AlmaLinux 9.6 Available Now

Delivering security and stability at enterprise speeds

FORT MYERS, FL, UNITED STATES, May 20, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The AlmaLinux OS Foundation, the nonprofit that stewards the free and community-governed open source enterprise Linux distribution, today announced the general availability of AlmaLinux 9.6. Codenamed “Sage Margay,” AlmaLinux 9.6 is available to download via the 400+ device mirror system, including pre-built ISOs, at: https://mirrors.almalinux.org/isos.html

“Thanks to our rock solid infrastructure and the betas that we continue to deliver, we were prepared for 9.6 like never before,” said Andrew Lukoshko, lead architect at AlmaLinux. “With our improved testing speeds, improved build speeds, and minimal changes between our beta and stable releases, we are very excited to release this version of AlmaLinux as quickly and securely as our community has come to expect.”

Releasing with Security, Consistency and Efficiency

The release continues to enhance performance, development tools, and security. Updated module streams improve support for web applications, while new compiler versions bring optimizations for better performance. The release also delivers updates to elfutils, Valgrind, SystemTap, and PCP, improving system debugging and performance monitoring. Networking improvements come with new versions of NetworkManager and iproute. Security updates include new SELinux-policy and SSSD versions. Containerization and virtualization are improved with updated podman, buildah, libvirt, and QEMU-KVM. Additionally, the new snpguest and snphost packages enhance virtualization capabilities.

AlmaLinux OS 9.6 also includes a tech-preview of KVM virtualization support for the IBM Power architecture. It has been unavailable upstream since version 9.0, but is fundamental for a number of AlmaLinux users, including the Oregon State University Open Source Lab, which submitted the RFC to the AlmaLinux Engineering Steering Committee for consideration in February.

AlmaLinux matches release and software versions with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and builds from the same sources as RHEL, ensuring complete compatibility with RHEL.

“AlmaLinux 9.6 marks another milestone release for AlmaLinux, as we continue to deliver AlmaLinux using the same upstream that RedHat uses to build RHEL,” said benny Vasquez, chair of the AlmaLinux OS Foundation. “Our community is more engaged and excited than ever before, and we are driven by their needs every day.”

The full release notes for AlmaLinux 9.6 are available at:
https://wiki.almalinux.org/release-notes/9.6.html

AlmaLinux OS 9.6 is available to download now at:
https://mirrors.almalinux.org/isos.html

Report bugs:
https://bugs.almalinux.org

AlmaLinux Wiki:
https://wiki.almalinux.org

AlmaLinux Chat:
https://chat.almalinux.org

About AlmaLinux OS
AlmaLinux OS is an open source, community-governed, and forever-free enterprise Linux distribution focused on long-term stability and delivering a robust production-grade platform. Distributed from a network of over 400 mirrors across six continents, AlmaLinux is compatible with RHEL(r) and pre-Stream CentOS, and powers projects for governments, the defense sector, and scientific research institutions as well as numerous global business sectors and the web hosting industry. Adopted by some of today’s foremost open source ecosystem projects such as VMware, GitLab and Tenable, it’s available on all major public cloud platforms including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle OCI. The AlmaLinux OS Foundation is a 501(c)(6) non-profit entity created as the central collaboration point for everything to do with AlmaLinux and for the benefit of the AlmaLinux OS community. Visit www.almalinux.org.

AlmaLinux Contact:
hello@almalinux.org

Matthew Zintel
Zintel Public Relations
matthew.zintel@zintelpr.com