AlmaLinux With Tristan Théroux

Posted on Thursday, Sep 3, 2026
In this week’s episode we’ve got a great interview with Tristan Théroux from AlmaLinux. I met Tristan at the AlmaLinux booth during SIGGRAPH and was really impressed with the cool stuff that the whole AlmaLinux community is doing. So I brought him on to share that fun stuff with you!

Show Notes

We’ve got a great episode this week where I had the opportunity to interview Tristan Théroux from AlmaLinux. If you’re not familiar with AlmaLinux, it’s a community-driven Linux distribution that’s ABI compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This is important for larger productions (and smaller ones, too) in media and entertainment because this gives a freely available version of the operating system that tracks with standards like the VFX Reference Platform. That means that there’s a standard expected base that software vendors, technical directors at studios, and freelance artists can use and expect things to work.

We talk about (and explain) all of this in the episode, plus we get Tristan’s impression of this year’s SIGGRAPH conference (similar to the one I shared in Episode 57), a fun story about getting Houdini working on Wayland, and why creatives should be actively choosing open source, even at the operating system level. Tristan points out that there’s some concerning things coming down the pipe with proprietary operating systems (coughWindowscough) that may well influence the platform you want to use to create.

And if that all convinces you, the folks at AlmaLinux have made it really easy for you. Not only can you get the live ISO (and instructions for putting it on a USB drive) at https://almalinux.org/get-almalinux/, but Tristan also worked on the AlmaLinux Creative Installer, which significantly lowers the barrier to getting all your creative apps installed on AlmaLinux. Be sure to check it out!

Guests

Tristan Théroux

Tristan Théroux

I’m a Senior System Administrator with over 8 years of experience engineering and securing Linux, macOS, and Windows environments. As an open-source advocate and Unix expert, I prioritize Linux for scalable infrastructure and macOS where specialized tooling requires it, while actively leading the AlmaLinux Media & Entertainment SIG as a maintainer and contributor. Committed to a security-first and automation-driven methodology, I specialize in designing reliable, modern systems that drive operational excellence.

Hosts

Jason van Gumster

Jason van Gumster

I make stuff. I make stuff up. On occasion, I stuff-up what I make. I don’t do much stuff with make-up… though I’m not above trying. I work in all kinds of media: words, animation, ink, coffee, wood, video. And, of course, I’m really passionate about open source and open content, so that’s what I talk about in this show. Books I’ve written and other creative experiments I’ve made can be seen on monsterjavaguns.com.