Which repository should I use?

General Discussion & Chat
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For context: I’ve been using Fedora for the last 2-3 years, but recently (because of my job) I’ll be dealing with both sensitive and valuable data, so I figured that perhaps it would be wise to move to a more stable and secure work environment, thus I installed AlmaLinux for the first time (, and implemented other InfoSec protocols).
However, I’m still new to all of this.

So, when I downloaded the LibreOffice Suite, I was a bit surprised that it was version 7.1, while on Fedora I’be using version 24.8. Functionality-wise I assume they are almost identical, but I would imagine that some of the updates where security fixes? how does this work?

Also, if I don’t find an application that I’m looking for in the main/default repositories (which is not that hard since there are only a handful of applications there), like NextCloud Sync, from where should I download it? the official website? flatpak? snap?
I’m asking this more like in general, like how would flatpak fit in the AlmaLinux infrastructure in terms of stability and security?
And where could I learn more about these?

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First, the wiki lists some repos: Repositories | AlmaLinux Wiki
The primary third-party repo for applications is EPEL (which exists because … RHEL is slim). (Naturally, with everything not on the tin one has the “Is this safe?” consideration.)

Versions are about what RHEL has and that leads to backporting that Red Hat does: What is backporting and how does it affect Red Hat Enterprise Linux? - Red Hat Customer Portal

For RHEL 10 Red Hat will apparently drop “non-essentials”, like LibreOffice and Firefox, or offer them as flatpacks …

1 Like
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First of all, thank you for your detailed reply!

So, if I understand correctly, if I were using RHEL, and download LibreOffice from their official repository, I would have a software which has more-or-less the latest security updates/patches, even though its version number would say otherwise, and all of this is because of Red Hat backporting. Is that correct?

My next question is: would all these apply the same way to AlmaLinux? As in, on AlmaLinux, if I download LibreOffice from the main repository, I would have the latest security related fixes?

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Yes. It’s the power of open source!
And yes, the LibreOffice fix should apply to AlmaLinux, they tend to get equivalent packages. They might not be the same, but functionally equivalent, and that includes security fixes.
You can use a Flatpak to get the latest security fixes, from The Document Foundation themselves, too.