A month and a half after the CloudLinux announcement, the public beta for AlmaLinux is available. AlmaLinux is a completely free 1: 1 binary compatible fork of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8, inspired by the community and built by the engineers behind CloudLinux. There are three ISO images of AlmaLinux Beta installation available:
Download AlmaLinux-8.3-beta-1-x86_64-boot.iso - network installation that downloads packages from the Internet.
Download AlmaLinux-8.3-beta-1-x86_64-minimal.iso - a minimal image that makes offline installation possible.
Download AlmaLinux-8.3-beta-1-x86_64-dvd1.iso - a complete installation image that contains mainly all AlmaLinux packages.
Download an ISO image and check its verification amount.
# import the AlmaLinux public key
$ wget https://repo.almalinux.org/almalinux/RPM-GPG-KEY-AlmaLinux
$ gpg --import RPM-GPG-KEY-AlmaLinux
# download a checksums list
$ wget https://repo.almalinux.org/almalinux/8.3-beta/isos/x86_64/CHECKSUM
#verify the checksums list
$ gpg --verify CHECKSUM
gpg: Signature made Thu 28 Jan 2021 11:39:12 PM MSK
gpg: using RSA key 51D6647EC21AD6EA
gpg: Good signature from "AlmaLinux packager@almalinux.org" [unknown]
gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature!
gpg: There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner. Primary key fingerprint: 5E9B 8F56 17B5 066C E920 57C3 488F CF7C 3ABB 34F8 Subkey fingerprint: E53C F5EF 91CE B0AD 1812 ECB8 51D6 647E C21A D6EA
# download the network install ISO
$ wget https://repo.almalinux.org/almalinux/8.3-beta/isos/x86_64/AlmaLinux-8.3-beta-1-x86_64-boot.iso
# calculate the downloaded ISO SHA256 checksum
$ sha256sum AlmaLinux-8.3-beta-1-x86_64-boot.iso
d15be406f417e81382b46a54d87dff01c8ca770c847c18703f19146587b61a1f AlmaLinux-8.3-beta-1-x86_64-boot.iso
# compare it with expected checksum, it should be the same
$ cat CHECKSUM | grep -E 'SHA256.*AlmaLinux-8.3-beta-1-x86_64-boot.iso'
SHA256 (AlmaLinux-8.3-beta-1-x86_64-boot.iso) = d15be406f417e81382b46a54d87dff01c8ca770c847c18703f19146587b61a1f
Create USB to install AlmaLinux:
dd if=AlmaLinux-8.3-beta-1-x86_64-boot.iso of=/dev/sdX