AlmaLinux OS 8.5 for PowerPC is now available

The AlmaLinux OS Foundation announced a new stable release with support for the PowerPC architecture and IBM Power Systems, inching closer to parity with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and CentOS.

AlmaLinux is a production-ready 1:1 drop-in replacement for the CentOS Linux distribution that is end-of-life as of December 31, 2021.

Driven by community members and with support from an array of partners, including infrastructure support from the Oregon State University Open Source Lab, and testing from researchers at CERN, AlmaLinux has added support for 64-bit PowerPC architectures, including the release of binary and source RPMs, container images, as well as cloud images.

AlmaLinux already provides full support for ARM architectures since AlmaLinux OS 8.4, and general availability of x86_64 since AlmaLinux OS 8.3.

“The AlmaLinux community is working tirelessly to deliver parity with RHEL and CentOS at all levels, providing former CentOS users with the obvious choice for a production-ready, drop-in replacement,” said Jack Aboutboul, community manager for AlmaLinux. “This includes ensuring the most popular architectures and hardware are supported and well tested. We’re looking beyond just the base operating system, in providing containers and cloud images as well, since those are of extreme importance and utility to our users. We’re currently working to deliver support for S/390 as well for eventual full parity with RHEL. The community shouldn’t settle for anything less.”

“We’re glad to empower the AlmaLinux community with access to POWER architecture for development and testing via our relationship with IBM. We strive to provide an on-ramp to a variety of architectures for FOSS projects, including POWER and ARM64,” said Lance Albertson, Director of the Oregon State University Open Source Lab (OSUOSL).