The Free RHEL 9.2 Clone Distros Arrive

AlmaLinux OS 9.2 and Rocky Linux 9.2 quickly followed the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2.

Hot on the heels of the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9.2, its free rival clones, AlmaLinux OS 9.2 and Rocky Linux 9.2, arrived on the scene. Built on the foundation of the RHEL 9.2 source code, both offer the latest RHEL feature enhancements and features. Classic CentOS may be on its way to history, but RHEL clones for cost-conscious users.

Both AlmaLinux OS and Rocky Linux incorporate a host of security enhancements. These include an idle session termination rule to the Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP), Clevis automated encryption framework upgrades that accommodate external tokens, and support for multiple Certificate Authority (CA) files for Rsyslog's TLS-encrypted logging.

Moreover, these versions have minimized Rsyslog privileges to reduce security exposure. Both also updated fapolicyd, the application whitelisting framework to facilitate RPM database filtering Other security-oriented packages, such as OpenSSL 3.0.7, SELinux 3.5, OpenSCAP 1.3.7, SCAP Security Guide 0.1.66, and Keylime 6.5.2 have also been updated.

AlmaLinux OS 9.2 brings along an updated AlmaLinux EV Code Sign Secure Boot certificate. Rocky Linux 9.2 offers an updated Container Universal Base Image, more closely mirroring the upstream RHEL UBI images. It also enables Wayland by default for Aspeed GPUs, introduces initial support for Intel ARC GPUs, enhances support for Flatpak apps, updates the WireGuard VPN to integrate with SELinux, and includes the nfsrahead tool for adjusting the read_ahead_kb parameter on those still using Network File System (NFS) mounts.

On the hardware side, one of the highlighted upgrades is support for 64k page sizes for ARM architecture. Additionally, these OS versions offer expanded system roles capabilities for increased automation of management tasks, a new Podman system role, and improved application streams.

As usual, the new distros include the latest languages, databases, and toolkits for developers. These include Python 3.11, PostgreSQL 15, Performance Co-Pilot (PCP), Rust v1.66, Go v1.19, and LLVM v15 toolsets.

You can download either AlmaLinux OS 9.2 or Rocky Linux 9.2 from their respective official websites today. Available installation images include 64-bit (x86_64), AArch64 (ARM64), PowerPC 64-bit Little Endian (ppc64le), and IBM System z (s390x) architectures. In short, thanks to these two distros, you can still use RHEL-compatible operating systems while keeping your costs low.

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