Rocky Linux 8 vs CentOS Stream 8 vs RHEL 8 vs Oracle Linux 8 vs AlmaLinux 8

The future of Linux has lived up to the expectations that most people have when they begin a project, a relationship, career or anything that will be long-term. Linux has had a stellar future with blinding lights of success and approbation. Today, there are so many distributions that have been spawned thanks to the versatility, the power, the community and the people who continue to keep the flames of this beautiful kernel hot and burning.

In this article, we put on the apparel of comparison and set into the gale party where Rocky Linux 8, CentOS Stream 8, RHEL 8 and Oracle Linux 8 have been invited to showcase what they got. We will strip them of their attire and look at some of the features they are hiding underneath so that we can make informed decisions when considering them for particular use-cases. We will look at some of each of their advantages and disadvantages which we believe will assist you pick the best distro for your various projects.

We will begin immediately so that you get the news while it is hot from the chef’s pot.

1. Rocky Linux 8

Rocky Linux is a community enterprise operating system designed to be 100% bug-for-bug compatible with America’s top enterprise Linux distribution now that its downstream partner has shifted direction. It is under intensive development by the community. Rocky Linux is led by Gregory Kurtzer, founder of the CentOS project after RedHat decided to switch to CentOS Stream. CentOS Stream tracks just ahead of a current RHEL release. CentOS will no longer be a stable point distribution but a rolling release Linux distribution.

Rocky Linux 8 is a downstream rebuild of RHEL 8 and, as such, aligns with the RHEL 8 lifecycle and therefore will be actively maintained until 2029. As of early August 2021, Rocky Linux has almost 100 mirrors, including a global CDN (Content Delivery Network). Over 80 mirrors provide HTTP, over 80 mirrors provide HTTPS and over 50 provide RSYNC connections.

So far, Rocky Linux has gained immense adoption and support from the community and its future is amazingly bright. It performs well as a server since it is based on RHEL’s stable source code hence can be used to power your production workloads without any fuss or doubt.

Pros

• A good replacement for CentOS 8
• Backed by community support that is growing and vibrant
• You get latest release of software
• A vibrant and growing community that is eager to make amends after CentOS switch.

Cons

• It is still young compared to other stable distributions.

2. AlmaLinux

AlmaLinux OS is an open-source, community-driven Linux operating system that fills the gap left by the discontinuation of the CentOS Linux stable release. AlmaLinux OS is a 1:1 binary compatible fork of RHEL® guided and built by the community.

As a standalone, completely free OS, AlmaLinux OS enjoys $1M in annual sponsorship from CloudLinux Inc and support from other sponsors. Ongoing development efforts are governed by the members of the community.

A little bit about the name AlmaLinux:

The AlmaLinux team has the following to say about why they named the distribution as AlmaLinux. “Alma means soul in Spanish and other Latin languages. Looking back, it is easy to see that Linux is as popular and pervasive as it is thanks to the efforts of a passionate, diverse developer community. This community is the soul of Linux, and everyone that relies on a Linux distribution is indebted to the efforts of the Linux community. That is why we called our new distribution AlmaLinux OS.”

Pros of AlmaLinux

AlmaLinux comes with the following goodies

• It is Production-ready: AlmaLinux OS is an enterprise-grade server OS and a stable Linux distribution with regular releases that come with a long support windows.
• It is Fully supported, and always free: AlmaLinux OS Foundation members, sponsors and partners back the AlmaLinux OS with investments and long support commitments to ensure the distribution is free of limitations, fees and charges.
• It is effortless to switch to AlmaLinux from CentOS: Switching distributions is usually costly and time-consuming, but that’s not the case when switching from CentOS and other RHEL® forks to AlmaLinux OS. They have provided the tools and good documentation on how that can be done.
• Community is growing so you can find help when stuck
• There is commercial support for the ones who would like to venture into it.

Cons of AlmaLinux

• It is still fairly new: Compared to other distributions that have been around for years, AlmaLinux was launched recently to sort out the issue of CentOS being discontinued. So the community is still growing.

You can find out more about the distribution from their main webpage.

3. CentOS Stream 8

Late last year (2020) RedHat announced that it was changing how CentOS was going to be going forward. It was shocking news that they were shifting focus from CentOS Linux, a distribution priding itself in stability as a rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), to a rolling release Linux CentOS Stream distribution. This means that CentOS Stream will be tracking just ahead of a current RHEL release positioned as a midstream between Fedora and RHEL. To bring the point closer home, CentOS is no longer a stable point distribution but a rolling release Linux distribution now known as CentOS Stream 8. As for CentOS 8, Red Hat will take the mantle of updating it until the end of 2021 to the dismay of many CentOS users who had settled for the earlier promise that it was going to receive updates till 2029.

A rolling-release Linux is one that is constantly being updated hence having the major issue of powering your production workloads. This is because something may break in the rolling release to the detriment of your applications. Use it in production knowing that bugs may appear anytime.

Pros

• You get the backing of RedHat
• You get latest release of software

Cons

• Stability and dependability get sacrificed on the altar of bleeding edge.
• With a rolling release, major bugs might appear in a production system.

3. RHEL 8

RedHat Enterprise Linux as the name suggests is a Linux distribution developed by RedHat, the company, and delivered to customers via a Licensing model.

The stability, the rigor involved in testing and ensuring that the RHEL being released is stable makes RHEL 8 wonderful to power your production workloads. Most companies across the globe use this distribution and has proven to perform quite well. In case of any problems, RedHat provides paid for support that customers can take advantage of to avert issues and stay afloat. This is the kind of stuff that makes RHEL stand out on the market. Moreover, they offer certifications that makes their qualified administrators trusted all over the world while carrying the brand.

Pros

• You get the backing of RedHat’s Support
• You get latest stable release of software
• Step releases ensure that what you get has undergone rigorous testing.
• It is trusted and performant.
• Stable Operating System by world standards.
• Source Code is provided.
• Certifications to certify administrators to ensure that trained personnel handle the systems.

Cons

• Support is paid for.
• It is enterprise hence licensing is involved

4. Oracle Linux 8

Oracle Linux is a Linux distribution packaged and distributed by Oracle for free. This distribution is compiled from RedHat Enterprise Linux sources just replacing the branding of RedHat with that of Oracle. Oracle Linux 8 is one hundred percent (100 %) application binary compatible with RedHat Enterprise Linux 8 and it has been completely free to download and use since 2006.

If you heavily use Oracle Products in your productions systems, then Oracle Linux will power them efficiently compared to other Linux distributions. Besides that, Oracle Linux has the kind of stability that production systems demand. So as far as powering your production systems are concerned, Oracle Linux can handle it. The community is available too where you can share your technical issues and get feedback that will point you in the right direction.

Pros

• You get latest release of software
• You get the backing of Oracle
• Highly easy to use GUI to manage the server
• It is based on RHEL, hence stable and performant
• Works best with Oracle applications such as databases
• Completely opensource and free
• Frequent updates and security patches
• No license but support is paid for.
• Powers Oracle Linux applications very well compared to other discributions.
• It has been completely free to download and use since 2006
• A linux distribution that enjoys automated Linux patching without reboot
• The only Linux distribution with zero downtime automated patching for kernel, hypervisor and critical user-space libraries.

Cons

• Paid support
• Has compatibility issues while integrating with other products

Now that we have seen some of the pros and cons of the distros we are discussing today, let us go further and compare them on other features in the table below.

Concluding Remarks

Comparing distributions is never an easy task because there are lots and lots of features that a brief article like this one cannot claim to exhaust. We have discussed some of the salient ones so that you as a user can make a decision as quickly as possible if you were to pick one for a particular use case. There is definitely much more about the distributions above. and we appreciate your readership.