜
I'm happy with Mint for now.😄
Because I'm not CERN nor Fermilab, I use Linux Mint
Supercomputer clusters in Slovenia that I worked on also use AlmaLinux. That's how I learned about its existence.
We had been using Centos for all our web servers and supporting services (db/caching etc) since 2008, but have started switching away since they made that change. Now mainly using Debian now these days