AlmaLinux is again the first RHEL clone to cross the finish line with a new release.
One thing you can bet the farm on is that when Red Hat releases a new version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, AlmaLinux will be the first of the clones to release its version.
AlmaLinux 9.5, which was released today, came out five days after Red Hat released RHEL 9.5. That wasn’t a record for AlmaLinux by any stretch of the imagination, but they still beat the competition.
AlmaLinux appears to have snuck this edition out the back door, with little to no advance warning except for some release notes — so I don’t have any quotes to give you from the Alma folks on what a great release this is. That’s OK, because since it’s a clone of RHEL, anything Red Hat says about RHEL appies to Alma (as well as Rocky or any of the other clones).
Here’s a quote from Red Hat’s press release for RHEL 9.5, from the VP and GM of RHEL, Gunnar Hellekson, who’s talking about how RHEL 9.5 is security hardened for complex modern workloads. Just substitute “AlmaLinux” in your mind for every mention of “Red Hat” or “RHEL”, and you’re good to go:
“Complexity in enterprise IT, from the applications that we build to the environments in which they run, isn’t going away. Rather, it’s growing exponentially, especially with the dynamics of new technologies like AI. While more complexity can impact the attack surface, we are committed to making Red Hat Enterprise Linux the most secure, zero trust platform on the market, so businesses can tackle each challenge head-on with a secure base at the most fundamental levels of a system. This commitment enables the business itself to embrace the next wave of technology innovations.”
Also, at some point between now and when AlmaLinux 9.5 reaches its end of life, it might even be more secure than RHEL 9.5. That’s because the Alma folks will always patch everything that Red Hat patches, but also occasionally patches security vulnerabilities that Red Hat chooses to ignore.
AlmaLinux’s announcement of this release can be found here, with release notes available here.
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
