“As a standalone, completely free OS, AlmaLinux OS enjoys $1M in annual sponsorship from CloudLinux Inc.” This is not to knock the valiant work done by small teams or even single developers but the resources pumped into AlmaLinux to make it happen definitely show in the finished product. I used the boot.iso and then added KDE being my preferred desktop. In addition to the choices available during install, Flatpak is included by default plus with the EPEL and Fusion repos added what else is there to need? The desktop presentation is clear, clean and sharp and everything works flawlessly, including Bluetooth. There is no longer any need to miss CentOS and IMO Rocky Linux will never be able to compete with this. https://almalinux.org/
Downloaded yesterday and will try it sometime this week. There's no live ISO by the way. I got the minimal one at 2GB. The full is around 9GB I think.
Another option is Springdale 8.3 which might be a better fit for some people. http://springdale.math.ias.edu/
I had some work to do to get AlmaLinux have a GUI. I'm using it at the moment. Even with EPEL and RPMFusion many things seem unavailable in comparison to Debian and Ubuntu. But it feels extremely solid and stable.
Really love it and if Mrk was in despair over CENTOS abandoning the long term stable model, we have a new OS to take off where IBM and Red Hat had it axed. Just what we needed for the desktop and if you’re not content to live on the bleeding edge with Fedora, AlmaLinux gives you the Red Hat experience for another decade. CENTOS is dead but its found a new home in which to live on.
You choose the workstation in the full dvd iso. and tick for installation the desired packages. GNOME does have to whipped into shape and you do have to add third party repos but the experience is what you’d expect from a LTS distro. Ask and you shall receive!
I prefer the boot.iso at only 638MB. Once installed, instructions to add KDE: sudo dnf update sudo dnf install epel-release sudo yum groupinstall "KDE Plasma Workspaces" Anything missing from the repos available you can always download the .rpm's from another source and try to install using yum from the downloads directory. Some will work, some won't, some might need additional dependencies (but you'll know what). You're unlikely to break anything trying but Clonezilla or alternative to the rescue. There`s also Flatpak.