How is AlmaLinux OS is community-driven? with benny Vasquez

In this episode, Scott Hanselman sits down with benny Vasquez, Chair of the AlmaLinux OS Foundation, to explore the project's journey since the shift away from CentOS. benny shares insights into how AlmaLinux stays community-driven, transparent, and enterprise-ready—all while navigating the evolving world of open-source licensing. It's a candid and thoughtful conversation about trust, sustainability, and what it takes to build an OS that listens to its users.

https://www.almalinux.orgKey TopicsIntroduction to benny Vasquez and AlmaLinux (00:07.87)The Evolution of CentOS and Birth of AlmaLinux (01:00.03)The Role of CentOS Stream and Enterprise Linux Ecosystem (03:27.08)Why AlmaLinux Stepped In and the Red Hat Source Code Shift (05:19.77)Differences Between AlmaLinux and Red Hat (08:33.74)Open Source Governance and Neutrality in AlmaLinux (14:05.99)Sustainability and Longevity of the AlmaLinux Project (24:07.31)Adopting AlmaLinux for VFX and Desktop Use (26:37.99)The Importance of Hardware Support and Adaptability (28:14.02)Upcoming Events: AlmaLinux Day Vancouver (33:48.05)
Main TakeawaysCommunity-Driven Replacement for CentOS: AlmaLinux emerged as a community-driven distro to fill the gap left by CentOS after Red Hat's change in focus, ensuring enterprise-grade Linux remains accessible.Open and Neutral Governance: AlmaLinux prioritizes a meritocratic and community-focused governance structure to maintain independence and serve diverse user needs.Adaptability and Innovation: By addressing omitted features and bugs faster than traditional vendors, AlmaLinux thrives as a flexible solution for enterprises and personal use, offering extended hardware support.Commitment to Longevity and Sustainability: The AlmaLinux OS Foundation is focused on creating a project that outlasts its current contributors by setting up governance for long-term stability.Embracing Enterprise and Desktop Markets: Though AlmaLinux is enterprise-focused, it demonstrates significant adoption in both server and desktop environments, especially in industries like VFX.
Notable Quotes

"AlmaLinux emerged to fill a void, ensuring enterprise-grade Linux users didn’t lose their stability and compatibility." – benny Vasquez

"The key for us is not just building compatibility with Red Hat but allowing for innovation and hardware support that suits the community’s needs." – benny Vasquez

"We have to maintain neutrality in our governance so that no one organization can unduly influence AlmaLinux." – benny Vasquez

"Making it independent in a way that it will outlast me and all of the current contributors is the ultimate success for me." – benny Vasquez

"Linux is known for not leaving folks behind, and that’s an ethos we adhere to with AlmaLinux." – benny Vasquez

Resources MentionedAlmaLinux.org: https://almalinux.org (Download and contribute to the project)AlmaLinux Day Vancouver (August 9th): https://almalinux.org/blog/SIGGRAPH Conference: https://s2023.siggraph.org/Additional MentionsFedora ProjectWSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)Azure and AWS sponsorshipsThinkPads and Linux Distros for older hardware

These show notes were automatically generated from the podcast transcript.

Hanselminutes Podcast by Scott Hanselman

The Hanselminutes podcast

Fresh Tech Talk from Fresh Faces

[That's good Mojo - Creating a Programming Language for an AI world with Chris Lattner]

That's good Mojo - Creating a Programming Language for an AI world with Chris Lattner

Show #1037 Feb 19 2026
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What does it take to design a programming language from scratch when the target isn’t just CPUs, but GPUs, accelerators, and the entire AI stack? In this episode, I sit down with legendary language architect Chris Lattner to talk about Mojo — his ambitious attempt to rethink systems programming for the machine learning era.

We trace the arc from LLVM and Clang to Swift and now Mojo, unpacking the lessons Chris has carried forward into this new language. Mojo aims to combine Python’s ergonomics with C-level performance, but the real story is deeper: memory ownership, heterogeneous compute, compile-time metaprogramming, and giving developers precise control over how AI workloads hit silicon.

Chris shares the motivation behind Modular, why today’s AI infrastructure demands new abstractions, and how Mojo fits into a rapidly evolving ecosystem of ML frameworks and hardware backends. We also dig into developer experience, safety vs performance tradeoffs, and what it means to build a language that spans research notebooks all the way down to kernel-level execution.

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