AlmaLinux has announced a change that should make life easier for users who rely on software from Fedora’s Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL). Starting with AlmaLinux 10, the CodeReady Builder (CRB) repository will be enabled by default. The update is now available and will also be included in the upcoming Alma 10.1 release.
For those unfamiliar, CRB is a collection of packages not traditionally included in enterprise Linux distributions. A lot of them are development-related, but some are simply required by desktop environments and popular tools—KDE Plasma being one of the big examples.
Without CRB turned on, users often ran into dependency errors when installing software from EPEL. That led to unnecessary bug reports and confusion.
Neal Gompa, a member of the AlmaLinux Engineering Steering Committee, explained that the change is aimed at reducing this friction. By shipping CRB enabled, users won’t have to manually adjust repository settings just to get packages like “plasma-discover” or “libAppStreamQt,” for example, installed.
Existing AlmaLinux 10 and AlmaLinux Kitten 10 systems will receive the change through an update that sets “enabled=1” in the “almalinux-crb.repo” configuration file. Users who don’t want CRB enabled can still disable it with a simple command using dnf config-manager.
Lastly, AlmaLinux 10.1 is expected to introduce a new “selinux-policy-extra package” in CRB, designed to help EPEL software work properly with SELinux, and it will be pulled in automatically during upgrades if CRB is enabled.
For more information, see the official announcement.
