AlmaLinux Announces ELevate Project to Migrate or Upgrade Any Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based Distribution

Open source initiative simplifies migrations from older CentOS versions to alternatives

RALEIGH, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ALL THINGS OPEN – The AlmaLinux OS Foundation introduced today the ELevate Project, an open source initiative to assist users perform migrations between different Red Hat Enterprise Linux based distributions, such as CentOS 7.x to AlmaLinux 8.x, Oracle Linux 8.x, or Rocky Linux 8.x. The announcement was made today at the All Things Open conference.

ELevate consists of two key components, enhancements to the open source Leapp project and a data library and toolset called the Package Evolution Service.

The enhancements to Leapp are currently contained on GitHub in the leapp-repository, where the AlmaLinux community has already added the necessary code to support RHEL derivatives and additional functionality needed to perform the migration. Work has already begun to have these changes merged upstream.

The Package Evolution Service (PES) includes a web interface for working with the data library that contains metadata which describes the list of configuration changes required for the migration. Developers and software vendors can create and submit PES data for their own applications or packages too, ensuring that migrations can be performed smoothly.

“Until today, it simply wasn’t possible to dream of migrations like these and that need has become very acute for CentOS users,'' said Jack Aboutboul, community manager for AlmaLinux. “This is a cause the whole community can get behind. We’re working with upstream on the tooling while creating a PES that is free and open to all.”

ELevate is open source, released under the Apache 2.0 License. You can learn more at ELevate site and on the AlmaLinux Wiki. Migrations can be done in place, meaning data and configuration files are preserved. Jack Aboutboul, community manager for AlmaLinux, offers additional insight in his blog post.

About AlmaLinux

AlmaLinux OS is an open source, community-governed and forever-free enterprise Linux distribution. It is focused on long-term stability and delivering a robust production-grade platform. It is 1:1 binary compatible with RHEL(r) and pre-Steam CentOS.

The AlmaLinux OS falls under the purview of The AlmaLinux OS Foundation, which is a 501(c)(6) non-profit created for the benefit of the AlmaLinux OS community.