The release of Rocky Linux 10.1 is available, developing a free build of Red Hat Enterprise Linux that can take the place of classic CentOS. The distribution is binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and can be used as a replacement for RHEL 10.1 and CentOS 10 Stream. Support for the Rocky Linux 10 branch will continue until 2035. Installation iso images for Rocky Linux have been prepared for the x86-64-v3, aarch64, ppc64le (IBM POWER), s390x (IBM Z), and riscv64 architectures. Additionally, live builds with GNOME and KDE desktops have been published for the x86_64 architecture.
As with classic CentOS, the main changes in Rocky Linux packages primarily involve removing the branding from Red Hat and eliminating RHEL-specific packages such as redhat-*, insights-client, and subscription-manager-migration*. You can familiarize yourself with the overview of changes in Rocky Linux 10.1 in the RHEL 10.1 announcement. The release includes only 64-bit package builds.
Among the specific changes for Rocky Linux, official support for the RISC-V architecture has been implemented for StarFive VisionFive 2 (VF2) and SiFive HiFive Premier P550 boards, as well as running in the QEMU emulator. Additionally, the project is developing several of its own repositories with additional packages:
- plus — currently only the package with the Valkey 8.0.3 DBMS (a fork of Redis) is available.
- NFV — packages for virtualizing network components, developed by the SIG group NFV (Network Functions Virtualization).
- CRB (Code Ready Builder) — additional packages for developers.
- RT — packages for real-time operation.
- HighAvailability — packages for creating highly reliable systems.
- SAP and SAPHANA — packages for SAP and SAP HANA, such as resource-agents, sap-hana-ha, sap-cluster-connector, and vhostmd.
Rocky Linux 10.1 is based on the OpenELA repository, which is jointly supported by Oracle and SUSE. The change in the development process is due to Red Hat ceasing to host the source texts of RHEL rpm packages in the public repository git.centos.org. Source packages are provided to the company's clients only through a restricted section of the website, where a user agreement (EULA) prohibits redistribution, preventing the use of these packages for creating derivative distributions. The source texts are still available in the CentOS Stream repository, but it is not fully synchronized with RHEL, and the latest versions of packages do not always match those from RHEL.
The Rocky Linux distribution is developed under the auspices of the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation (RESF), registered as a Public Benefits Corporation, focused on public good rather than profit. The organization's owner is Gregory Kurtzer, the founder of CentOS, but management functions are delegated to a board of directors elected by community members involved in the project. Concurrently, to develop extended products based on Rocky Linux and to support the community of developers of this distribution, a commercial company, Ctrl IQ, has been established and has received $26 million in investments. Companies such as Google, Amazon Web Services, GitLab, MontaVista, 45Drives, OpenDrives, and NAVER Cloud have joined the development and financing of the project.
Source: opennet.ru
