AlmaLinux is promoting the addition of proprietary features beyond RHEL compatibility and collaboration with companies. The key points concerning ALESCo’s role and specific examples are summarized from the presentation.
AlmaLinux is more than an operating system compatible with RHEL. The AlmaLinux project may provide additional fixes ahead of RHEL, incorporate bug fixes and security fixes from RHEL, and apply its own fixes. It also seeks to reuse hardware and features that are not supported by RHEL if they can be made operational. Releases are characterized by their speed, at up to 6 days for minor releases and approximately 2 weeks for major releases, enabling the provision of security information and the use of certain features.
The presentation cited examples of support for legacy hardware and software, including reuse of the SPICE protocol removed in RHEL 9, support for KVM virtualization on IBM PowerPC, support for older CPUs in AlmaLinux 10, the addition of frame pointers for debugging and profiling, and reuse of legacy features in storage and networking equipment. These efforts were described as aimed at ensuring practical usability, rather than merely maintaining compatibility.