Red Hat Archive

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0 released

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0 is now officially available to Red Hat customers as stable, building off the RHEL9 beta available since the end of last year. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 ships with a wealth of updated software components and derived from CentOS Stream. On the versioning front, RHEL9 has GCC 11 as the default system compiler, Python 3.9, RPM 4.16, PHP 8.0, updated LLVM / Rust / Go compilers, a plethora of optimizations, OpenSSL 3, Ruby 3.0, and much more to enjoy with this major release for enterprise Linux users. Linux 5.14 is the kernel in use by RHEL 9.0 albeit with various kernel back-ports. There will be several community alternatives based on RHEL 9.0 soon enough, too, so if you want to run something RHEL like without all the corporate support, there’s enough options, too.

Rocky Linux 8.4 released

Rocky Linux, a fork of CentOS and a replacement set up by one of the founders of the original CentOS project, has unveiled its first final release. Rocky Linux is a community enterprise operating system designed to be 100% bug-for-bug compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4. Since this is the first Release of Rocky Linux, the release notes below reflect only changes in upstream functionality between point releases. CentOS needed a replacement since the project shifted focus towards CentOS Stream.

CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream

The future of the CentOS Project is CentOS Stream, and over the next year we’ll be shifting focus from CentOS Linux, the rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), to CentOS Stream, which tracks just ahead of a current RHEL release. CentOS Linux 8, as a rebuild of RHEL 8, will end at the end of 2021. CentOS Stream continues after that date, serving as the upstream (development) branch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. A lot of people are not going to be happy with this announcement, and it seems this is the first clear insight into what IBM is planning to do with the Red Hat acquisition. Expect a new CentOS to rise to the occasion and takes its place.

Red Hat has been working on new NVFS file system

Yet another new file-system being worked on for the Linux/open-source world is NVFS and has been spearheaded by a Red Hat engineer. NVFS aims to be a speedy file-system for persistent memory like Intel Optane DCPMM. NVFS is geared for use on DAX-based (direct access) devices and maps the entire device into a linear address space that bypasses the Linux kernel’s block layer and buffer cache. I understood some of those words.

CentOS Stream

The “stream” of development in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux ecosystem has been Fedora > RHEL > CentOS, but Red Hat is changing things up: The CentOS Stream project sits between the Fedora Project and RHEL in the RHEL Development process, providing a “rolling preview” of future RHEL kernels and features. This enables developers to stay one or two steps ahead of what’s coming in RHEL, which was not previously possible with traditional CentOS releases.

IBM acquires Red Hat

IBM and Red Hat, the world's leading provider of open source cloud software, announced today that the companies have reached a definitive agreement under which IBM will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Red Hat for $190.00 per share in cash, representing a total enterprise value of approximately $34 billion.

With this acquisition, IBM will remain committed to Red Hat's open governance, open source contributions, participation in the open source community and development model, and fostering its widespread developer ecosystem. In addition, IBM and Red Hat will remain committed to the continued freedom of open source, via such efforts as Patent Promise, GPL Cooperation Commitment, the Open Invention Network and the LOT Network.

This comes as a surprise, but now that I think about it, Red Hat would've been a great acquisition for a number of cloud providers, including Amazon and Microsoft. Let's hope the second quoted paragraph isn't an empty promise.

Microsoft and Red Hat announce partnership

The partnership we are announcing today with Red Hat extends our commitment to offer unmatched choice and flexibility in an enterprise-grade cloud experience across the hybrid cloud. With more than 80 percent of the Fortune 500 using Microsoft’s cloud, for us to team with the leader in enterprise Linux allows even more businesses to move to the cloud on their terms. By working with Red Hat, we will address common enterprise, ISV and developer needs for building, deploying and managing applications on Red Hat software across private and public clouds, including the following.

Only fourteen short years ago:

Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.

What a time to be alive.

Fedora 21 released

Fedora version 21 has been launched. The Fedora project, which is sponsored by Red Hat, has taken a new approach with the new version of the Fedora Linux distribution. Fedora 21 has been split into three separate product offerings: Workstation, Cloud and Server. Each product shares a common base, allowing for software compatibility between the three branches. According to the release announcement, Fedora 21 ships with a number of new administration tools, a new graphical package manager and experimental support for running the GNOME desktop on a Wayland display server. More detailed information on Fedora's latest release can be found in the project's release notes.

CentOS 7 released

The CentOS Project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of CentOS 7 for x86_64, including images for docker, and various cloud providers. There are many fundamental changes in this release, compared to previous releases of CentOS. Notably the inclusion of systemd, Gnome3, and a default filesystem of XFS. For more information about what makes CentOS 7 stand out, please see our release notes.

CentOS 6 can be upgraded to 7, but that functionality is still being tested.

CentOS Project joins forces with Red Hat

With great excitement I'd like to announce that we are joining the Red Hat family. The CentOS Project is joining forces with Red Hat. Working as part of the Open Source and Standards team to foster rapid innovation beyond the platform into the next generation of emerging technologies. Working alongside the Fedora and RHEL ecosystems, we hope to further expand on the community offerings by providing a platform that is easily consumed, by other projects to promote their code while we maintain the established base.

Well, that's certainly a different tune from Red Hat. Welcome though!

CentOS 6 Released

"We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of CentOS-6.0 for i386 and x86_64 Architectures. CentOS-6.0 is based on the upstream release EL 6.0 and includes packages from all variants. All upstream repositories have been combined into one, to make it easier for end users to work with. There are some important changes to this release compared with the previous versions of CentOS and we highly recommend reading this announcement along with the Release Notes."

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 Released

"Red Hat is out today last week with the GA release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6. After the big launch of RHEL 6 last year though, there isn't a whole lot to be excited about in the latest 5.x release. That said RHEL 5.x users that aren't in a position to move to RHEL 6 will likely be very happy with the update. Each incremental update of RHEL always brings with it additional driver and bug fixes, which make them important for users. Among the updates that I find interesting from a server perspective is an update to BIND 9.7 for DNS, which has improved DNSSEC capabilities. As DNSSEC is now enabled in the root zone of the Internet, the time for all DNS servers globally to be DNSSEC enabled is here. The other interesting thing to note is that EXT4 finally is fully supported for RHEL 5.x with the 5.6 update."

Can RHEL Break Open Source’s ‘Low-Cost Ceiling’?

InfoWorld's Savio Rodrigues views Red Hat's notable marketing shift from low cost to high value as an "important shift in the ongoing evolution of open source software vendors' business models". Long left in the low-cost ghetto of enterprise IT mind share, RHEL is being pushed for its technical innovations, performance enhancements, and customer-requested improvements, rather than as a solution for cash-strapped shops. This shift, and the underlying improvements to RHEL 6.0, give Red Hat a legitimate shot against Microsoft, and open source a new model for competing with proprietary products. After all, focusing on low cost unnecessary limits the growth of open source business, creating a 'low-cost ceiling' that indirectly dissuades many IT shops from considering open source products.

Red Hat’s Secret Patent Deal

"When patent troll Acacia sued Red Hat in 2007, it ended with a bang: Acacia's patents were invalidated by the court, and all software developers, open-source or not, had one less legal risk to cope with. So, why is the outcome of Red Hat's next tangle with Acacia being kept secret, and how is a Texas court helping to keep it that way? Could the outcome have placed Red Hat in violation of the open-source licenses on its own product?"

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Released

"Red Hat, Inc. today announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, the latest major release of the company's flagship operating platform, setting the scene for its server operating systems for the next decade. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Red Hat defines new standards for commercial open source operating environments. Designed to support today's flexible and varied enterprise architectures, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 delivers the comprehensive foundation customers need for physical, virtualized and cloud deployments."