Oracle announced the formation of packages with the UEK-next kernel (Next Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel) built on the Linux kernel 6.9 release. By default, instead of the kernel from Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the Oracle Linux distribution continues to use UEK 7, based on Linux kernel 5.15, while the UEK-next kernel is positioned as a continuously updated option for developers, providing access to the latest improvements from the main kernel branch, while maintaining access to the specific extended features of the UEK kernel, such as DTrace integration and enhanced Btrfs support, as well as optimizations for working with Oracle's industrial software and hardware.
The UEK-next kernel is formed by overlaying patches and enhancements prepared for the UEK kernel onto the mainline Linux kernel. The kernel is not intended for use in production deployments but undergoes basic testing and can be used to adapt applications and workloads to new versions of the main kernel. After some time, one of the UEK-next kernels will be provided with a long-term support (LTS) cycle, and this kernel will be used as the basis for forming the UEK 8 branch.
Among the enhancements specific to the UEK-next 6.9 kernel is support for the 'sched_ext' (SCX) mechanism, which allows the use of eBPF to create CPU schedulers. The main kernel will not include sched_ext until at least the 6.11 release.
In the next update of UEK-next, based on kernel 6.10, support for the fsck utility to check and fix identified issues for the XFS file system is planned to be provided in online mode, without unmounting the file system.
Source: opennet.ru
