We have a stack of CentOS machines but I'm not that happy with all of them going to the new Stream model where potentially buggy packages get installed. So I'm going to just convert a development box (actually one I'd prefer to not be trashed) to AlmaLinux and see what happens. The machine is CentOS 8 in a vsphere environment.

The first stable release of AlmaLinux OS was introduced on March 30, 2021.

So first obtain the conversion script:

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AlmaLinux/almalinux-deploy/master/almalinux-deploy.sh
chmod u+x ./almalinux-deploy.sh

And give it a go:

./almalinux-deploy.sh
[root@vuh-lb-wat002 ~]# ./almalinux-deploy.sh
Check root privileges                                                 OK
Check Secure Boot disabled                                            OK
Check centos-8.x86_64 is supported                                    OK
Download RPM-GPG-KEY-AlmaLinux                                        OK
Import RPM-GPG-KEY-AlmaLinux to RPM DB                                OK
Download almalinux-release package                                    OK
Verify almalinux-release package                                      OK
Remove centos-linux-release package                                   OK
Remove centos-gpg-keys package                                        OK
Remove centos-linux-repos package                                     OK
Remove insights-client package                                        OK
Verifying...                          ########################################
Preparing...                          ########################################
Updating / installing...
almalinux-release-8.3-4.el8           ########################################
Install almalinux-release package                                     OK
Remove centos-indexhtml package                                       OK
Install almalinux-indexhtml package                                   OK
Remove centos-logos-httpd package                                     OK
Install almalinux-logos-httpd package                                 OK
Last metadata expiration check: 0:00:08 ago on Mon 17 May 2021 15:00:15 BST.
Dependencies resolved.
====================================================================================================================
 Package                                Arch    Version                                            Repository   Size
====================================================================================================================
Upgrading:

...
Complete!
Run dnf distro-sync -y                                                OK
/etc/alternatives ~
~
Generating grub configuration file ...
done

It seemed to replace each package – that was it.

I have downloaded the DVD and built a host in Parallels (so not Vsphere) as well as upgrading an existing development machine on a vmware host and it’s not given me any trouble yet.