My main use case for AlmaLinux is to build a custom image on top of the AlmaLinux image provided by TuxCare. I use that custom image to supply it through all the stakeholders, for example, different teams to use it to launch VMs or containers for whatever workloads they have, and these images are created by our team.

The use case with AlmaLinux is that we are using a common OS platform for our entire environment, which was earlier divided into multiple operating systems.

In terms of support provided by TuxCare, it is good, particularly regarding patching and updates. The OS updates are prompt compared to when we were using Amazon Linux, which had unpredictable patches and a lot of vulnerabilities.

The prompt patching and OS updates with AlmaLinux have helped our team by improving our FedRAMP compliance and vulnerability scan reports, since AlmaLinux connects better with KernelCare provided by TuxCare. We are also using JFrog with these new AlmaLinux images, which means the AlmaLinux repositories for package updates provided by TuxCare are updated more frequently compared to other repositories such as Amazon Linux 2.

AlmaLinux has positively impacted our organization because our goal was to generalize our entire fleet into one operating system, which earlier was not the case as we were using around seven to eight different operating systems. We have now taken up this project to drive it from a central image, allowing us to deploy common security agents, monitoring agents, and different compliance packages or patching workflows to the entire fleet. That centralization has been progressing well.

In terms of how AlmaLinux can be improved, while I praise the patching part, the support provided by TuxCare needs to be more prompt and responsive. We feel they are not taking ownership of addressing a lot of vulnerabilities in some operating systems that are not patched even though fixes are available in open sources. We also expect KernelCare to be better integrated with AlmaLinux, as it is integrated well but the patch sets are not available promptly for AlmaLinux operating systems.

Definitely, the community support has to be improved, and we would also appreciate enhancements in the documentation part.

I have been using AlmaLinux for the last one to one and a half years.

We are measuring specific outcomes since moving to AlmaLinux, but we have not come up with those metrics yet because until the last one or two months, we were in the development phase where I was part of building the image. Now the images are being used by different stakeholders or teams, so we will see the results.

I would advise others looking into using AlmaLinux to first fix their strategy for patching and have that in place, as we rely on KernelCare for our OS patching, but it seems to lag behind, causing us to breach our SLAs for FedRAMP and PCI. If your automations are stronger or if you rely on relaunch-based updates or use new images with continuous patching and reboots for the machines, that will be a better approach. I rate this product a seven because, as I mentioned, there are criticisms mainly around patching. Since we own the patching, it needs some improvement, and since it is a new operating system, the patch sets are not readily available, so that area needs work. Better community support such as that of Ubuntu or RHEL might lead to better results.