Rocky vs Alma

rcy026

Nobody in the industry could possibly have missed the latest debacle after RHEL's move with CentOS, and it seems the general consensus is that Rocky Linux or Alma Linux will be the natural successor.
So far, it seems to me that the hosting industry favors Alma.

Personally it's to soon for me to have an actual opinion in this matter, I've tried both and they both work, but it would be interesting to hear what others think? Do you prefer Rocky or Alma, and why?
Providers, which one are you betting on? VPS hosts, will you provide one or both as installable options?

I think a crucial factor in the low end market of course will be support from the major panels, such as DA and cPanel, but lets say that they are equally well supported, what other factors would influence your choice?

Jab

Debian.

Janevski

@Jab said:
Debian.

$7

Amadex

AlmaLinux

root

They are both good. Both distributions originate from Red Hat. Providers should simply add templates for both; besides it's not like a few gigabytes of operating system templates represents a huge waste on their space. The more options, the better, because it is hard to satisfy 8 billion people with a single operating system.

terrorgen

Welp, red hat pulled the rug on Alma and Rocky. And I am surprised nobody here is talking about it.

xleet

@terrorgen said:
Welp, red hat pulled the rug on Alma and Rocky. And I am surprised nobody here is talking about it.

Welp, did the "all seeing eye" read the original post? That is the point of this thread, is it not?

I am still trying to differentiate between Alma Linux and Rocky Linux. They are supposed to be source and binary identical to RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). RedHat is owned by IBM. RedHat is trying to prevent Alma and Rocky (and others) from obtaining the source code they need to replicate RHEL exactly as shipped by RedHat, including updates. That decision has been controversial, to say the least. The long term ramifications have yet to be seen.

Suse has come out to say that they will fork RHEL and maintain a compatible version for everyone. What a smart move by them! I am sure that many people hope that Suse takes a big piece of RedHat's market share. See:
https://www.suse.com/news/SUSE-Preserves-Choice-in-Enterprise-Linux/
https://www.suse.com/c/at-suse-we-make-choice-happen/

About five months ago, I looked at Alma Linux and Rocky Linux for myself and struggled to differentiate between them. As far as I could tell, they were identical, except for two things: (1) When RedHat updates are released to their users, which are similar timeframes but don't always happen on the same day, and (2) Their long term support models.

As old VPSs expired and I acquired new ones, I slowly evolved from CentOS to Debian. Honestly, my VPS needs are basic, and anything I might do is well supported by either family of Linux. I note that RHEL seems to be moving away from supporting the desktop, as evidenced by their recent decision to drop support for LibreOffice in their own packaging.

Based on my research from a few months ago,, if I were forced to choose one or the other, I would choose Alma Linux over Rocky Linux, based on their support models. Frankly, it makes little difference to me as an end user. I am not in their target market of those who would buy their support services.

In the meantime, I am using Debian and it is working well.

Kian

+1 for alma

Flying_Chinaman

Alpha chad runs Arch in production

rcy026

@xleet said:
About five months ago, I looked at Alma Linux and Rocky Linux for myself and struggled to differentiate between them.

[...]

@xleet said:
Based on my research from a few months ago,, if I were forced to choose one or the other, I would choose Alma Linux over Rocky Linux, based on their support models. Frankly, it makes little difference to me as an end user. I am not in their target market of those who would buy their support services.

This is the kind of answers I was hoping for.
Like you, I've tried both and find it hard to pinpoint any direct differences that would make me go one way or another. Technically, there are very few differences.
Different support models is a very good point, to be honest I haven't even looked at them since I totally focused on differences in the software itself. Alma is run by Cloud Linux and Rocky was created by one of the founders of CentOS so both camps clearly have the experience to do something like this, but the way they run the business part could of course make a big difference.

rcy026

@root said:
They are both good. Both distributions originate from Red Hat. Providers should simply add templates for both; besides it's not like a few gigabytes of operating system templates represents a huge waste on their space. The more options, the better, because it is hard to satisfy 8 billion people with a single operating system.

I don't think the diskspace is what bothers most providers, but maintaining templates for multiple os's means more work.
I feel like the majority of providers here have templates for Debian, CentOS and Ubuntu, and that's about it. You rarely see a lot of choices, for obvious reasons.
I think that since Alma and Rocky technically are very much alike, one of them will become the "default" choice for vps providers, I see no reason to provide both of them. Anything that runs on Alma will of course run on Rocky and vice versa. It's kind of like Debian and Ubuntu, but I find more differences between Debian and Ubuntu than I do between Alma and Rocky, technically but especially in philosophy.
I just feel that Rocky and Alma are too much alike in every aspect for both to survive, and I'm curious as to what will be the reason one wins.

linveo

In my sample size most people are going with Alma Linux. I have a handful of Rocky VMs. I went with Alma Linux since it is related to CloudLinux.

somik

@Janevski said:

@Jab said:
Debian.

$7

$8

Also, if you prefer centos, why not go with RHEL? Paid OS that comes with great support. If you are willing to pay for Windows license, why not pay for linux as well?

terrorgen

@xleet said:
Welp, did the "all seeing eye" read the original post? That is the point of this thread, is it not?

It was written in a way that it could be referring to the previous episode.

rcy026

@somik said:

@Janevski said:

@Jab said:
Debian.

$7

$8

Also, if you prefer centos, why not go with RHEL? Paid OS that comes with great support. If you are willing to pay for Windows license, why not pay for linux as well?

Not sure who you are replying to here?
CentOS is free and who has said anything about Windows?

somik

@rcy026 said:

@somik said:

$8

Also, if you prefer centos, why not go with RHEL? Paid OS that comes with great support. If you are willing to pay for Windows license, why not pay for linux as well?

Not sure who you are replying to here?

Ya, was too lazy to qoute 2 people... My first $8 reply was to the $7 post about replying to use debian.

My second para of the post was reply to OP (you) about moving away from centOS and going to rocky/alma. I was suggesting to check out RHEL as it is a popular choice for many industries that require good support from OS vendor.

@rcy026 said:
CentOS is free and who has said anything about Windows?

I was comparing RHEL's paid scheme to windows licensing. Windows servers exist and people on LES uses them. But I have yet to see (read) anyone using RHEL.

BTW, Oracle Linux is also an option, built on RHEL just like CentOS and is also free and supported by a big corporation.

https://www.oracle.com/sg/linux/

rcy026

@somik said:

@rcy026 said:

@somik said:

$8

Also, if you prefer centos, why not go with RHEL? Paid OS that comes with great support. If you are willing to pay for Windows license, why not pay for linux as well?

Not sure who you are replying to here?

Ya, was too lazy to qoute 2 people... My first $8 reply was to the $7 post about replying to use debian.

My second para of the post was reply to OP (you) about moving away from centOS and going to rocky/alma. I was suggesting to check out RHEL as it is a popular choice for many industries that require good support from OS vendor.

But low end hosting has never been an industry that requires support.
I personally is not moving anywhere, I left the hosting business years ago. My post was an open question to the community as I am simply curious about how providers will react and their reasoning for doing so.
RHEL is pretty much non-existent in the hosting industry so I didn't even list it as an option.

@rcy026 said:
CentOS is free and who has said anything about Windows?

I was comparing RHEL's paid scheme to windows licensing. Windows servers exist and people on LES uses them. But I have yet to see (read) anyone using RHEL.

I do. Well, not personally, but most of my customers do. On enterprise level I would say RHEL is pretty much standard.
But again, both RHEL and Windows is pretty much nonexistent in the hosting industry so I do not really consider them viable options to replace CentOS.

BTW, Oracle Linux is also an option, built on RHEL just like CentOS and is also free and supported by a big corporation.

Now that is actually an interesting suggestion.
Oracles press release at https://www.oracle.com/news/announcement/blog/keep-linux-open-and-free-2023-07-10/ is basically giving IBM/RHEL the finger, so it will be fun to see how that plays out.