AlmaLinux version 8.7 has been released by the AlmaLinux OS Foundation, a nonprofit organization that looks after the open source CentOS substitute that is community owned and administered. AlmaLinux 8.7 is currently accessible for free download. AlmaLinux 8.7 features the Linux kernel version 4.18.0-423.el8, and is 1:1 binary compatible with RHEL. AlmaLinux 8.7 supports the x86 64, aarch64, ppc64le, and s390x architectures, totaling 4 architectures.
“We are driven by our duty to the community to continue to offer a platform that is secure, easy to use, and dependable,” said benny Vasquez, chair of the AlmaLinux OS Foundation board. “We aim to deliver the quality and timeliness end users require from the leading CentOS successor, and to provide a free and open, community owned and governed, enterprise-grade Linux operating system.”
Changes to the system configuration in AlmaLinux 8.7 include the installer and image creation, which now permit creating images with customized /boot mount point partitions and sizes. The Network Security Services (NSS) libraries have been updated, raising the minimum key size for all RSA operations from 128 to 1023 bits, among other significant security enhancements. Also included in AlmaLinux 8.7 are upgrades and enhancements to the infrastructure services and dynamic programming languages.
AWS, Azure, Google Cloud
To sum up, the main features of AlmaLinux 8.7 include:
- Security – The content of the Security Technical Implementation Guidelines (STIG) in the scap-security-guide (SSG) package is more in line with DISA’s (Defense Information Systems Agency) technical guides.
- Shells and command-line tools – The package xmlstarlet is a new addition to RHEL 8.7. You can parse, manipulate, query, validate, and modify XML files with XMLStarlet. Updates have been made to libva, powerpc-utils, and opencryptoki.
- Infrastructure services – unbound and chrony have both been updated.
- Dynamic programming languages, web, and database servers – The most recent versions of the following software – Ruby 3.1, Mercurial 6.2, and Node.js 18 – have been released.
AlmaLinux has millions of downloads from a network of over 200 mirrors worldwide. The OS is used to power projects by U.S. government agencies, the defense industry, the CERN particle accelerator, Top 500 rated HPC clusters, business applications across a wide range of enterprises, as well as software development at GitLab and the web hosting sector.
AlmaLinux is available on all major public cloud platforms, including as AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Oracle OCI, and others, and has millions of Docker pulls. Members of the AlmaLinux OS Foundation, including AMD, AWS, CloudLinux, Microsoft, and others, are assisting in the rapid development of AlmaLinux.
