CERN & Fermilab use AlmaLinux. Why Don’t You?
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- Опубликовано: 14 июл 2024
- CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, have both said they will use AlmaLinux as "the standard distribution" for experiments at their facilities. If it is good enough for nuclear physicists, then I guess it is good enough for me and you!
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Just a fun fact: in our language (Hungarian) ALMA means APPLE (the fruit)
Same in Turkish; Apple Linux :)
I think Alma derives from the Latin _Alma Mater_ (the nurturing mother).
In German this is a common idiom in academic circles to refer to the university where you studied and graduated.
..and in Portuguese and Spanish, "alma" means "soul".
In Latvian it’s a name given to girls.
@@usptact in Spanish speaking countries too...
I think I will stay with Debian for the next 10 years. I did lot of distro hopping before and am tired of being distracted by new and shiny distros, just want to get my work done :)
Same, but I'll try this one
Here's the comment I was looking for... Debian based distros for me as well. I've always been a little annoyed when I've had to use/support RH based stuff. Seems like when people in fancy suits make the call, it's always RH stuff because "enterprise"...
@@ryanchowdhary965 now we almost have to...
I tried Debian, but it was such a moving target, that after having my laptop down for a while because the battery went bad, I ran updates and the OS pretty much ate itself. That's not usable for me, even though I was able to easily recover all my data. I run mostly Linux Mint anymore, after Ubuntu went with Gnome. Servers are all Ubuntu
I have using Debian since 2005.
Pretty sure Alma Linux is a rock solid stable distro, but as desktop user, I prefer using fedora for the leading edge software.
hehe funny choice of words since the most popular alternative for Almalinux is Rocky Linux
Same. I'm using Fedora as my daily driver and Alma linux for my server setup
I find fedora stable enough. I particularly like the part where it doesn't get in my way in the name of stability
Its meant to be a server distro but you can run it as a desktop. Its supported for a decade so its basically a LTS Fedora but it won’t have the bleeding edge aspect associated with Fedora.
I had a long OS hopping.
The best experience for me was Alma Linux.
Due to the lack of support for Fusion 360 I stick to Windows until my next pc purchase.
That will be tuxedo
Just to be clear, while CERN and Fermilab have made that announcement about AlmaLinux as the plan going forward, what is actually running at CERN and Fermilab is mainly still CentOS 7, and some AlmaLinux 9 installs are starting in the new year.
And they will probably use Alma's ELevate-leapp tool to migrate those systems from CentOS-7 to AlmaLinux-8
What's great about alma linux is was created by a "Cloud Linux" they were already doing the rebuilding of packages of RHEL for the paid operation system. So they know what they are doing.
It's great that they are now doing the same for free for the community.
The paid version is for those who want handholding. Redhat offers its distro to developers for free but will be happy to sell you their paid support if you really need it.
One of my cousins is a nuclear physicist, studying neutrinos. Last I heard he was using Red Hat.
I run openSUSE, but used Red Hat several years ago.
Gary: Being retired I can well afford to stay with MINT as it has been very good to us. Whatever makes you happy is all good, so long as it is GNU Linux, grin.
The shop I work at used CentOS for everything except production. We used RHEL production. We switched to Ubuntu for everything after RedHat killed CentOS and haven't looked back.
I remember the times when CERN was creating their own RHEL compatible clone named "Scientific Linux". It appears like AlmaLinux is the reincarnated "Scientific Linux", and Rocky Linux became new CentOS.
Rocky and Alma are straight recompiles of RHEL from source code. So they are the "new CentOS." Scientific Linux was a recompile of RHEL with a little extra sauce, as I understand it.
@@philipgwyn8091 this is correct, scientific linux was built to be compatible with certain scientific software. You're also correct that both are RHEL-clones.
Yep I just wrote a familiar comment xD
RIP CentOS :'(
The big difference is AlmaLinux was put into a 501 non-profit foundation so it's independent and community controlled (meaning you can count on it for the long term). Rocky will repeat the history of CentOS: eventually it will be acquired by a commercial enterprise (because Greg owns all of it), and it will go the same route for more $$$ in Greg's pocket
Ive been using Ubuntu since 2008, with a splash of arch for certian projects at times. I have had a few CentOS VPS instances over the years and have always found guides and tutorial seem to prefer giving instructions for Debain based systems, this makes anything with apt a solid win over anything yum. I can understand thats going to be less of an issue at CERN and Fermilab considering they run lots of custom in-house software, but to just get something to work on at home, ubuntu cant be beat.
Supercomputer clusters in Slovenia that I worked on also use AlmaLinux. That's how I learned about its existence.
I've been a CentOS user historically but have been out of the game for a couple years so I didn't know about any of this. Thanks for the info.
A fun thing is that, in the visual effects industry, Linux is actually the standard too! Most studios used CentOS, but Rocky Linux seems to be the more popular replacement there. Though the popularity of real time stuff with unreal engine and the like has made some switch to windows…
The Visual Effects Society Technology Committee has made strides to convince developers to support linux better, and have actively pushed at least epic games to support Linux better. Other observers of this committee include Canonical, CIQ, CloudLinux, Red Hat, Autodesk, SideFX and Foundry (Adobe is notably absent… of course)
Yes, I read their 2021 report. Quite an eye-opener. Seems Adobe’s refusal to offer its products for Linux is more of a nuisance than an actual show-stopper.
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 the thing is, adobe’s stuff isn’t industry standard for film. The only adobe thing that is truly industry standard is probably photoshop, but vfx houses don’t necessarily work with photoshop a lot. (Adobe does now own the substance suite of apps which are industry standard but they are available on linux)
@@binchamers Photoshop has trouble with image formats like EXR with more than 16 bits per pixel component. Something like GIMP, with its integrated GEGL pixel engine, works better with that.
I don't know much about the visual effects industries (I'm a database admin i use Linux every day). Why is Linux industry standard there too? Is it because of like render servers and Nas for footage have better support with Linux than a windows ecosystem?
Thanks for the update! Another good 'un, Prof!
We use tumbleweed, simply because there is no better.
I am using Alma on home servers, and it's awesome.
One of my own personal rules, never use anything with "Alma" in it's name, that is why... plus, I use bsd....
I find it very odd to show some gnome desktop features as "this is AlmaLinux".
The history is interesting, but the end is just odd.
For a distro like this, I'd be interested in how they ensure stability (is it just transferred from RHEL?), How up-to-date packages usually are, how long it takes security patches to arrive. Basically what should set this distro apart as a stable distro.
Yes, that is the main thing, the stability is the same as RHEL, plus the updates are the same as RHEL. In other words a working and viable RHEL clone.
We had been using Centos for all our web servers and supporting services (db/caching etc) since 2008, but have started switching away since they made that change. Now mainly using Debian now these days
I'm happy with Mint for now.😄
Great video as always :D
Thanks Gary as always very brief and thorough/concise at the same time. I'm interested in your thoughts on chatGpt and gpt3 and the fears by software engineer about they're careers becoming obsolete In a few years. Kindly explain :)
Alma Linux brought back KDE, which has been deprecated by RHEL upstream and they also offer XFCE as an an alternative desktop.
Yes, we had converted to centos a while ago, though we still run a couple of fedora 13 servers. When they announced the change to stream, we tried it and was not really happy, if I remember right we had issues with something as simple as ethernet, so we set up some test servers using rocky and it worked very well. That being said, based on this news, we will setup some servers to use alma and check it out.
Because I'm not CERN nor Fermilab, I use Linux Mint
3:03 if you know the origin of Debian's name it becomes easier to pronounce the name: it's Deb-Ian, Debra and Ian together.
Been running AlmaLinux on Ampere Altra's on the Oracle Cloud Free tier for all my personal offsite backup needs. It's really just like CentOS, and now Rocky, a solid, but boring server distro. For a desktop, I prefer Fedora or Arch, but if you just want something to work and don't require exotic or bleeding edge versions, you're fine with Alma.
For servers I went with FreeBSD. Just many more options and the ZFS format option.
Does it run on RISC-V yet?
At work we have a couple of Redhat enterprise servers, but, most of the stuff I work with is on AIX or SUSE. At home, I'll stick with my old favorite, Slackware. However, Alma sounds like a great option for folks who had been running CentOS or like RH. My comments are probably useless here, but it will at least feed the algorithm.
Gentoo is the only distro I've used that stays the hell out of my way forever. Takes a lot of effort to set it up, but once that's done it's extremely customizable and stable.
Very educational. I didn't even know about WSL, which I'm now looking into. Thanks.
I am glad you liked it. I have a couple (maybe 3) videos on WSL on this channel.
@@GaryExplains Excellent. Will do. Thanks!
GARY!!!
GOOD MORNING PROFESSOR!
GOOD MORNING FELLOW CLASSMATES!
STAY SAFE OUT THERE EVERYONE!
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!
MARK ‼️ Happy Holidays 🎉
I use Linux Mint for day to day tasks, and Nobara (based on Fedora) for gaming.
I use fedora in day to day usage... it's pretty smooth before that i was with manjaro but not sure how but it gets broken with new updates 😜
I believe the Centos clone they used was called Scientific Linux wasn't it? I used that for a while until IBM blew up Centos. I think AlmaLinux will be given a tryout.
Well Explained...
"bug-for-bug" is very important! Some of the most important software out there relies on bugs in OS and protocols to function correctly :P
Seems that’s only true for proprietary software. The open-source folks know how to fix their stuff!
We’ve moved our servers to FreeBSD. For any Linux-specific server job, we use Ubuntu at an org I work with
I use Fedora Silverblue and it's awesome
Will stick to my Mint Mate, but it's good to see that the Linux community is keeping the good work going. Have fun, CERN, and thanks again for the HTML.
Thanks for the video. Alma Linux is new to me.
Thanks for this. I've been wondering what the CentOS image is, on the shelf beside my current desk. Clears things up. Won't be trying Alma mainly because I've got only a little clue about home server.
I am running linux mint on my dell optiplex 9020, I have an internal lc m-disc burner, which ran just fine under win 7, but while the burner reads my burned M-discs, it will not burn them! can you suggest a solution, thanks!!
you didn't really show what AlmaLinux was capable of. You only showed the Gnome DE... :(
Probably because most people do not have 8 hours everyday to spend trying to get Linux to behave.
Scientists do?
@@AClarke2007
I did not know everyone were a scientist.
To answer your question - because it's one of the few distros that doesn't have btrfs support.
THANK YOU, BOSS
I have been really pleased with openSUSE for the last few years but may give this a try on a spare laptop.
Moved to Ubuntu lts .. works like a charm for my server needs.... It would be cool if you could do a video on alma vs any Debian distro
I'm curious to know if there are other differences besides the package manager... Maybe some performance differences?
Intresting changes, as I worked for the CERN they used Scientific Linux a bit compatible version of RHEL.
As far as enthusiast/I'm going to game but on linux distros go I think NixOS keeps getting more interesting over time. I'll probably be giving it a try when I build my next machine.
To be clear, CERN & Fermilab use case is mostly on servers. Both have been using RHEL distributions for as long as I can remember - back in the days they had their own called "Scientific Linux" which was scrapped as CentOS 7+ looked sufficient. The main reason for their choices are long-term support and conservative upgrade policies. Remember, these labs run long-term experiments with data policies > 20 years. Just because they picked Alma, does not mean it is the right thing for _you_ ;).
I was a huge CentOs fan before the acquisition and the discontinuation and now completely on Debian. Will definitely pull the Docker image and play with it out of curiosity though. Glad to see a new "CentOs" like distro out there. Choices are good to have.
RiP loveable CentOS, even i use CentOS icon as my mobile wallpaper
When RH screwed up CentOS, we had a choice, I tried Oracle, but found it to be a bit too wonky. Then Rocky and Alma came along. Remembering that Kurtzer abandoned CentOS, I figure it's only a matter of time before he abandons Rocky, so I chose to go with Alma.
Also almalinux has actual company behind it
I have switched a lot of my CentOS boxes over to RockyLinux. The switch has been mostly painless.
Because in a lot of ways, they're going to be focused on science packages, and less so on other things other users are interested in.
We’re in the process of going to Alma. Was shocked by what happened to CentOS. I run Arch at home but at work I calm down and run Alma.
My organization is in the middle of a migration from CentOS 7 to Ubuntu because of the CentOS Stream changes. I kinda wish we had known about this earlier but I don't think management would've gone for something so new.
I would agree. Plus I expect new bugs.
Same where I work. For new VMs they other go with good RHEL if the client pays for the license or Ubuntu. I asked one of the senior sysadmins (I'm a junior) responsible for these decisions why they decided to go for Ubuntu instead or rocky and alma and they told me it's still to early to tell if the people behind those distros will maintain them as expected. Possibly in the future once they've proven themselves to be reliable they might switch back.
The fact that the video starts with an eloquently explained history of RHEL and CentOS for the context of the existence of Alma Linux, only for it to end with, "Oh look, GNOME", kinda feels like a troll.
Sorry you feel like that. My goal was to add something visual after all the data and history.
@@GaryExplains I was hoping for more of a "Fedora vs Alma" thing, like how are they different, and what unique kernel features do they each ship with? Is one more compatible with Intel graphics, or something. Up until the end, I really liked it, I just wanted more, "Why should you use this?" at the conclusion. I find the CentOS situation really interesting, and I'm glad CentOS users are getting what they need, so it's good to see people making videos and talking about it.
Fedora vs Alma vs Rocky could be an interesting video, but certainly a separate video, it wouldn't have fitted in this one.
@@GaryExplains @Gary Explains It's easier to decide between things like Arch and Debian based distros than between multiple distros based on the same thing. All of my RHEL experience comes exclusively from Fedora, so I know little about the bigger culture, as opposed to Debian and Arch, which are kind of the Disney and Warner Bros. of Linux, and subsequently hog the spotlight. If you were to make a video about comparing RHEL based distros, then I'm all on board for it. I'm gonna subscribe to your channel to see what you come out with next.
I'm a semi-retired software developer. Back when I used to spin up servers for various companies, I'd run CentOS on servers and Debian on my personal laptop. A long time ago, I also used to run Debian on servers, but I remember hitting an issue a long time ago when I compiled MySQL sources on a Debian server, and there was a bug in some version that only emerged when it was used with the existing library versions on Debian stable at the time. It took me a while to figure out why it was happening in a server environment, but I eventually found that I could consistently reproduce the bug when compiled on Debian stable but NOT on CentOS or RHEL. At that point, I started to use CentOS on servers (I had used RHEL on servers at some deep-pocketed companies in the past that paid for support), I learned enough RPM to be able to build my own RPMs for certain specific software deployments, and I found CentOS to be reliable and predictable for server installations.
I continued to run Debian on my laptop because I use various niche desktop/workstation productivity apps that are available in Debian's repos but not other distros' repos. When I need to compile specific versions of software from source, it's easy enough for me to do on either Debian or RH-flavored distros. I think I've been running Debian on my personal computer for almost 20 years now! Once every couple years, I have to help a friend or family member with something on their personal MacOS or Windows machine, and they feel totally foreign to me these days.
Next time I need to run a critical server setup, I'll probably take a look at AlmaLinux to see if it has enough of the packages that I need to install all the major dependencies for anything that I might want to compile. I've found that compiling server software-- web servers, database servers, etc -- is generally easy-enough on RH-flavored distros as long as they don't have dependencies on loads of libraries that aren't available in the RH repos. Installing a few libraries from source is fine, but when you have to install > 6 libraries from source to install some piece of server software, it becomes tedious. So hopefully AlmaLinux has enough libraries to allow you to compile, for example, a recent stable version of nginx or postgres without too much fuss.
Really nice👍
Good to read that my decision to switch our CentOS Servers to AlmaLinux about five month ago seems wo have been OK. ;-)
Would you consider making a video on what it takes to move from a Debian based distro (eg Ubuntu or my favorite, Linux Mint) to Alma Linux?
Why? Download it to a flash drive and try it out before you change Distros. I've used a bunch of different Distros and find that Mint is to my liking even though I do have Arch running on one of my machines. I guess if you like Gnome then switch to Alma. Linux is Linux though with a few different package managers and DE's.
As was pointed out above if you are a home / desktop user I would also advise Fedora.
Either way IMO you will need to learn dnf. It is similar to Apt.
If you are a desktop user you probably also want to enable the rpmfusion repos.
Other than that the transition should be fairly smooth although gnome is more bare bones but give it a try for a month it tends to grow on you as it is clean. If not look into an alternative DE or gnome extensions.
Why don't you? We do! We've switched our server OS of choice from CentOS 7.x to Alma 9 at the University I work for. I've built a fair few recently. :-)
gary, maybe you can look into why videos in this tube have so poor volume levels. some have to be reduced so much while others have to maxed but with not much help.
Typical "fixing" by big multi billion £ corporations. It's certainly no accident that they killed the point of CentOS. Congrats to the guy for giving them the finger and keeping the original vision alive.
I used RH all the way until it was no longer free...something like RH9 or so...then started using Debian...fell in love with it...plus I saw a huge benefit to not having a Corporate entity driving the project...so I still use Debian or Mint in my personal life! CentOS was just a bit of hobby stuff...but ultimately came back to Debian! I think I will give Alma a try since I have a Proxmox instance...might be fun! :-)
Good explanation
i have been using linux for about 15 years and have hopped around, finally landing on amarok linux. as a user, i like an o s
that is easy to install and use as i don't do any heavy lifting, just web browsing mostly. most versions work fairly well
and there's not that much difference. some of them have little things that are irritating, so i just try a different one.
I use RH for our cluster for its stability and validated compatibility with OFED, Ubuntu for all the GPU/Python scientific and AI stuff and Mint as my daily driver.
But what was the criteria that both institucions use to select AlmaLunux over the others Centos forks?
I was really hacked off when they announced the sale of Redhat. As IBM SCREWS UP EVERYTHING. Started using Rocky Linux, but switched to AlmaLinux shortly after. Been pretty happy since the switch.
The distribution is geared for CERN requirements
So, what's the benefit of Alma versus Fedora? The latest Fedora Workstation was a little heavy on resource usage, running services, what is pre-installed like Cubes. My media driver "gloss distro" is LinuxMint Cinnamon, but I use Manjaro for programming, both with btrfs. I'm curious now, because dnf seems pretty rock solid. I just didn't like Fedora overhead.
Thank you! I just installes almalinux9 for my wsl, so easy!
I tried sudo yum install firefox and, although I could start firefox, there were error messages, which does not seem goo for a "rock stable distro"
Are wsl versions of Microsoft modified to become compatible with wsl, which could affect their solidity?
I was using ubuntu (and sometimes opensuse) , why should I prefer alma?
Running GUI under WSL needs some configuration. I have a video about it on this channel. It has nothing to do with Alma.
WSL seems to have some Microsoft-specific quirks that you don’t get on a genuine Linux distro.
Alma linux packages is too old(or stable), depend how people look at it. Prefer fedora for desktop, Alma Linux / Rocky Linux / Debian / Ubuntu for server.
I am running Centos Stream 9, Almalinux 9 and Oracle Cloud Linux 8. Gotta catch em all :D
At work I administer RHEL 7 and 8 (not 9 yet) server hosts.
Thus Fedora lent itselft to me as the least fussy OS because it has all the config files located in the same places like RHEL, on my private laptop, where I still am running Fedora 36 though 37 was released recently.
Of course, all the Linux hosts I fiddle with at work are headless so I am so much accustomed to working in the shell and doing configurations with vim that I don't use any graphical tools from the Fedora desktop, which in my case is Xfce.
I've heard that Red Hat put a lot of effort in Cockpit, which is a GUI admin tool for not just a single host but rather for a whole bunch of RHEL hosts somewhat like a managed servers automation, at least that seems what Red Hat is aiming at in the long run.
But to make use of Cockpit you need to install a desktop environment (usually Gnome as for RHEL) on your Cockpit master host.
Cockpit comes with all sorts of plug-ins for various admin tasks, whatever applies to your requirements, so there is one plug-in for e.g. virtualisation (similar to virtmanager), and the functionality of Cockpit seems to be extended with every new major RHEL release.
I think this sounds pretty interesting, as Alma as well as Rocky linux will have this too, and well worth giving it a try even though I am a die-hard bash user for all tasks that don't explicitly require a GUI.
Another thing that is seamlessly integrated in RHEL (and thus in Alma, Rocky, Fedora too) is SELinux to harden your services run on the host, it even is configured to run in enforcing mode out of the box.
Though reconciling with SELinux can be a bit challenging in the beginning you shouldn't switch it off entirely when your services don't seem to work for no obvious reason.
In such cases you can always switch SELinux to petmissive mode despite some violation of its targeted policy so that it would allow the execution of the violation anyway, and have peek at the audit log to find out what made SELinux croak and try to fix it with the help of a introduction to and the manpages of various SELinux helper commands.
Another hardening feature is that firewalld is started with just three allowed services for the default public zone of NICs after the OS installation.
firewalld (I think as of RHEL 8) is managing nftables instead of iptables rules, which was introduced to ease firewall administration and comes with the admin command firewall-cmd that can add and remove rules more dynamically than with iptables before.
Of course, if it is considered easier I think might depend on your prior exposure to iptables, like I am more accustomed to iptables and so far have next to none experience with nftables, why I entirely have used firewall-cmd on my RHEL 8 and Fedora hosts so far.
But I would say that for the Joe average firewall "administrator" the firewall-cmd tool fully suffices to administer your firewalld firewall (that sounds redundant).
I thought that AlmaLinux only worked on Super Computers such as the Cray, well thanks for information.
I’m curious what made them choose Alma over Rocky. I’m still deciding between the two
I used CentOS for years and was really distressed when they killed it. Alma looks awesome, and I will be installing it next week. Thanks for this!
I switched my server to almalinux over Xmas weekend. It’s working great, but I still have a couple of bugs to work out
Excellent info, thanks for putting this together. I had heard about Rocky Linux but not AlmaLinux. I know of at least one commercial off the shelf security product that still runs on a cut down version of CentOS and they still haven't let their customers know what they will be switching to since Red Hat (IBM) has pretty much destroyed CentOS.
You are missing your mastadon profile in the description
Let them contribute to Linux, they have been Linux users for a long time but we haven't seen any solid contributions up to this point. I am sure they have some cutting edge internal software in their hands.
Is there any "real" difference from AlmaLinux to Mint, ZorinOS or even Nobara? As in, something that makes it stand out other than being "user-friendly"?
Stability.
Rocky linux appears to be a lot more popular. If they are both bug compatible with RHEL what's left to distinguish them?
I use Manjaro Linux, but if the rumblings I've heard about start to affect the quality, I'll change to plain Arch or a fork of Arch.
Also worth mentioning is Oracle Linux (also bin-compatible with RHEL source code). It's free, and if you have many Oracle products in the enterprise, it's a more natural choice. Cheers.
The problem with Oracle Linux is that at a whim Oracle could change the rules about its use, just like Red Hat did with CentOS. Too risky.
‘For experiments . . .” Doesn’t mean a lot considering everything that goes on in those facilities. For instance, do they have a Linux CAD/CAM solution that they use to build parts required for their experiments?
AlmaLinux is a great choice for servers. Fedora or Arch for workstations for me though :)
There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again
I'll be sticking with Debian based distros. I hardly ever have to delve into Linux, so I know just enough to be dangerous and get what I need done. I haven't used CentOS in over a decade, and honestly can't be bothered to relearn all the basic commands and syntaxes that differ in RHEL compared to Debian. I abandoned RHEL based distros back when they still couldn't decide on a common front-end command for the package manager....
Still have some CentOS VMs/servers, but starting to migrate to Rocky Linux.
Will they still use alma after rhel changes?
I've honestly only used Ubuntu but it's only for personal use, not production.
Cern has theit own OS I think it is called CernOS or somehting like that with all the CERN tools like ROOT preinstalled. (Worked there last year)
alma means apple in hungarian... anyway... i used centos for years, maybe i will give it a try...
Interesting, in Latin it means to grow, nourish.
Because Red Hat ftw!
They use what works for them. I use what works for me.
Disappointed when CentOS was sunset. Not using CentOS stream. Using AlmaLimux.