AlmaLinux Reviews

I am using AlmaLinux as a hosting platform for my application. I have taken VMs and deployed a React and Node-based application on AlmaLinux.

I am using AlmaLinux only for hosting my application server. My application is used daily, but I do not use AlmaLinux login every day. When I need to update anything in the application, then I use it.

AlmaLinux is deployed in my organization on the public cloud through AWS. I purchased AlmaLinux through the AWS Marketplace.

As an application server, it will not save any employee costs or anything.

AlmaLinux is lightweight, so my hardware resource usage is very low, and I am able to use it effectively.

AlmaLinux provides regular updates, and the security is very good because it is a flavor of Linux. I know that Linux security is excellent.

AlmaLinux's performance is very good, and I am getting high performance in my application, which is a very positive thing. It is very reliable with excellent performance.

I notice faster load times and reduced resource usage with AlmaLinux. That is the main benefit I have experienced.

AlmaLinux is stable and scalable with good scalability features.

AlmaLinux can be improved in terms of hardware support. On some latest PCs, it is not supported. I recently tried to install it on a PC with the latest Windows, but I encountered some hardware compatibility issues.

Better hardware implementation for AlmaLinux would be very beneficial. If they would implement support for high-end gaming laptops, then it would be very good for us.

I have been using AlmaLinux for the last one year.

I did not attend any customer support calls for AlmaLinux because my team handles it. I am only handling the deployment, and the deployment is very good.

I was using Ubuntu before, but I found that Ubuntu was taking too many hardware resources. I started exploring and then found AlmaLinux, which uses low resource usage.

I evaluated Ubuntu before choosing AlmaLinux.

I would rate AlmaLinux an eight as an application server or if you use it as a server. If you use it as an operating system, then it will not be good. It is not user-friendly like Windows.

I chose eight because I think there are some hardware usage issues with AlmaLinux. It is not supporting the latest hardware, so that is not good. If it did, I would suggest it for laptops also.

There are no other improvements needed for AlmaLinux that I have not mentioned yet.

I did not see the pricing for AlmaLinux because that is handled by another team. A different purchasing team in my organization handles the pricing.

If you want to host an application in a VM, then you should go for AlmaLinux. It will take low hardware resources, and you can get high scalability.

There are no other additional thoughts about AlmaLinux.

My overall rating for AlmaLinux is eight.

My main use case for AlmaLinux is to set up many machines on AlmaLinux for another application for our organization. I mainly use AlmaLinux to configure and manage multiple machines and to run applications for our system. For example, I have to set up an AlmaLinux server to host a web application stack using Nginx, PHP, and a PostgreSQL database, which support our internal services and APIs.

In my experience, the best features AlmaLinux offers are the stability and enterprise-grade stability, long-term support, broad software compatibility, predictable and secure updates, easy migration from CentOS, and being free and open source and well-suited for automation and DevOps. Because AlmaLinux is binary compatible with Red Hat, it provides a very stable and reliable operating system suitable for production environments.

AlmaLinux has impacted our organization positively by providing a stable and reliable enterprise Linux platform without licensing cost. It has allowed me to replace CentOS and avoid expensive commercial subscriptions while maintaining full compatibility with Red Hat-based applications. As a result, we have reduced operating costs, especially for server infrastructure, while keeping a high level of security, performance, and long-term support.

AlmaLinux is already a very solid and reliable operating system, but it could be improved in a few areas. For example, more extensive official documentation and practical case use examples would help new users adopt it more quickly. Faster availability of certain packages or clear communication around the release timeline could further improve the user experience. Enhanced tooling or GUIs for in-place major version upgrades would also be beneficial for organizations managing large infrastructures.

I have been using AlmaLinux for one year.

In my experience, AlmaLinux is very stable.

AlmaLinux's scalability is impressive. It is very scalable and performs well both on small deployments and large-scale infrastructure with many servers. I have been able to add new machines easily without change to our architecture or processes.

The customer support for AlmaLinux is good.

Positive

I had to switch to AlmaLinux because of the cost of the subscription manager.

My experience with AlmaLinux in terms of pricing, installation cost, and license has been very positive because AlmaLinux is free and open source with no licensing or subscription fees, which significantly reduced our operating cost in comparison to commercial enterprise Linux distributions.

The most immediate benefit has been the elimination of licensing and subscription fees compared to commercial enterprise Linux distributions or Windows.

Before choosing AlmaLinux, I evaluated other options including Debian, specifically Debian 12.

My advice to others looking into using AlmaLinux is that I want to continue using it for the future infrastructure. I would rate this review as a 9.

AlmaLinux serves as a replacement for us; initially, we were using CentOS because we had a couple of Red Hat servers as well, but Red Hat operates on a licensing model, whereas CentOS was a free open source component. When CentOS was discontinued, we moved to a different solution, but we believed AlmaLinux could be the right replacement. We have a couple of use cases for AlmaLinux. On AWS, we have a couple of EC2 instances running AlmaLinux, which we mostly use for application servers. We host applications such as Apache and NGINX and similar components. I can confirm that for one of our Kubernetes worker nodes, we also used AlmaLinux, but not for all, only for one or two worker nodes to conduct some research and development.

We have a couple of static websites running on AlmaLinux, mostly for our own Wikipedia-like content and to host knowledge-based articles and internal company, team, and project information. We have Apache servers running on top of AlmaLinux, and those Apache servers connect with databases. Those databases come directly from Amazon RDS. That is our main use case. Another use case is the Kubernetes worker node. We have a custom Kubernetes deployment on AWS, not the Amazon-provided Kubernetes. In that custom Kubernetes solution, we have deployed AlmaLinux as the operating system for the worker nodes. This also proves helpful, as we have containers, pods, and other services running on top of the worker nodes.

We have used AlmaLinux for database servers, but that did not work as well because we need good scalability and reliability. We conducted a small proof of concept with that, and if the scale is very low, then it is good. However, if we need high scalability, then we will definitely have to switch and deal with some other database solutions. I would say this is also good for databases.

AlmaLinux has the similar features that we had with CentOS, most of which it provides. It provides an enterprise-ready operating system without any subscription and cost. It has long support from the community and from the vendor itself. I would say this is an enterprise-ready solution, meaning it is an enterprise-grade operating system that we can directly use in our environment to host applications, to host databases, or for whatever use cases we want. This means it is not only for lower environments like development and non-production; this is a production-ready system. We have a couple of servers running in our production environment using AlmaLinux. These are the main benefits I can think of. We have good documentation and, as it is open source, we have good community support as well.

There is plenty of documentation available with AlmaLinux. Initially, when we were dealing with packages and installing and updating them, we were having some dependency issues. At that time, when we went through the documentation provided by AlmaLinux, those documents were really helpful. We learned about dependencies, repositories, upgrade paths, and upgrade channels. That really helped. The documentation is really good. I do not feel any issues with that. AlmaLinux is enterprise-ready, so it is reliable because we have huge package availability, the RPMs and packages that we usually install.

AlmaLinux has the similar capabilities that we have with CentOS.

As of now, I do not see any challenges or any issues with this. The only thing is that this is community-driven. We do not have that enterprise type of support, but that is what we can expect from a free or open source product.

I have been using AlmaLinux for the last year.

I think we have covered everything, so there are no new comments.

As I already mentioned, AlmaLinux is an enterprise-ready server, so it is really scalable. This depends on how you have set up AlmaLinux in your environment. When I talk about a Kubernetes cluster or any cluster deployed using AlmaLinux, we can have multiple instances running and then it is really scalable. We can scale in, scale out, horizontally, and vertically depending on the way we want. AlmaLinux is really scalable and is a stable one.

Initially, we were using CentOS, and then when the CentOS support and new releases were discontinued, we thought that we would have to stick with some vendor licensing model and go with the enterprise product which comes with licensing and cost. Then we heard of AlmaLinux and we tried and tested it, and it really helped us save costs. Another point I would like to highlight is that it is AWS compatible. This means on AWS or any other cloud platform, we can directly deploy it as an instance, and this is also fully supported. It is available in the marketplace and it is stable. We have stable releases and community support. I would say this is also beginner-friendly. If someone who is completely new to the Linux environment comes across it, it is a beginner-friendly solution.

I do not have any numbers because earlier we were using CentOS, and then we were supposed to get some paid versions like Red Hat Linux and some other solutions. Thanks to AlmaLinux, that cost part got saved. We do not need to pay anything there. It is completely free, I would say, open source.

For the project where we use AlmaLinux, it is a kind of hybrid. We have AlmaLinux deployed as an EC2 instance on AWS and some of our on-premises virtual machines. It is a kind of hybrid deployment.

AlmaLinux is an open source one, so we have community support. In the community, there are multiple communities coming from Red Hat and some different open source communities we have. This is really good. There was good support from the community.

AlmaLinux is an open source one, so I think there is no licensing or cost involved with this. The setup part was quite easy. As I already mentioned, it is beginner-friendly. We did the installation, we did the configuration, we configured the repositories and the network settings. It was quite straightforward.

I would say it has saved our time because when the CentOS part was discontinued, we had to explore a couple of other products, and AlmaLinux was the first one in the list. We tried exploring that, and when we got all the features in one place, we did not have to spend separate or much time exploring other components. The other options are vendor-locked or license-based, which we were not expecting for the current project. We were looking for an open source and free solution. AlmaLinux fits in our requirement.

We considered Red Hat Enterprise Linux. That is also good, stable, and a fully enterprise-ready operating system. However, the only challenge we had was the cost because that is a license model. According to our current project budget, we did not have that much budget allocation. We went with AlmaLinux because earlier we were using CentOS, so we thought it would be good to have a similar solution.

I rate AlmaLinux ten out of ten. It is a lifesaver for me and for my project. It has the same features which I was expecting from an operating system coming from open source communities. AlmaLinux has everything similar to CentOS. If you have already experienced or already used CentOS for any of your workloads, solutions, projects, or environments, I would recommend going with AlmaLinux because it has been discontinued now. AlmaLinux provides the similar solution that we had with CentOS. It is really good to have AlmaLinux in our environment, and you should also give it a try. My overall rating for this product is ten out of ten.

My main use case for AlmaLinux is to build a custom image on top of the AlmaLinux image provided by TuxCare. I use that custom image to supply it through all the stakeholders, for example, different teams to use it to launch VMs or containers for whatever workloads they have, and these images are created by our team.

The use case with AlmaLinux is that we are using a common OS platform for our entire environment, which was earlier divided into multiple operating systems.

In terms of support provided by TuxCare, it is good, particularly regarding patching and updates. The OS updates are prompt compared to when we were using Amazon Linux, which had unpredictable patches and a lot of vulnerabilities.

The prompt patching and OS updates with AlmaLinux have helped our team by improving our FedRAMP compliance and vulnerability scan reports, since AlmaLinux connects better with KernelCare provided by TuxCare. We are also using JFrog with these new AlmaLinux images, which means the AlmaLinux repositories for package updates provided by TuxCare are updated more frequently compared to other repositories such as Amazon Linux 2.

AlmaLinux has positively impacted our organization because our goal was to generalize our entire fleet into one operating system, which earlier was not the case as we were using around seven to eight different operating systems. We have now taken up this project to drive it from a central image, allowing us to deploy common security agents, monitoring agents, and different compliance packages or patching workflows to the entire fleet. That centralization has been progressing well.

In terms of how AlmaLinux can be improved, while I praise the patching part, the support provided by TuxCare needs to be more prompt and responsive. We feel they are not taking ownership of addressing a lot of vulnerabilities in some operating systems that are not patched even though fixes are available in open sources. We also expect KernelCare to be better integrated with AlmaLinux, as it is integrated well but the patch sets are not available promptly for AlmaLinux operating systems.

Definitely, the community support has to be improved, and we would also appreciate enhancements in the documentation part.

I have been using AlmaLinux for the last one to one and a half years.

We are measuring specific outcomes since moving to AlmaLinux, but we have not come up with those metrics yet because until the last one or two months, we were in the development phase where I was part of building the image. Now the images are being used by different stakeholders or teams, so we will see the results.

I would advise others looking into using AlmaLinux to first fix their strategy for patching and have that in place, as we rely on KernelCare for our OS patching, but it seems to lag behind, causing us to breach our SLAs for FedRAMP and PCI. If your automations are stronger or if you rely on relaunch-based updates or use new images with continuous patching and reboots for the machines, that will be a better approach. I rate this product a seven because, as I mentioned, there are criticisms mainly around patching. Since we own the patching, it needs some improvement, and since it is a new operating system, the patch sets are not readily available, so that area needs work. Better community support such as that of Ubuntu or RHEL might lead to better results.

AlmaLinux is used for web hosting and control panels, enterprise production servers, cloud and containerization, regulatory industries, and edge computing.

AlmaLinux serves as a replacement for CentOS in cPanel, Plesk, and DirectAdmin environments, and it performs excellently for MySQL and PostgreSQL databases, LAMP stacks, and ERP software. It is also beneficial for cloud and containerization, such as virtualized infrastructure and cloud-native applications.

AlmaLinux has positively impacted my organization by providing improvements such as no licensing cost, enabling us to focus more on updates related to RHEL. We are seeing very good results in Linux server profiles primarily due to the updates we are implementing in development and R&D performance.

Since using AlmaLinux, I have noticed time and cost savings because it has no licensing cost, which decreases budgets, and its strong performance and predictable updates allow us to update servers in a timely manner, limiting issues related to infrastructure maintenance.

The benefits and features of AlmaLinux include no licensing cost, a smooth migration from CentOS, fast predictable updates, and strong performance.

These features help my team by following Red Hat release cycles for infrastructure maintenance, which makes scheduling maintenance easier after a RHEL release cycle, and it also helps with CIS benchmark compliance.

AlmaLinux could be improved by addressing the slow adoption of new software and the dependency on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I would like to see enhancements in stability and the speed at which newer software versions of the kernel are included, as changes made by RHEL development could affect AlmaLinux development, although it is community-governed.

I have been using AlmaLinux for the last five to six years.

AlmaLinux is very stable in my experience.

AlmaLinux's scalability is very good because the predictable updates ensure there are no issues from that point of view.

I have reached out to customer support for some reasons, and my experience was very good.

Previously, I was using RHEL and now exclusively use AlmaLinux.

I have seen a return on investment through significant time and money savings.

I have no licensing cost, which means there is no burden related to licensing, and the server and budget management is handled by the sales and accounts teams.

Before choosing AlmaLinux, I evaluated CentOS and Ubuntu.

For others looking into using AlmaLinux, I would advise that if you are worried about licenses and migration from CentOS and looking to optimize some performance, you can go with AlmaLinux.

I would rate this solution a 9.

My main use case for AlmaLinux is to use it for our servers, maintaining it as the backbone of our infrastructure, such as the data centers for our system, our web server, our application server, and everything else we do, making it the backbone of our system and infrastructure architecture. We use AlmaLinux for our business case.

The best features AlmaLinux offers focus on enterprise service, such as a server engine for our database, as well as compatibility with other external environments, being useful for Red Hat and CentOS, and very ideal for our company, where we also have DevOps, making it the backbone of infrastructure for the CI/CD pipeline and Docker deployment and everything else, plus security, as we use it for firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and monitoring services such as Prometheus and Grafana. We specifically use AlmaLinux because of its stability, its binary compatibility with RHEL, and the additional promotions for everything else.

The most valuable feature I find in AlmaLinux is the binary compatibility with RHEL and the long-term stability, which makes it a predictable, rock-solid system behavior, while also having small and safe packaging for subsystems or systems that run twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It is also very useful for long-term projects as a company's software for release, with a huge ecosystem, which is why I appreciate it so much, along with the security, as it offers a stable kernel API with timely security patches. The tooling stability for DevOps is also significant, allowing easy use of infrastructure as code with Ansible or scripting playbooks that remain valid for years, making it especially important for the CI/CD pipelines.

AlmaLinux has positively impacted my organization by being the backbone of our system, which is vital for our revenue as the backbone of our data center.

I am not certain how AlmaLinux can be improved since we simply use it and do not face any security issues.

If AlmaLinux could provide ten to twenty years of fixes, that would be an improvement because I do not want to update the system all the time, as it becomes more challenging for me as a system administrator to track all the patches and everything I should patch on the system. If it could remain very stable, I would appreciate that consistently.

I have been using AlmaLinux for about five years, from two thousand eighteen until now.

The positive outcomes I have seen with AlmaLinux include very few system failures, where updates do not randomly break our servers due to the configuration and binary compatibility. Systems can run for months or years without rebooting, which is ideal for production, laboratories, and research, as I use it heavily in my research on decarbonization and carbon footprint in the company, making it very ideal for production and laboratory research, as we look for safe operating system migration and better automation possibilities with tools such as Ansible and Terraform for configuration, which behaves consistently.

Its security is another highlight, providing minimal disruptions, timely security patches, bug fixes, and a reduced attack surface.

My advice for others looking into using AlmaLinux is to prioritize its stability, reliability, predictable behavior, long-term support, and brand compatibility, along with careful planning, automation, documentation, and understanding that security Linux should not be disabled, as SELinux restricts what a user can do, keeping the major security advantages intact. I would rate this product nine out of ten.

AlmaLinux is used as a DHCP server. I installed DNSmasq service on AlmaLinux and use it for many tasks and services such as Kaspersky EDR.

AlmaLinux is easy to use as a VM and with containers.

We saved approximately 70% of our budget with AlmaLinux, and the system is stable and reliable.

AlmaLinux has a firewall that performs well for security. AlmaLinux is a reliable and stable version of Linux. It is fast and does not require significant resources when using AlmaLinux as a VM and with containers.

AlmaLinux could be improved by enhancing security and increasing speed.

I have used AlmaLinux for five years.

AlmaLinux is a reliable and stable version of Linux. At this time, AlmaLinux is performing well. AlmaLinux is stable and reliable.

AlmaLinux is easy to scale in terms of resources and capacities.

I did not switch to AlmaLinux from a different solution.

We saved approximately 70% of our budget with AlmaLinux, and the system is stable and reliable.

The billing with AlmaLinux is very low, and the manager is very satisfied.

I did not evaluate other options before choosing AlmaLinux.

The experience with AlmaLinux pricing, setup cost, and licensing was good. I suggest others use AlmaLinux and work with it.

I have been using AlmaLinux for the last 2.5 years. In my organization, we use a Red Hat Enterprise version, but I required Red Hat alternatives to work in my home setup, which is why I chose AlmaLinux. I have hosted one site locally as well as in AWS, and during that time I have hosted that site on AlmaLinux. I deployed one EC2 instance using AlmaLinux OS, and on that OS, I set up that website.

AlmaLinux provides the DNF command to install packages, making it very easy to install any package. The patching and security patches are very reliable in my environment.

Before AlmaLinux, I used a CentOS system. In CentOS, if you want to install any packages, you have to install that package using the RPM command, which only installs a specific package. With AlmaLinux using DNF, it installs the whole packages with their dependencies, which is a bit easier.

Stability is good in AWS as well as when I installed it on VirtualBox, so stability and performance are very good. It uses minimum resources while providing high performance.

AlmaLinux does not require any specific additions from my side; it only requires strong support as Red Hat provides. This means the organization can make and afford to use it.

To improve AlmaLinux, some commands could be automated, such as expanding the repository of AlmaLinux or improving the shell experience.

There is not vast information about AlmaLinux on Google or the internet, so more information is required about how it works, how it can be used for hosting sites, and how to optimize performance. This documentation is needed on the internet.

I have been working for the last 2.5 years as a system engineer.

AlmaLinux is stable.

The scalability of AlmaLinux is good.

I had a good experience with the customer support team of AlmaLinux.

I was using CentOS, but after CentOS support was lost, I switched to AlmaLinux.

I do not have specific metrics to share regarding return on investment, but it is a cost-effective OS.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is good.

I did not evaluate other options before choosing AlmaLinux.

Computing power could be added while executing the commands to illustrate positive outcomes, but there are no specific metrics available at this time. Two points were deducted only for the support aspect. Any Linux distribution can be shifted to AlmaLinux, as it is very good to use and easy to manage. I would rate this product an 8 out of 10.