Technology media ZDNET senior writer Steven Vaughan-Nichols recently published an article " How AlmaLinux stays Red Hat Enterprise Linux compatible without Red Hat code ", which introduces how the AlmaLinux distribution remains compatible with RHEL without any Red Hat code .
In June this year, Red Hat implemented a new policy that restricted RHEL code access. This move made it difficult for RHEL-based derivative distributions (such as AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, Oracle Linux, etc.) to provide builds that are 100% compatible with RHEL.
In response to this policy, Oracle, SUSE and CIQ (the commercial entity behind Rocky Linux) collaborated to establish OpenELA (Open Enterprise Linux Association) - aiming to create a RHEL-compatible Linux code base and provide open and free Enterprise Linux (EL ) source code to encourage development of RHEL-compatible distributions.
AlmaLiniux did not join OpenELA, but chose another path. AlmaLinux OS Foundation Chairman benny Vasquez's original words : "Abandoning the goal of 1:1 with RHEL, AlmaLinux is committed to compatibility with its application binary interface (ABI) . " The main code is obtained from CentOS Stream , and other code is obtained from the Red Hat universal base image and upstream Linux code.
But the hardest part is actually updating the Linux kernel for RHEL. "You can't get these kernel updates without violating Red Hat's licensing agreement," Vasquez said. "So what they do is they get security patches from various other sources , and when Oracle releases the patches, they go back to the upstream source."
Vasquez said such a process has brought benefits: "AlmaLinux is no longer bound to RHEL and can release upstream security fixes faster than it can." For example, AlmaLinux fixed the AMD microcode vulnerability a week earlier than RHEL.
Since this article has been emphasizing that AlamLinux does not use "Red Hat code", some people have questioned this and believe that the code AlamLinux obtains from CentOS Stream is actually "Red Hat code". CentOS Stream has also been ABI compatible with RHLE.