The hostname of a Linux system is important because it’s used to identify the device on a network. The hostname is also shown in other prominent places, such as in the terminal prompt. This gives you a constant reminder of which system you’re working with. It’s a real life saver when you’re managing multiple systems through SSH and those command line terminals start to blend together in your mind.
Of course, IP addresses are used when devices need to communicate with each other, but those can change frequently. Hostnames give us a way to know which device we’re interacting with either on the network or physically, without remembering a bunch of numbers that are subject to change. Thus, it’s important that your system bears a hostname which helps you to identify it quickly. For example, “backup-server” is much more informative than “server2.” If you can’t easily identify a system’s purpose from the hostname, it’s time to change it.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to change the hostname on AlmaLinux. This can be especially useful if you’ve recently migrated from CentOS to AlmaLinux and need to update the hostname accordingly. Changing the hostname can be done either by command line or GUI, and we’ll show you the steps for both methods below.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to change the AlmaLinux hostname from command line
- How to change the AlmaLinux hostname from GNOME GUI
