Throughout the last few weeks, the team at CloudLinux has worked tirelessly to gear our internal infrastructure to meet the needs of launching a free, open, public Linux distro that’s driven by the community. We’ve committed to AlmaLinux OS, and we see the associated responsibilities in a serious light. While we are preparing the new distro for launch within the next month, we are also putting in place the structures that will ensure continuity for AlmaLinux OS - and that ensures community involvement.
Due Date
End of January - early February.
Infrastructure
Here is where we are currently at in terms of infrastructure, supporting team, and critical tools:
AlmaLinux OS is relying on existing CloudLinux infrastructure that includes the OpenNebula cloud management platform hosted on our bare-metal servers.
We’ve established a comprehensive supporting team that includes the following roles:
a. Packaging - debranding RPMs, packaging
b. Development - developing our toolchain
c. Signing and release - signing packages, composing the distribution
d. QA - testing and automation
e. Infrastructure - infrastructure deployment and maintenance
Key tools including a bug tracker, public repos, wiki, and a forum will all be available to coincide with the Beta release.
Our new website is live and ready to view - just visit almalinux.org.
The AlmaLinux OS Github organization is also live, we will release all source code on GitHub as soon as source code is finalized.
Packaging
At the time of writing we are taking the following approach to packaging:
Right now, we are using the internal CloudLinux build system for both building and testing.
We also use Jenkins, Packer, Ansible and other open source software to implement our testing pipeline.
Community
To make a success of AlmaLinux OS we need the close involvement of the Linux community. Here are our efforts so far:
We’ve chosen and announced the new name for the endeavour we initially code-named Project Lenix. That name is, of course, AlmaLinux OS.
In the space of just over a month our community has expanded quickly: we currently have over 900 members on Reddit (/r/ProjectLenix/ & /r/AlmaLinux/).
You can look forward to a blog and mailing list for future announcements and community updates. Sign up for the updates here.
Slack will be our group chat tool, the Slack workspace will be ready soon.
We are working to build a governance board with members from the community, this governing board will function as a voice of the community and as a central source for decision making.
Media coverage so far includes:
a. Data Center Knowledge
b. Computer Weekly
c. TFIR
d. FOSSMint
e. Learning Linux TV
f. Host Review
g. ZDNet
h. DevOps.com
i. Hosting Journalist
j. Linux Magazine
k. Linux Security
l. ZDNet
m. TechRadar
n. Heise
o. The Register
p. ItsFOSS
q. TugaTech
r. Developpez
s. Web Hosting Talk
t. SDx Central
u. IT Wire
v. Yahoo Finance
w. Slashdot
You, the Linux community, gave a very warm welcome to AlmaLinux OS. From everyone at AlmaLinux OS, a big thank you. We also thank you for your contribution to our public channels. Yes, CloudLinux initiated AlmaLinux OS as a CentOS replacement. But AlmaLinux OS is a Linux distribution developed for the community to fill an important gap. Your contribution, input, and support is essential throughout launching AlmaLinux OS. And in future. Together, we will build AlmaLinux OS into the stable, forever-free server OS the community needs. Soon, we’ll announce our community-based governance board. In the meantime, if you have any direct feedback or if you want to join the regulatory board, you can let us know by completing the sign-up form on the AlmaLinux OS website. Do you have any questions, comments, concerns, suggestions? Or just want to help out? please feel free to reach out to us via email at: hello@almalinux.org. PS: don’t forget you can sign up for news updates at almalinux.org. Sincerely, The AlmaLinux OS Team hello@almalinux.org