The beta version of AlmaLinux 9 is now available and it already proves to be incredibly fast and easy to use. Jack Wallen gives his first impressions of this early release.
Since its inception, AlmaLinux has very quickly become one of the best replacements for both CentOS Stream and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Of course, based on RHEL, AlmaLinux benefits from a fairly high bar set by the Red Hat family tree. And while at first glance there aren’t any user-centric features that would surprise anyone out of the Linux waters, AlmaLinux 9 still manages to seriously impress… even as a beta version.
SEE: 40+ Open Source and Linux Terms You Should Know (Tech Republic Premium)
I’ve already written about what’s in the AlmaLinux 9 beta, so if you’re curious about what’s what, read “AlmaLinux 9 beta is now available and introduces several improvements† For those who want to know what AlmaLinux 9 beta is like, read on.
It’s all about speed
I installed AlmaLinux 9 to see what was what, and right out of the gate I noticed something that surprised me… speed.
If I had to point out one single difference from previous versions of AlmaLinux, it’s how much faster the OS has gotten with the latest release. It is noticeable, by a wide margin. I’d go so far as to say that AlmaLinux 9 is the most performant of any RHEL clone I’ve ever experienced.
How did the developers handle this? First off, it’s no secret that AlmaLinux 9 benefits immensely from what the Red Hat developers have done with the platform. In fact, AlmaLinux 9 is identical to RHEL 9, minus the branding and removal of RHEL-specific packages (such as redhat-*, insights-client, and subscriber-manager-migration*). What most likely gives AlmaLinux 9 beta its new speed is a combination of the new kernel, the changes made to SELinux, and the improved I/O controller.
Of course, it’s not just about the underlying layers. AlmaLinux comes with GNOME 42, so for those who prefer to interact with their servers via a desktop, you’ll find that even the GUI is significantly faster.
I ran some simple tests and compared them to previous releases and I found that AlmaLinux is 9 light years faster than version 8. Applications install faster, desktop applications open faster, websites load faster, containers deploy faster, networks are faster…in In fact, everything on AlmaLinux 9 far outperforms everything in AlmaLinux 8. And since this is a beta version, that’s saying something.
Another test I did was a real benchmark, using the Phoronix Test Suite. This was, of course, a single CPU virtual machine, so the results were already doomed to skew fairly low. Even with so little horsepower behind it, the AlmaLinux VM scored in the 15th percentile on this test.
Everything works (almost) normally
I’d also go so far as to say that this is the first release of a CentOS/RHEL clone that I didn’t feel needed to do that much after the initial install. In addition to enabling Cockpit with the command sudo systemctl enable --now cockpit.socketeverything just worked.
The only glitch I encountered was installing PHP. Since this is a beta version, the SSL certificate is not yet valid, which is made clear by the following error:
Error: Error downloading packages:
Curl error (60): SSL peer certificate or SSH remote key was not OK for https://mirrors.almalinux.org/mirrorlist/9.0-beta/appstream [SSL certificate problem: certificate is not yet valid]
And even using the --nogpgcheck option didn’t work. However, it turns out that the time zone on the installation was not set correctly. A quick change of time zones with the command sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/Kentucky/Louisville and (after a quick reboot) I was able to install PHP. It just shows you that you need to check all the details of your installation before actually installing.
Since this is a beta, it’s almost unfair to call this a review. In many cases, reviewing beta software is generally frowned upon. However, I find it fascinating to see how an operating system not only evolves from alpha to beta to final, but also how well it performs before it is really ready for the masses. Considering how well AlmaLinux 9 is already performing, it’s safe to say that once the operating system reaches its final release status, it will be a platform that many businesses and administrators will become dependent on very quickly.
When AlmaLinux 9 is finally released, I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes the de facto standard by which all other server-facing operating systems are judged. And while I won’t be switching from my default Ubuntu Server distribution, I could easily see where AlmaLinux could become my default for certain use cases… especially when speed is a necessity.
If you are interested in testing the beta of AlmaLinux 9, download a copy and turn it on. Please note that this is a beta version and should not be used for production environments.
Subscribe to TechRepublic’s How to make technology work on YouTube for all the latest technical advice for business professionals from Jack Wallen.
