AlmaLinux OS Kitten 10 Begins Supporting RISC-V

The community-focused, RHEL/CentOS-derived AlmaLinux distribution has announced its support for the RISC-V CPU ISA with AlmaLinux Kitten 10 builds now available. This marks a significant expansion of Linux support for the open-source instruction set architecture.

AlmaLinux Kitten 10: The Testing Ground

AlmaLinux Kitten 10 serves as the distribution's version tracking CentOS Stream 10 changes and acts as a testing area for future AlmaLinux 10 improvements. Following the RISC-V enhancements in CentOS Stream 10, AlmaLinux has begun producing dedicated RISC-V builds.

Hardware and Profile Support

AlmaLinux Kitten 10 for RISC-V specifically targets the RV64GC profile, which provides support for 64-bit RISC-V with both the G (standard extensions) and C (compressed instructions) extensions. This profile ensures broad compatibility with existing RISC-V software while maintaining efficient code density.

Initially, the distribution offers:

• Docker containers for container-based deployments
• QEMU images for virtual machine testing

Hardware Compatibility

Builds are expected soon for AlmaLinux Kitten 10 on two prominent RISC-V development platforms:

• StarFive VisionFive 2: A popular single-board computer based on the StarFive JH7110 SoC
• SiFive HiFive Premier P550: A high-performance development board featuring the SiFive U74 application cores

These platforms were recently added to the CentOS Stream 10 kernel, allowing AlmaLinux Kitten 10 to immediately benefit from the upstream hardware support.

Getting Started with AlmaLinux on RISC-V

For developers and enthusiasts interested in exploring AlmaLinux on RISC-V hardware, the distribution provides:

• Docker images for quick container-based testing
• QEMU images for virtual machine deployment
• Upcoming direct hardware builds for VisionFive 2 and HiFive Premier P550

The Growing RISC-V Ecosystem

This announcement represents another step in the maturation of the RISC-V ecosystem. As major Linux distributions like AlmaLinux add official support, developers gain more options for deploying workloads on RISC-V hardware. The combination of AlmaLinux's enterprise-focused approach with RISC-V's open architecture creates interesting possibilities for edge computing, embedded systems, and specialized workloads.

Next Steps

The AlmaLinux team encourages users to test the available Kitten 10 builds and provide feedback. As the distribution moves toward AlmaLinux 10, the RISC-V support introduced in Kitten 10 will likely become a stable, production-ready feature.

For more details and download links, visit the official AlmaLinux blog post by Andrew Lukoshko, AlmaLinux's lead architect.