Hi,
I’ve been a long-time RHEL clone user since the days of CentOS 4.x. After CentOS 8.x went EOL prematurely I switched to Rocky Linux (after a brief stint on Oracle Linux).
I have Rocky Linux running on all my desktops and servers. I noticed that 9.x doesn’t boot on some older hardware like some Intel Dual core processors at our local school. I went for 8.x which is still supported until 2029.
Now that RHEL 10 is around the corner I gave CentOS 10 a spin and was surprised that it didn’t even boot on the sandbox PC I have in my office, a Dell Optiplex 3020. Well, I can still have 9.x on it, but it’s a pity RHEL 10 won’t support anything under x86_64_v3.
I recently read your blog article about support EPEL 10 for x86_64_v2. How is it with the main releases for Alma Linux 9.x and 10.x ? I don’t know Alma Linux at all and wondered: how “bug-for-bug compatible” are you guys ? Do you somehow improve stuff from upstream ? Do you provide extensive hardware support for older hardware ?
Cheers from South France,
Niki
AlmaLinux does not try to be bug-for-bug compatible.
Just “If it [application] runs on RHEL X, then it should run on AlmaLinux X”.
The release notes do list some deviations (additional hardware support):
For 8: 8.10 | AlmaLinux Wiki
For 9: 9.6 | AlmaLinux Wiki
For 10: 10.0 Beta | AlmaLinux Wiki
You do probably know that
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 --help
run on 8.x does show what the CPU of the machine supports (in “x86-64-v2”, “x86-64-v3”, etc terms). That is easier than staring at the flags from ‘lscpu’.
Simplified, the “x86-64-v2” is SSE4 and the “x86-64-v3” is AVX2.
The AlmaLinux 9 for x86_64 is built with x86-64-v2 instructions, just like RHEL 9.
The AlmaLinux 10 for x86_64 will be built with x86-64-v3 instructions, just like RHEL 10.
AlmaLinux 10 will have also a x86_64_v2 version, built with x86-64-v2 instructions.
It is because of that version that the EPEL 10 for x86_64_v2 did start – any KDE user knows that plain RHEL without EPEL feels somewhat barren.
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I just downloaded Rocky Linux 10.0 and gave it a spin on my sandbox PC, a Dell Optiplex 3020 with an Intel Core i5 processor. This is what we mainly use in our local school. Unfortunately Rocky Linux 10 won’t boot on it. And according to the Rocky Linux maintainers, there won’t be a custom version supporting processors below x86_64-v3.
So I’ll have to cross my fingers and wait for a custom x86_64-v2 ISO by the Alma Linux team. I admit I don’t understand decisions like these made by Red Hat. As far as I’m concerned, I’m now weighing my options and considering moving to Debian or some other distribution that doesn’t suffer from the “Windows 11 syndrome”.
Cheers,
Niki
Florian Weimer’s blogs may (but probably won’t) help:
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I have a follow-up question for the Alma Linux team : do you have a timeline for a first ISO of Alma Linux 10.0 for x86_64-v2? Or even a rough estimation?
Before they say,
AlmaLinux does use similar Soon™ as Rocky Linux; no exact dates.
However, I do see Alma 10 x86_64 and x86_64_v2 isos (dated 2025-05-25) on nearest mirror, so I’d expect release announcement genuinely Soon™.
(AlmaLinux 10.0 beta was released several months ago and there is also AlmaLinux Kitten 10 out there. AFAIK, the Kitten is to AlmaLinux as CentOS Stream is for RHEL.)
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AlmaLinux 10 was just released today including x86-64-v2.
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I installed Alma Linux 10 on my sandbox PC, and everything ran smoothly.
One thing’s not working though. I installed the EPEL release package (dnf install epel-release) but so far nothing seems to be available. I think the release package itself contains the wrong URL, since all the packages appear to be here:
https://epel.repo.almalinux.org/10/x86_64_v2/Packages/
Or was there something I missed ?
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Nope, you’ve done nothing wrong. That’s the correct folder for those packages, but it looks like they’re still being built. We should have EPEL ready Soon™, like @jlehtone said. 
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