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On 20 May 2025, the AlmaLinux OS Foundation team announced the official release of AlmaLinux OS 9.6, codenamed ‘Sage Margay’! Version 9.6 uses the 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6 kernel and was released one week ahead of AlmaLinux 10.0.
ICYMI: Last week we announced the general availability of AlmaLinux OS 9.6! 🎊
— AlmaLinux (@AlmaLinux) May 29, 2025
“Sage Margay” has some pretty exciting new features. Check em' out here: https://t.co/DEnZrATdn4 pic.twitter.com/goKfH0nvra
The installation ISOs are now available for all four architectures on the mirrors:
AlmaLinux 9.6 Stable further improves performance, development tools and security. Updated module streams enhance support for web applications, whilst new compiler versions optimise performance. The release also includes updates to runutils, Valgrind, SystemTap and PCP, improving system debugging and performance monitoring. Networking improvements come with new versions of NetworkManager and iproute. Security updates include new versions of SELinux policy and SSSD. Containerisation and virtualisation have been improved through updates to podman, buildah, libvirt and QEMU-KVM. In addition, the new snpguest and snphost packages further enhance virtualisation capabilities.
Software versions in AlmaLinux 9.6
Version 9.6 is also an important release for web servers: PHP 8.3, MySQL 8.4 and the nginx 1.26 module were released as part of this update.
| Area | Versions |
|---|---|
| Module streams | PHP 8.3, MySQL 8.4, nginx 1.26, Maven 3.9 |
| Web server and runtime environment | Apache HTTP Server 2.4.62, Node.js 22 |
| Version control | Git 2.47.1, Git LFS 3.6.1 |
| Basic toolchain | GCC 11.5, Annobin 12.70 |
| Compilers and toolkits | LLVM Toolset 19.1.7, Go Toolset 1.23.6, Rust Toolset 1.84.1 |
| Debugging and logging | elfutils 0.192, Valgrind 3.24.0, SystemTap 5.2, rsyslog 8.2412.0, PCP 6.3.2 |
| Network | NetworkManager 1.52.0, iproute 6.11.0 |
| Security | SELinux policy 38.1.53, SSSD 2.9.6 |
| Containers and virtualisation | podman 5.4.0, buildah 1.39.4, libvirt 10.10.0, QEMU-KVM 9.1.0 |
Here’s how to enable PHP 8.3:
dnf module reset php
dnf module install php:8.3
Differences from RHEL 9.6
AlmaLinux 9.6 offers a few extra features compared to the upstream version:
- KVM on IBM Power: as a technical preview, support for KVM virtualisation has been reintroduced on the IBM Power architecture, having been missing from the upstream since version 9.0
- Older hardware: the aacraid, be2iscsi, be2net, hpsa, lpfc, megaraid_sas, mlx4_core, mpt3sas, mptsas, qla2xxx and qla4xxx drivers have, since version 9.4, once again recognised controllers and cards that had been disabled in the upstream code
- snpguest and snphost: new packages for managing AMD SEV-SNP-based virtual machines with encrypted memory
ISO verification and updating
wget https://repo.almalinux.org/almalinux/RPM-GPG-KEY-AlmaLinux-9
gpg --import RPM-GPG-KEY-AlmaLinux-9
wget https://vault.almalinux.org/9.6/isos/x86_64/CHECKSUM
gpg --verify CHECKSUM
sha256sum AlmaLinux-9.6-x86_64-boot.iso
The line ‘Good signature from “AlmaLinux OS 9”’ and the SHA256 value matching the CHECKSUM file indicate that the download is correct. On an existing AlmaLinux 9 system, running dnf upgrade -y will update to the latest point release; beta users should first install the almalinux-repos-9.6-1.el9 package:
rpm -i https://vault.almalinux.org/9.6/BaseOS/x86_64/os/Packages/almalinux-repos-9.6-1.el9.x86_64.rpm --replacefiles
dnf upgrade -y
You can upgrade from AlmaLinux 8 to 9 locally using the ELevate tool; see our ELevate guide. The requirements for upgrading from 9 to 10 differ; it is worth checking these at the end of this guide and in the ELevate documentation.
You can read the full release notes for this version on the wiki: AlmaLinux OS 9.6 release notes, and the full list of changes in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.6 release notes.
How long will AlmaLinux 9 be supported?
Active support for AlmaLinux 9 will continue until 31 May 2027, and security updates will be provided until 31 May 2032. Further releases in the 9 series:
- AlmaLinux 9.0 (May 2022)
- AlmaLinux 9.1 (November 2022)
- AlmaLinux 9.2 (May 2023)
- AlmaLinux 9.3 (November 2023)
- AlmaLinux 9.4 (May 2024)
- AlmaLinux 9.5 (November 2024)
- AlmaLinux 9.7 (November 2025)
- AlmaLinux 9.8 (May 2026)
AlmaLinux is an operating system available on both our KVM VPS servers and our dedicated servers.