AlmaLinux is a community-owned and governed, free, and open-source Linux distribution that is binary-compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The project started after Red Hat announced in 2020 that it was discontinuing the stable CentOS Linux release.
Now, the Linux distro is preparing for its next minor release by enabling its CRB repo by default, a change that will land in an update to version 10.0 and be standard in the upcoming AlmaLinux 10.1.
If you"re unfamiliar, the CRB, or CodeReady Builder repo, is a collection of extra packages not typically included in a standard enterprise Linux installation. It primarily provides software and libraries for developers. For those who have been around for a while, back in AlmaLinux 8, it was known as PowerTools.
This repository holds dependencies for a number of popular packages, such as those required to run the KDE Plasma Desktop, that are not part of the core operating system"s solution set.
The AlmaLinux team says it is enabling it by default because not having it on causes a shitload of problems for users and an increased support load for developers. This is particularly true when people try to use software from the Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) repository. Users frequently encounter dependency errors, like the one below, when trying to install packages from EPEL.
Error: Problem: package plasma-discover-6.3.6-1.el10_0.aarch64 from epel requires libDiscoverCommon.so()(64bit), but none of the providers can be installed - package plasma-discover-6.3.6-1.el10_0.aarch64 from epel requires plasma-discover-libs(aarch-64) = 6.3.6-1.el10_0, but none of the providers can be installed - conflicting requests - nothing provides libAppStreamQt.so.3()(64bit) needed by plasma-discover-libs-6.3.6-1.el10_0.aarch64 from epel According to the AlmaLinux team, these errors happen because the needed packages are in CRB, which is disabled by default. This leads to users filing incorrect bug reports about broken dependencies.
The fix is as simple as setting enabled to 1 in almalinux-crb.repo, and the only real drawback is a slight slowdown in metadata downloads on systems with constrained resources.
If you want to disable the repository after the change rolls out, you can do so with dnf config-manager --disable crb. The team also says that this change prepares the ground for another addition in the 10.1 release, scheduled for September 9, 2025.
A new selinux-policy-extra package will be introduced in the CRB repository, which is necessary for some software from EPEL to work properly with SELinux. Because DNF does not re-evaluate weak dependencies, having CRB enabled by default ensures this new package is available and installed when epel-release is installed.