AlmaLinux 9 and 10: First-Class Support on Panelica

AlmaLinux has become one of the most widely deployed Linux distributions in the hosting industry since its initial release in 2021. Following the end of CentOS 8, the AlmaLinux OS Foundation launched AlmaLinux as a 1:1 binary-compatible rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux — community-governed, openly developed, and free to use without restrictions. Many hosting companies and data centers migrated their server fleets to AlmaLinux, and the distribution has grown to become a primary production choice across cloud providers, bare-metal servers, and hosting stacks worldwide.

Panelica supports AlmaLinux 9 and AlmaLinux 10 as first-class production targets. Both versions receive the same panel releases at the same time as all other supported distributions. There is no separate AlmaLinux build, no delayed patch cycle, and no per-distribution licensing difference. If you run AlmaLinux today, Panelica installs in under three minutes and works without modification.

This article covers what AlmaLinux support means for operators, and what the technical integration looks like under the hood.

For End Users and Operators

Your AlmaLinux Investment Works With Panelica

If you or your hosting provider has standardized on AlmaLinux, Panelica does not ask you to change anything. The installer detects AlmaLinux automatically. The panel installs, configures, and operates identically to what you would see on Ubuntu or Debian. Your team does not need to learn a different set of commands or navigate a different interface depending on which OS the server runs.

This matters for teams that manage mixed environments. If you run AlmaLinux 9 on your primary infrastructure and have a few Debian-based servers for specific workloads, both sets of servers can be managed through the same Panelica update channel and receive identical features.

AlmaLinux 9 and AlmaLinux 10: Both Supported

AlmaLinux 9 is the current stable production release. AlmaLinux 10, based on RHEL 10, was released in 2025 and brings updated base packages, kernel 6.12, and changes to the default software stack. Panelica supports both. You do not need to stay on AlmaLinux 9 to keep your panel functional — AlmaLinux 10 is a supported, production-ready target.

AlmaLinux 10 introduces changes to several system-level packages that affect how hosting panels operate. Panelica's installer handles these differences automatically, including updated EPEL 10 package mappings and adjusted dependency resolution paths. No manual intervention is required.

No CloudLinux Required for Tenant Isolation

One of the primary reasons hosting companies have historically added CloudLinux to their AlmaLinux servers is to gain per-user resource controls: CPU limits, memory caps, I/O throttling per hosting account. Without CloudLinux, traditional panels cannot enforce these limits reliably on standard RHEL-family kernels.

Panelica implements the same class of per-user resource controls using cgroups v2, which is built into the AlmaLinux kernel and requires no additional software. On every AlmaLinux server running Panelica, each hosting account gets its own cgroup slice with enforced CPU, memory, I/O, and process limits. This works on stock AlmaLinux 9 and 10 without any additional kernel module or commercial license.

For a hosting company running 20 AlmaLinux servers, the CloudLinux saving alone represents a significant monthly reduction in per-server operating costs, with no reduction in isolation quality.

RHEL Binary Compatibility Is Preserved

AlmaLinux maintains binary-level ABI compatibility with RHEL. This means software certified for RHEL 9 runs on AlmaLinux 9 without modification, and the same applies for AlmaLinux 10 and RHEL 10. Panelica benefits from this compatibility: the same Go binary used across all supported distributions works correctly on AlmaLinux because glibc and core system library versions align with the RHEL compatibility baseline.

If your organization requires RHEL-compatible infrastructure for vendor support reasons, compliance requirements, or internal policy, AlmaLinux satisfies that requirement and Panelica runs on it without compromise.

Migration from cPanel on AlmaLinux

If you currently run cPanel on an AlmaLinux 9 server, Panelica includes a migration tool that transfers sites, databases, email accounts, and DNS zones. MySQL password hashes are imported directly, so existing users can log in without password resets. The migration does not require downtime on the source server during data transfer.

See the cPanel to Panelica migration walkthrough for full details on the migration process.

Same Features, Same License, Different OS

Panelica's licensing is not OS-specific. A Professional, Business, or Enterprise plan on AlmaLinux 9 gives you the same feature set as the same plan on Ubuntu 24.04. There is no AlmaLinux surcharge, no RHEL-family extra tier, no per-OS support contract. The plan you choose determines your feature limits; the OS you choose does not.

For Sysadmins and Technical Readers

AlmaLinux 9: System Requirements and Kernel Notes

AlmaLinux 9 ships with glibc 2.34, kernel 5.14 (ELK/UEK kernels are also supported), and cgroups v2 enabled by default as the unified hierarchy. All three of these align exactly with Panelica's requirements:

• glibc 2.34 — Panelica binaries are compiled targeting glibc 2.34 as the minimum. No GLIBC version mismatch errors.
• Kernel 5.14 — cgroups v2, BPF, io_uring, and all kernel interfaces Panelica uses are present in 5.14. The panel does not require kernel modules that are absent in the stock AlmaLinux 9 kernel.
• Cgroups v2 default — Panelica's isolation stack writes to /sys/fs/cgroup/panelica.slice/ using the v2 unified hierarchy. No boot parameter changes needed on AlmaLinux 9.

Minimum hardware: 1 CPU core, 1 GB RAM, 20 GB disk. For production hosting use, 2+ CPU cores and 4+ GB RAM are recommended.

AlmaLinux 10: What Changed and How Panelica Handles It

AlmaLinux 10, based on RHEL 10, introduces several changes relevant to hosting panel deployment:

• Kernel 6.12 — Brings improvements to cgroups v2 memory accounting and io_uring performance. Panelica's resource monitoring and cgroup controls benefit from these improvements without configuration changes.
• Updated glibc — AlmaLinux 10 ships a more recent glibc than 2.34. Panelica binaries compiled against glibc 2.34 remain forward-compatible and work correctly.
• EPEL 10 package changes — Several packages available in EPEL 9 are not present or have different names in EPEL 10. Panelica's installer resolves these differences automatically. Specifically, yajl, opendkim, and redis package availability differs between EPEL 9 and EPEL 10; the installer maps each to the correct package name for the detected OS version.

EPEL Integration: How the Installer Resolves Packages

Panelica's installer detects the OS major version and selects the appropriate EPEL repository configuration automatically:

• AlmaLinux 9 receives EPEL 9 and PowerTools/CRB as needed
• AlmaLinux 10 receives EPEL 10 with the appropriate CRB equivalent

This happens transparently during installation. The operator does not need to pre-configure EPEL or add additional repositories. After installation, the panel manages its own service binaries from /opt/panelica/services/ and does not depend on EPEL-provided packages for panel operation — EPEL packages are only used for host-level utilities like rsync, sshpass, and fail2ban integration.

Firewall: nftables on AlmaLinux

AlmaLinux 9 and 10 use nftables as the default firewall backend. Panelica manages nftables rules directly through its firewall service, without wrapping firewalld or iptables-legacy. The panel's firewall UI maps to nftables rulesets stored under /opt/panelica/etc/firewall/. This integration works correctly on stock AlmaLinux without disabling firewalld — Panelica's installer handles the coexistence configuration.

PHP-FPM User Isolation on AlmaLinux

Per-user PHP-FPM pools on AlmaLinux follow the same pattern as all other supported distributions. Each hosting account receives a PHP-FPM pool running under its dedicated Unix UID, with open_basedir set to the user's home directory and document roots, and a customizable disable_functions list. The pool socket lives at /opt/panelica/var/run/php-fpm-{username}.sock.

On AlmaLinux, the PHP binaries under /opt/panelica/services/php/{8.1-8.5}/ are statically linked against the panel's own glibc and do not depend on the OS-level PHP packages. This means AlmaLinux's default PHP (typically 8.1 in RHEL 9, 8.3 in RHEL 10) does not conflict with panel-managed PHP versions. You can run PHP 8.5 per-user pools on AlmaLinux 9 regardless of the OS-level PHP version.

SELinux: currently disabled by default

Panelica installations on AlmaLinux currently ship with SELinux set to permissive or disabled by default. This is a deliberate choice for the present release: while we ship the panel and its services, SELinux context management for per-user PHP-FPM pools, custom service sockets under /opt/panelica/, and shared directories is not yet automated end-to-end.

Security is not weakened by this decision — Panelica's isolation model relies on five other layers that operate independently of SELinux: cgroups v2 resource limits, Linux namespaces, SSH chroot jails, per-user PHP-FPM pools, and strict Unix permissions. These layers are active by default on every supported release.

A dedicated SELinux integration is on our roadmap: when it lands, Panelica will be able to run on AlmaLinux with SELinux in enforcing mode out of the box, while preserving the per-user FPM pool model. Until then, operators who require SELinux enforcement should plan to author and load custom policies manually and we are happy to assist on forum.panelica.com.

Systemd Service Management on AlmaLinux

All 20 Panelica-managed services register as systemd units. On AlmaLinux, the units are installed as copies (not symlinks) to /etc/systemd/system/, which ensures correct behaviour without requiring additional file context rules for symlink traversal. Service control through pn-service start|stop|restart|status {service|all} works identically on AlmaLinux as on Debian or Ubuntu.

OS Coverage Comparison

Get Started or Learn More

Install Panelica on AlmaLinux 9 or AlmaLinux 10 with the standard one-line installer:

curl -sSL https://latest.panelica.com/install.sh | bash

OS detection is automatic. The installer handles EPEL configuration and package mapping without additional flags.

Related reading:

• One Panel, One Update Channel — The full architecture overview covering all supported distributions and the single update channel model
• Rocky Linux 9 and 10: First-Class Support on Panelica — The equivalent deep-dive for Rocky Linux
• Migrating from cPanel to Panelica — Step-by-step migration guide for existing cPanel installations on AlmaLinux
• Panelica vs the alternatives — Full feature and OS coverage comparison
• cPanel's 30-Day Security Storm — Context on why more operators are evaluating alternatives