I have been using CentOS for years as a somewhat stable go-to for a long time, especially in business environments.
Honestly, it was a very simple fire-and-forget distro that I happen to know extremely well. However, with RH completely migrating to an Elon Musk inspired business model, it’s time for a change.
While I don’t have anything against Debian or Ubuntu, it was never my first choice of distro. (I’ll give them another go shortly though, as the Ubuntu server distros were quite clean.) It boils down to silly things like yum instead of apt and such.
I suppose I am really asking what the most generic server-style distros are super popular these days. Any suggestions?
Alma, Rocky, or Oracle if you’re looking for a direct replacement for RHEL
I happen to like Alma the best out of all of them.
I just can’t figure out the tangible differences between rocky and alma, can you elaborate?
Originally it was a governance structure thing.
Now, Rocky is aiming to hold RHEL bug for bug compatibility, and Alma is giving up on that and situating to ABI but not bug for bug compatible.
SLE and OpenSUSE are pretty popular. They merge sources every release.
CentOS Stream
I just end up using Debian since its supported on almost every remote server and arm devices I use.
Rocky Linux is the only one saying they will maintain full bug for bug compatibility with RHEL. Oracle makes similar claims but offers a different kernel. Alma Linux has been bug for bug compatible but going forward will be ABI compatible but not bug for bug. CentOS Stream is “compatible” but is a bit like a preview of what RHEL might become.
