How To Convert CentOS 8 to AlmaLinux 8

In this guide, we want to teach you How To Convert CentOS 8 to AlmaLinux 8. As you know, Red Hat has supported the CentOS project for some time, and we will no longer have a stable CentOS after CentOS 8. One of the companies that relied on CentOS products decided to release a Linux distribution like CentOS. That distribution is called AlmaLinux OS, which is exactly the same as CentOS, based on Red Hat.

This distribution is in the form of a Stable Release, and packages are placed in updates that are more suitable for servers than Rolling Release distributions. To get more information, you can check our article Introducing AlmaLinux as a Replacement for CentOS.

Now, proceed to the guide steps below on the Orcacore website to complete the conversion steps from CentOS 8 to AlmaLinux 8.

Table of Contents

How To Convert CentOS 8 to AlmaLinux 8

In this article, we will teach you how to convert your CentOS 8 to AlmaLinux 8. Before you start to complete this guide, log in to your CentOS 8 as a root user or a non-root user with sudo privileges.

Now you can follow the steps below to migrate from CentOS to AlmaLinux.

Migrate from CentOS 8 to AlmaLinux 8

First, you need to update your local package index with the following command:

sudo dnf update -y

Then, reboot your server with the command below:

sudo reboot

Next, you need to download the AlmaLinux deploy script by using the wget or curl command:

sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AlmaLinux/almalinux-deploy/master/almalinux-deploy.sh

Now you need to set the correct permissions for this file with the following command:

sudo chmod -v +x almalinux-deploy.sh

At this point, you can migrate CentOS 8 to AlmaLinux 8 by running the AlmaLinux deploy script:

sudo ./almalinux-deploy.sh

This will take some time to complete.

When it is completed, you will get the following output:

Output
Complete!
Run dnf distro-sync -y OK
Restoring of alternatives is done OK
Generating grub configuration file ...
done
All Secure Boot related packages which were not released by AlmaLinux are reinstalledOK

Migration to AlmaLinux is completed

Reboot the server:

sudo shutdown -r now

Finally, you can verify that you have successfully migrated CentOS 8 to AlmaLinux 8 by checking the AlmaLinux version with the following command:

sudo cat /etc/redhat-release

Output
AlmaLinux release 8.5 (Arctic Sphynx)

Or you can use the command below instead:

cat /etc/os-release

In your output, you will see:

Output
NAME="AlmaLinux"
VERSION="8.5 (Arctic Sphynx)"
ID="almalinux"
ID_LIKE="rhel centos fedora"
VERSION_ID="8.5"
PLATFORM_ID="platform:el8"
PRETTY_NAME="AlmaLinux 8.5 (Arctic Sphynx)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;34"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:almalinux:almalinux:8::baseos"
HOME_URL="https://almalinux.org/"
DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://wiki.almalinux.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.almalinux.org/"

ALMALINUX_MANTISBT_PROJECT="AlmaLinux-8"
ALMALINUX_MANTISBT_PROJECT_VERSION="8.5"