The release of Rocky Linux 8.7 has been announced, aimed at creating a free build of RHEL that can take the place of classic CentOS, after Red Hat prematurely ended support for the CentOS 8 branch at the end of 2021, rather than in 2029 as originally expected. This is the third stable release of the project, recognized as ready for production use. Rocky Linux builds are prepared for x86_64 and aarch64 architectures. Additionally, builds for cloud environments such as Oracle Cloud Platform (OCP), GenericCloud, Amazon AWS (EC2), Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure, as well as images for containers and of virtual machines in RootFS/OCI and Vagrant (Libvirt, VirtualBox, VMWare) formats.
As with classic CentOS, the changes made in Rocky Linux packages revolve around removing the ties to the Red Hat brand. The distribution is fully binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.7 and includes all the improvements offered in this release. For instance, new modules ruby:3.1, maven:3.8, mercurial:6.2, Node.js 18 are introduced, and updates are made to GCC Toolset 12, LLVM Toolset 14.0.6, Rust Toolset 1.62, Go Toolset 1.18, Redis 6.2.7, Valgrind 3.19, chrony 4.2, unbound 1.16.2, opencryptoki 3.18.0, powerpc-utils 1.3.10, libva 2.13.0, PCP 5.3.7, Grafana 7.5.13, SystemTap 4.7, NetworkManager 1.40, samba 4.16.1.
Among the specific changes for Rocky Linux, one should note the provision of the Thunderbird email client with PGP support in a separate repository, as well as the open-vm-tools package. The nfv repository offers a set of packages for virtualizing network components, developed by the NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) SIG group.
The project has been placed under the auspices of the recently established Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation (RESF), which is registered as a public benefits corporation, aiming for public good rather than profit. The organization is owned by Gregory Kurtzer, the founder of CentOS, but the management functions, according to the adopted charter, are delegated to a board of directors, whose members are elected by the community involved in the project.
In parallel, for the development of advanced products based on Rocky Linux and to support the community of developers for this distribution, a commercial company Ctrl IQ has been established, which received $26 million in investments. The Rocky Linux distribution promises to be developed independently of Ctrl IQ under the guidance of the community. Companies such as Google, Amazon Web Services, GitLab, MontaVista, 45Drives, OpenDrives, and NAVER Cloud have also joined the project for its development and financing.
Note: A few hours ago, releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.1 and AlmaLinux 9.1 were announced, but news about them will be published later.
Source: opennet.ru
