Tbh I do not know the ins and outs of rhel based distros, so these have caught my interest. I’ve tries live usb of both and I really did like the feel of alma. Rocky I thought felt like every other GNOME system… But I clearly dont really know much about these sort of distros and their capabilities. Are these considered enterprise grade? I have no clue. Would love to hear your thoughts on alma and Rocky and what makes them different that other distros. Thanks
Alma and Rocky aren’t really distros intended for casual use, they’re designed mainly with servers in mind. If you want an RHEL-based experience designed for a desktop, go with Fedora.
I used CentOS for my servers during CentOS6/7, but since they moved to Stream I run my servers on Debian or Ubuntu instead.
This is the info I needed to know! So I dont have a server; I should probably leave them alone then huh?
Unless the application specifically demands it, there is no point to use these over Debian. If Debian is lacking in something (a package is missing and cannot be fixed for example), then the answer is almost never going to be a Rhel clone. (Fedora could be)
Up until very recently, both Alma and Rocky were meant to be bug-for-bug duplicates of RHEL. Other than branding, there should be no difference at all between the three.
So, as far as the software is concerned, they are enterprise grade. Support is may be another matter.
Recently, Red Hat made it more difficult to create exact copies of RHEL. Without getting into it, Rocky has figured out how to continue while Alma has decided to be ABI compatible but give up on being an exact big-for-bug copy.
I do not think either Alma or Rocky has had a release since the change so they should still be identical.
Thanks for this info; kinda seems bizarre to me lol
I am building a homelab for during college (4 years) and I don’t really feel like doing a release upgrade (ie: debian 11 to 12) in the middle of schooling or over a break when i wanna relax and just chill. Debian offers 2 years of support official, and like 4 extended (unluckily, the times didn’t align so if I picked debian I would have to upgrade during college),and Rocky/alma offer 4 years official and like 8 extended.
I might be wrong (on phone rn), I recommend checking https://endoflife.date
Big difference, big enough that this factor is the singular reason companies go with them. Not having to do release upgrades as frequently means less maintenance, means less costly.
Debian offers 5 years of extended support.
Debian 12 was just released. You are not going to need to upgrade it ( until June 2028 ).
Certainly though, being able to say in the same release for a long time is one of the primary reasons to use RHEL or its clones.
My goal was to install openstack on my server, using kolla-ansible, one of the automatic installers. It officially supported debian 11. I would have had to upgrade when the openstack packagers switched over to 12.
But it also officially supported Rocky Linux 9, which goes eol in like 7 years.
I use Alma Linux on one of my production servers. It’s very stable. Never used Rocky Linux, but I would guess it’s also similar i.e enterprise grade.
They were both created to replace CentOS, a free version of RHEL that Red Hat killed.
I’m not familiar with that world of linux, what sets rocky and alma aside from the rest of the distros
They are both supposed to be versions of a “free RHEL”. You’ll mostly find them used in the enterprise space where the big players are RHEL, OpenSuse Leap, Ubuntu, Oracle Linux etc.
Gotcha, I knew they were more enterprise oriented but wondering if there’s any benefit of using an enterprise oriented distro just as an individual lol its foreign to me
Only benefit you’ll get is rock solid stable support at the cost of new kernel and desktop features trickling in very slowly (This is how everything in enterprise in general moves).
I would recommend using a distro geared towards desktop use such as Fedora.
Thank you, I never quite knew the differences between enterprise oriented distros and just regular workstation or personal use distros
I don’t see much point to enterprise distros unless you have a specific reason to use one, i.e. specific business or server applications. So unless you need it for that, you’re better off with a desktop Linux - Fedora if you want to stick with rhel’s sphere, Debian if you want super stable.
Thanks, thats pretty much what I was thinking. Trying to explore other areas of linux lol
Both are meant to be close copies of RHEL. That is what makes them different than other distros. Red Hat will also give you a free developer license for 16 machines of actual RHEL, so that is also an option. By following RHEL, Rocky and Alma intend to be enterprise grade, they have long-term support.
The main surface thing that differentiates Alma from Rocky is the default artwork. Otherwise there is governance stuff on the project itself.
Red Hat itself, when installed with a GUI, is pretty much the definition of “every other GNOME system” since they keep it more or less vanilla.
Awesome info man, thanks
I moved everything over to Rocky from CentOS when RH moved to stream. I don’t run a GUI on my Rocky Linux servers but as a command line distribution it is working really well for me.
I really did like the feel of alma. Rocky I thought felt like every other GNOME system
Unless you used different versions of each, shouldn’t they feel exactly the same?
Idk but they felt quite different to me…
I don’t like how CIQ taking away 30% of Red Hat Customer, that lead to Red Hat doing shit… Rocky shouldn’t done that in first place… and their brand, trademark are transferable to CIQ from RSEF… so I don’t know, I don’t have respect to Greg… after Rocky Fiasco… Red Hat did communicate about CentOS Stream long way before, and they already give signal in 2014/2015, but they burry it… and Greg profit a lot of it from RHEL Engineering, without even contribute much after the money gotten to his pocket… so… Welp call me greg hater, but I hate him so much… with his decision and his press release that make Red Hat always bad…