The AlmaLinux project became the first public RHEL-based distribution that has released a stable build based on RHEL 9. This new distribution is fully binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux which means you can use it as a replacement for RHEL 9 and CentOS 9 Stream.
New Features and Changes in AlmaLinux 9
There are quite a lot of exciting features introduced by the AlmaLinux project. Here are the best six features we have pinned down and sharing with you.
GNOME 40 and GTK 4 Library
The desktop edition of AlmaLinux 9 is based on GNOME 40 and the GTK 4 library. A noticeable change one can notice is the virtual desktops in Activity Summary mode that have been changed to landscape orientation and are displayed as a continuous scrolling chain from left to right.
GRUB Boot Menu
By default, GRUB boot menu is hidden if it is the only distro installed on the system and if the last boot was successful. To display the menu during boot, simply hold down the Shift key or the Esc or F8 key several times.
OpenSSL and OpenSSH Updates
Security updates could not have been neglected, of course. AlmaLinux 9 distribution now uses a new branch of the OpenSSL 3.0 cryptographic library, which means more secure cryptographic algorithms are in enabled.
Additionally, the OpenSSH package has been updated to version 8.6p1 and Cyrus SASL was moved to the GDBM backend instead of Berkeley DB. The NSS (Network Security Services) libraries no longer support the DBM (Berkeley DB) format and, finally, GnuTLS has been updated to version 3.7.2.
Python 3
AlmaLinux 9 is now fully migrated to Python 3 with default branch set to Python 3.9. Python 2 has been deprecated.
SELinux
SELinux performance has been significantly improved with reduced memory consumption, as there is now support for setting “SELINUX=disabled” to disable SELinux in /etc/selinux/config has been removed (the specified setting now only disables policy loading, and in fact disabling SELinux functionality now requires passing “selinux=0” to the kernel).
Deploy AlmaLinux 9 on VPS and Dedicated Servers
The stable edition of AlmaLinux 9 is now available for deployment in all our VPS plans.
Deployment is instant and all you have to do is choose your favourite VPS plan, choose AlmaLinux 9 and proceed with order.
Similarly, you can choose AlmaLinux 9 from the Operating system drop-down list when ordering a Dedicated server of your choice.