The AlmaLinux OS Foundation has released AlmaLinux 10.2 Beta “Lavender Lion.” It gives Linux users an early look at the next version of the community-driven enterprise distribution. Just don’t get too excited and throw it on a production server. This is a beta, meaning it is meant for testing, bug reports, and lab machines where a broken afternoon won’t ruin your week.
AlmaLinux 10.2 Beta ships with Linux kernel 6.12.0-211.7.1.el10_2 and supports x86_64, x86_64_v2, i686 userspace, aarch64, ppc64le, and s390x. That is a pretty wide net, especially for folks running older hardware or less common enterprise systems.
The developer updates are the big story here. AlmaLinux 10.2 Beta includes LLVM Toolset 21.1.8, Rust Toolset 1.92.0, and GCC Toolset 15 with GCC 15.2.1. It also adds Python 3.14, PostgreSQL 18, MariaDB 11.8, Ruby 4.0, PHP 8.4, SDL3 3.2.4, and libkrun 1.17.4.
Performance tools and debuggers get attention too, including elfutils 0.194, Valgrind 3.26.0, SystemTap 5.4, GDB 16.3, Bpftrace 0.24.2, BCC 0.35.0, and libbpf 1.7.0. For admins and developers who like seeing what is really happening under the hood, that is useful stuff.
Security is also updated across several important pieces, including SELinux-policy 42.1.18, SSSD 2.12.0, OpenSSL 3.5.5, OpenSSH 9.9p1-20, crypto-policies 20260216, keylime 7.14.1, libreswan 5.3-8, audit 4.0.3-5, and aide 0.19.2. AlmaLinux says this beta is already patched for Copy Fail, tracked as CVE-2026-31431.
Containers and virtualization have not been ignored either. This release includes Podman 5.8.0, Buildah 1.43.0, skopeo 1.22.0, libvirt 11.10.0, and QEMU-KVM 10.1.0. Networking tools are refreshed as well, with NetworkManager 1.56.0, iproute 6.17.0, nftables 1.1.5, BIND 9.18.33-15, and chrony 4.8.
Other updated components include Git 2.52.0, Git-LFS 3.7.1, Samba 4.23.5, Mesa 25.2.7, PipeWire 1.4.9, Cockpit 356, cmake 3.31.8, sudo 1.9.17p2, and GNOME 49.
One of the more interesting parts of AlmaLinux 10.2 Beta is where it differs from RHEL 10. AlmaLinux adds Btrfs support, including the ability to boot from a Btrfs volume. It also provides an x86-64-v2 build for older hardware, while the standard x86_64 build follows the x86-64-v3 direction. That matters because a lot of perfectly usable older CPUs are getting pushed aside in the enterprise Linux world.
There is a caveat, of course. Third-party RHEL 10 packages will generally target x86-64-v3, so the x86-64-v2 version of AlmaLinux is best suited for systems that can live mostly on the default OS package set, or for users willing to rebuild packages themselves. AlmaLinux is also rebuilding EPEL for x86-64-v2 users, which should help a bit.
The i686 userspace support is another welcome move. There is no 32-bit kernel and no bootable i686 installer, but AlmaLinux 10.2 Beta does include 32-bit userspace packages. That can help with older software, CI pipelines tied to specific 32-bit glibc versions, and containerized workloads that require a full 32-bit environment. AlmaLinux says the i686 stream will be maintained alongside the other AlmaLinux 10 architectures through 2035.
AlmaLinux also re-enables frame pointers by default, which helps with real-time tracing and profiling. SPICE support returns for both server and client applications. KVM is enabled for IBM POWER in the virtualization stack. Firefox and Thunderbird are shipped as regular RPM packages in the system repositories.
Hardware support gets a practical boost too. AlmaLinux has restored PCI IDs for several drivers, including those tied to Dell PERC, HP Smart Array, Broadcom MegaRAID SAS, Emulex Fibre Channel and network adapters, Mellanox ConnectX-2 and ConnectX-3 adapters, LSI SAS controllers, QLogic Fibre Channel HBAs, and QLogic iSCSI HBAs. That may not sound exciting, but for admins trying to keep older enterprise hardware useful, it can be a very big deal.
Beta ISOs are available here now in boot, minimal, and DVD versions. The boot image downloads packages over the internet, the minimal ISO allows offline installs with a smaller package set, and the DVD image includes most AlmaLinux packages.
At the end of the day, AlmaLinux 10.2 Beta “Lavender Lion” looks like a strong testing release for developers, sysadmins, homelab users, and enterprise Linux nerds who want to see what is coming next. Between Linux kernel 6.12, Btrfs boot support, x86-64-v2 builds, i686 userspace, updated developer tools, refreshed security components, and better support for older hardware, there is a lot here to poke at.
Just please, folks, keep it away from production… for now.
