AlmaLinux 8.6 Beta ‘Sky Tiger’ Released – Testers Needed

Friday’s beta release of AlmaLinux 8.6 means the project is currently actively working on two separate versions of its RHEL clone.

On Friday, the folks at AlmaLinux announced the beta release of version 8.6 “Sky Tiger.” This comes a little over a month after the beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.6, which means the folks behind the RHEL clone should be able to push a stable release out the door within hours after RHEL 8.6 is officially released later this month.

This release also comes a little over two weeks since the announced release of AlmaLinux 9.0 beta, which I guess proves that the Alma team can walk and chew gum at the same time, since this means they’re now actively working on two releases at once.

“Installation ISOs are available on mirrors now,” the project said in its press release. “Cloud and container images are in progress, so stay tuned for these in the next few days.”

As always with a beta release, AlmaLinux is hoping that those who depend on the distro to run mission critical workloads will download it and start putting it through its paces in order to help discover any bugs before the time for the official release arrives. However, this is a beta release, so it shouldn’t be used in production, but instead as an opportunity to see what the new release can do.

In other words: “Test, test, test. Your feedback is what helps make great production releases.”

“Please report any bugs you may see on the Bug Tracker. Also, pop into the AlmaLinux Community Chat and join our Testing Channel, post a question on our 8.6 Beta Forum, on our AlmaLinux Community on Reddit, or catch us on Twitter,” the project said.

According to Alma, the new release comes complete with the new system roles that Red Hat has been touting for RHEL 8.6, including the High Availability Cluster System Role which was previously available as a preview but which is now fully supported in RHEL.

Also included is the new System Role for the web console, which automates the web console’s installation and configuration, including specifying which packages are to be installed, starting and enabling the web console, and configuring settings such as idle timeout. In addition, a new Firewall System Role will let users automate the management of the firewall configuration.

More information can be founds in this version’s release notes.

AlmaLinux 8.6 supports x86_64, ARM and ppc64le architectures. Starting with version 9.0, the distro adds support for IBM Z systems, which means it will support all of the architectures supported by RHEL.

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Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

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