AlmaLinux 10.2 released with GNOME 49, i686 userspace packages and more

Some of the packages AlmaLinux 10.2 ships with include Python 3.14, PostgreSQL 18, MariaDB 11.8, Ruby 4.0, and PHP 8.4.

The AlmaLinux team has released AlmaLinux 10.2 "Lavender Lion" today, bringing Btrfs boot support, x86-64-v2 architecture options, re-enabled frame pointers, and native SPICE support for client applications alongside i686.

Starting with i686, the release provides userspace packages for specific workloads, such as building legacy software or running CI pipelines that require 32-bit glibc versions. Since the team only provides the userspace, you will not find a bootable 32-bit installer or a 32-bit kernel in this version.

As the team noted back when Kitten 10 shipped, the decision to keep i686 alive solves problems for people dealing with proprietary software that only ships in 32-bit i686 formats. While many modern systems have moved on, some still require these packages for their internal tooling and system components. The community will maintain this stream through the year 2035 to ensure that long-term projects do not lose access to the environments they require.

Firefox and Thunderbird in the system repositories now ship as regular RPM packages, and the team included a list of updated developer tools. You will see GNOME 49, Python 3.14, Ruby 4.0, PHP 8.4, and PostgreSQL 18 available for your web stacks while the kernel sits at version 6.12.0. Security updates include OpenSSL 3.5.5 and OpenSSH 9.9p1, plus the team re-added drivers for hardware like the HP Smart Array and several Mellanox ConnectX adapters. The update also brings GCC Toolset 15 and Rust Toolset 1.92.0 for developers needing the latest compilers.

If you're on Kitten (AlmaLinux 10), you can upgrade to the stable release by running a simple dnf upgrade command. Existing 10.2 beta testers follow a similar path, like so:

$ dnf install https://repo.almalinux.org/almalinux/almalinux-{release,repos,gpg-keys}-latest-10.$(uname -m).rpm
$ dnf upgrade -y

AlmaLinux, if you've never heard of it, emerged as a community-driven project after the company Red Hat announced it was killing the traditional, stable CentOS release in favor of the rolling-release "CentOS Stream."

It used to be a one-to-one clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but things shifted after the upstream source code went behind a paywall in 2023. The OS is now Application Binary Interface (ABI) compatible with RHEL, meaning that any software, script, or app certified to run on RHEL will run perfectly on it.

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Posted Wednesday 27 May 2026 at 4:30 pm AEST (my time).

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