Oracle Linux arrives with Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R6U3, updates and more

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Few days ago Oracle announced the release of the new version of your Linux distribution, "OracleLinux 8.6", based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.6 base package.

For Oracle Linux, free unlimited access to the yum repository with binary package updates with bug fixes (errata) and security issues is open. Separately supported Application Stream modules are also available for download.

In addition to the RHEL kernel package (based on kernel 4.18), Oracle Linux offers its own Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 6, based on Linux kernel 5.4 and optimized for Oracle hardware and industrial software.

The kernel source code, including a breakdown into individual patches, is available in the public Oracle Git repository. The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel is installed by default, is positioned as an alternative to the regular RHEL kernel package, and provides a number of advanced features, such as DTrace integration and improved Btrfs support.

Major New Features in Oracle Linux 8.6

The new version of that is presented from Oracle Linux 8.6 Delivers Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R6U3 Kernel Release, which stabilizes support for the WireGuard protocol, extends the capabilities of the asynchronous I/O interface io_uring, improves support for nested virtualization on systems with AMD CPUs, and extends NVMe support. Otherwise, the functionality of the Oracle Linux 8.6 and RHEL 8.6 releases is completely identical (the changelog in Oracle Linux 8.6 repeats the changelog in RHEL 8.6).

In addition, Oracle is testing a beta version of the kernel variant Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 7 (UEK R7) developed for Oracle Linux as an alternative to the standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel package. Kernel sources, including the breakdown into individual patches, will be published to the public Oracle Git repository after release.

Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 7 is based on the Linux 5.15 kernel (UEK R6 was based on kernel 5.4), que was updated with new features, optimizations and fixes, and has been tested for compatibility with most applications running on RHEL, and has been specifically optimized to work with Oracle hardware and industrial software.

The key changes in the UEK R7 kernel include improved support for the Aarch64 architecture, transition to DTrace 2.0 dynamic debugging system, support Enhanced Btrfs, Enhanced eBPF Subsystem Capabilities, a new slab memory allocation driver (slab memory driver) and a split lock detector and Multipath TCP (MPTCP) support.

As for changes made to shell and command line tools:

  • lsvpd updated to version 1.7.13.
  • net-snmp-cert gencert . The net-snmp-cert gencert utility has been updated to generate certificates using the SHA512 encryption algorithm. This change provides increased security.
  • opencryptoki updated to version 3.17.0.
  • New ability to exclude certain network interfaces and IP addresses when creating a rescue image. The EXCLUDE_IP_ADDRESSES variable allows you to ignore certain IP addresses and the variable
  • EXCLUDE_NETWORK_INTERFACES allows you to ignore certain network interfaces when creating a rescue image.

Compilers and development toolsets:

  • Updated GCC toolset to version 11.2
  • Rust Toolset updated to version 1.58.1
  • Updated LLVM toolset to version 13.0.1
  • Updated PCP to version 5.3.5
  • Grafana updated to version 7.5.11

In addition to Oracle Linux, alternatives to RHEL 8.x are also positioned as Rocky Linux (developed by the community under the direction of the founder of CentOS with the support of a specially created company, Ctrl IQ), AlmaLinux (developed by CloudLinux, together with with the community), VzLinux (prepared by Virtuozzo), SUSE Liberty Linux and EuroLinux. In addition, Red Hat has made RHEL freely available to open source organizations and individual developer environments with up to 16 physical or virtual systems.

Finally, if you are interested in knowing more about it, you can consult the details in the following link.

Download and get Oracle Linux 8.6

For those interested in this new version, you should know that an 8.6 GB iso image prepared for x86_64 and ARM64 (aarch64) architectures is distributed for download without restrictions.

The link is this.


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