The History of AlmaLinux

Learn about the important milestones in AlmaLinux's journey from its inception to its development, as well as the key moments in community building.

Project Origins (2020–2021)

December 2020: The CentOS Strategy Change

• December 8: Red Hat announced that CentOS 8 would reach end of maintenance at the end of 2021
• Community shock: enterprise users began looking for alternatives to CentOS
• Market demand: a stable, free, RHEL-compatible operating system was needed

January 2021: The AlmaLinux Project Launches

2021-01-11: CloudLinux announces the launch of the AlmaLinux project
2021-01-20: The project is named "AlmaLinux" (Latin for "to nourish")
2021-02-01: A dedicated development team is formed
2021-02-15: The first test release is published

Early Development (2021)

March 2021: The First Stable Release

• March 30: AlmaLinux 8.3 was officially released
• Key features:
  • Fully binary compatible with RHEL 8.3
  • Support for the x86_64 and ARM64 architectures
  • Complete installation images and cloud images provided

# Release information for the first version
cat /etc/almalinux-release
# AlmaLinux release 8.3 (Purple Manul)

Mid-2021: Infrastructure Building

• April: established a global mirror network
• May: released AlmaLinux 8.4
• June: started discussions on the community governance structure
• July: established the Technical Steering Committee

Second Half of 2021: The Transition to a Community Project

• August: announced the establishment of the AlmaLinux OS Foundation
• September: released AlmaLinux 8.5
• October: CloudLinux transferred project ownership to the Foundation
• November: officially became an independent community project

Stable Development Period (2022–2023)

2022: Major Version Releases

2022-05-12: AlmaLinux 9.0 is released
2022-08-24: AlmaLinux 8.6 is released
2022-11-15: AlmaLinux 9.1 is released
2022-12-20: Support for more architectures is announced (ppc64le, s390x)

The Significance of AlmaLinux 9.0

• Technical breakthrough: based on the Linux 5.14 kernel
• Modernization: improved container support and cloud-native features
• Ecosystem expansion: support for the latest development tools and runtimes

2023: Ecosystem Maturity

• Cloud platform support: all major cloud service providers offer official images
• Container ecosystem: support on Docker Hub and major container registries
• Enterprise adoption: more and more enterprises migrate from CentOS to AlmaLinux

Technical Milestones

Evolution of Architecture Support

Date	Architecture Support	Notes
2021.03	x86_64	First release
2021.05	x86_64, aarch64	Added ARM support
2022.12	x86_64, aarch64, ppc64le	Added IBM Power support
2023.03	All architectures	Added s390x (IBM Z) support

Version Release Timeline

# AlmaLinux major version release history
echo "AlmaLinux version release timeline:"
echo "8.3 - March 30, 2021   (Purple Manul)"
echo "8.4 - May 26, 2021     (Electric Cheetah)"
echo "8.5 - November 12, 2021 (Arctic Sphynx)"
echo "8.6 - May 12, 2022     (Sky Tiger)"
echo "8.7 - November 10, 2022 (Stone Smilodon)"
echo "8.8 - May 18, 2023     (Sapphire Caracal)"
echo "9.0 - May 26, 2022     (Emerald Puma)"
echo "9.1 - November 16, 2022 (Lime Lynx)"
echo "9.2 - May 10, 2023     (Turquoise Kodkod)"
echo "9.3 - November 13, 2023 (Shamrock Puma)"

Evolution of the Governance Structure

Establishing the AlmaLinux OS Foundation

Foundation Structure

• Type: 501(c)(6) non-profit organization
• Established: August 2021
• Headquarters: United States
• Mission: to ensure AlmaLinux remains free, open, and community-driven forever

Board Members

# Foundation board of directors (2023)
board_members:
  - name: "Igor Seletskiy"
    role: "Chair"
    organization: "CloudLinux"
  - name: "Jack Aboutboul"
    role: "Director"
    organization: "AlmaLinux"
  - name: "Jesse Asklund"
    role: "Director"
    organization: "WebPros"
  # More members...

Community Development

Since the project's launch, the AlmaLinux community has continued to grow: contributors, mirror sites, and enterprise adopters have all steadily increased, and the global mirror network continues to improve. For the latest community size and project activity, we recommend referring to the public data on the AlmaLinux official website and its GitHub organization.

Important Partnerships and Certifications

2022: Industry Certifications

• Docker Hub: official image certification
• AWS Marketplace: official AMI images
• Microsoft Azure: official virtual machine images
• Google Cloud Platform: official Compute Engine images

2023: Ecosystem Expansion

• Kubernetes: a CNCF-certified Kubernetes distribution
• OpenShift: Red Hat OpenShift compatibility certification
• Major cloud providers: support from Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, and Huawei Cloud

Development of the Chinese Community

The Localization Process

2021-Q4: A Chinese documentation translation team is established
2022-Q1: The Alibaba Cloud mirror goes live
2022-Q2: Tsinghua University mirror support is added
2022-Q3: The USTC mirror joins
2023-Q1: Huawei Cloud official images are released
2023-Q2: Tencent Cloud adds support for AlmaLinux
2024-Q1: The Chinese community website goes live
2025-Q2: AlmaLinux 10 is synced across all major China-based mirrors

Adoption Among Chinese Users

As CentOS reached end of maintenance, demand among users in China for RHEL-compatible distributions has continued to rise, and AlmaLinux is increasingly being noticed and adopted in the following scenarios:

• Internet industry: as an alternative to CentOS for servers and cloud environments
• Traditional enterprises: industries such as finance and manufacturing are gradually migrating from CentOS
• Educational institutions: deployed in teaching and research environments
• Domestic innovation scenarios: as one of the open-source, community-driven enterprise-grade alternatives

Recent Progress and Future Outlook (2025–2026)

Milestones Achieved

1. AlmaLinux 10 release: "Purple Lion," based on RHEL 10, was officially released on May 27, 2025, with the kernel upgraded to 6.12 and x86-64-v2 support retained
2. Continuous iteration: 10.1 (2025-11, introducing Btrfs) and 10.2 (2026-05) were released in succession, and the 9 series was updated in sync to 9.8
3. Cloud-native enhancements: container and virtualization stacks continue to be refreshed, and images for major cloud platforms are ready

Key Subsequent Goals

1. Tracking RHEL 10.x minor releases: maintaining a 1:1-compatible release cadence (each May and November)
2. Deepening engagement in the China market: strengthening localization support and services
3. AI/ML support: optimization of machine learning and artificial intelligence toolchains

Long-Term Development Plans

• Technical innovation: maintaining synchronized development with upstream RHEL
• Community building: expanding the global developer community
• Enterprise services: providing better support services for enterprise users
• Ecosystem maturity: building a complete software ecosystem

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Learn more: see the distribution comparison analysis to understand the technical advantages of AlmaLinux