AlmaLinux hit the ground running. As one of the first 1:1 RHEL binary compatible replacements, after CentOS shifted to a rolling release, the Linux distribution from the developers of CloudLinux has gained serious ground over the competition. And now, AlmaLinux has made its way to the Azure Marketplace, giving it even more credibility as an enterprise-ready operating system. AlmaLinux is one of the first of the new RHEL clones to arrive on Azure, alongside various iterations of Rocky Linux, which were created by third parties (such as Rocky Linux supporter Procomputers.com).

This particular version of AlmaLinux is optimized for 64-bit architecture and is considered a general-purpose release, meaning it is suitable for most use cases. And because of its 1:1 binary compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, if a task can be handled by RHEL, AlmaLinux is equally suited.

One very important thing of note is that pricing of AlmaLinux on Azure is currently listed as $0.00/hour. You will also find a number of other instances of AlmaLinux on Azure (many of which are purpose-built) that start anywhere from $0.008/hour and go up to $0.034/hour.

AlmaLinux is a 100% community-driven distribution with the goal of ensuring it will never follow the same path as CentOS.