AMD Now Backing AlmaLinux As This Increasingly Popular RHEL/CentOS Alternative

[Charlie68]

However downstream aren't that tied to them. For example, if Red Hat disappeared tomorrow, both Alma and Rocky could carry on. The upstream vendor wouldn't be able to stop them (unless of course it bought AlmaLinux or Rocky out and broke it by turning it into a rolling release tech demo).

These "derivatives" do nothing but rebuild Red Hat, if Red Hat disappeared tomorrow, the derivatives would disappear too, unless one of them is able to create a distribution similar to Red Hat, which is not at all probable.

[MadeUpName]

I don't suppose that "support" includes releasing packaged drivers for that distro does it?

[Developer12]

So was I until I figured out that RockyLinux is actually owned by a company while AlmaLinux is owned by the Community through the AlmaLinux OS Foundation which is a 501 (c) (6) non-profit. On the Board of Directors of that foundation there is one person from CloudLinux out of five seats. See https://wiki.almalinux.org/Transparency.html

Now compare that with RockyLinux. From their own site (bold by me): The Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation (RESF) is a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) formed in Delaware (file number 4429978). The RESF was founded and is owned by Gregory Kurtzer. See https://rockylinux.org/organizational-structure/

Would you rather have one person control your distro or a proper foundation with a proper Board of Directors with a proper Community member majority?

See the word "corporation" and start running. Maybe look up what that "public benefit" part implies? And yes, Alma has a CEO too.

This is hardly a fair comparison.

[Dan39]

I think the people believing Greg Kurtzer is doing this just for the distro/community are being naive. We have seen pretty quickly that he is in it to make money too, case in point his CIQ company popping up now, and not wanting to make RESF a nonprofit organization like Alma is. I also wonder how honest Greg is being when capitalizing on always calling himself the "CentOS founder". There seems to be some uh, rocky, history to that story.

The Alma Linux / CloudLinux crew is being very honest about everything in my opinion, and by making it a nonprofit forces some transparency.

Note that I don't think I ever heard of CloudLinux before this whole CentOS fiasco. I do not use either of the distros yet, though I have played with both. I also found it interesting how it seems like many of the same companies are contributing to both of these distros at the moment.

[torsionbar28]

These "derivatives" do nothing but rebuild Red Hat, if Red Hat disappeared tomorrow, the derivatives would disappear too, unless one of them is able to create a distribution similar to Red Hat, which is not at all probable.

This is the part people conveniently forget. The hard work is being done at Red Hat. I.e. the stuff that requires an army of full-time professional software developers. The other "downstream" distros are simply rebranding and repackaging. Fretting over the governance of the repackagers seems pretty pointless.

[jaypatelani]

AMD should support NetBSD as well it is best for hosting enterprise applications also has backword ABI support and Major version upgrades available

[gfunk]

After reading the comments I'm now undecided between Alma and Rocky, I think we actually have too many options these days

[Yoshi]

I took the route with AlmaLinux. I like the idea of elected community members in the "board of directors". But the current situation is also confusing. At least as long there's no clear "winner". It would be better if both parties join their efforts. But this won't happen, I suppose.

[skeetre]

I like that there are both alternatives... this way if one of them does go evil, we have the other... but yeah, those talking about them remaining around if Red Hat went away, I don't see that happening. I use strictly Red Hat Linux at work, but at home I like to have options to test things on. Fedora works well enough 99% of the time.

[Terr-E]

Well, there's always Springdale Linux