The launch of the new version of the Linux distribution, "RockyLinux 9.0", whose goal is to create a free RHEL build that can take the place of the classic CentOS.
The release is marked ready for production deployments. The distribution is fully binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and can be used as a replacement for RHEL 9 and CentOS 9 Stream. Support for the Rocky Linux 9 branch will continue until May 31, 2032.
As with classic CentOS, the changes made to Rocky Linux packages are reduced to the removal of Red Hat branding and the removal of RHEL-specific packages such as redhat-*, insights-client, and subscribe-manager-migration. *.
Main new features of Rocky Linux 9.0
This new version of Rocky Linux 9 is the first version that was built with the new Peridot build system, created by the developers of the project, which supports repeatable builds, allowing any user to reproduce the packages provided in Rocky Linux and ensure that they contain no hidden changes. Peridot can also be used as a tool to maintain and create individual distributions or to keep forks in sync.
For the part of the specific changes of Rocky Linux 9, we can find that comes with GNOME 40 as the default desktop environment, in addition to The openldap-servers-2.4.59 package release is included in a separate pluse repository.
Other notable improvements is the NFV repository offering a set of packages for virtualization of network components, developed by the SIG NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) group.
On the other hand, it also stands out system monitoring from the Cockpit web console which offers an improved performance metrics page that helps identify the causes of high CPU, memory, disk, and network resource usage spikes.
In addition, it is mentioned that root user authentication with a password via SSH has been disabled by default. Instead of using the root password, users can access remote systems using SSH keys to login.
In addition, it also highlights that the software can be run on a separate graphics card by right-clicking and selecting the appropriate option, as well as the ability to silence notifications by selecting Do Not Disturb, which will appear as a separate button on the notification. .
On the part of the software it is mentioned that Python 3.9 will be compatible with the entire lifecycle of Rocky Linux, while Node.js 16 includes an update to the V8 engine to version 9.2, a new Timer Promises API, Ruby 3.0.3 provides several performance improvements, along with bug and security fixes, Perl 5.32 provides bug fixes and improvements and PHP 8.0 provides bug fixes and improvements.
Of the other changes that stand out of this new version:
- Each screen can use a different refresh rate
- The Activities program allows you to group app icons into folders using a drag-and-drop method
- Fractional display scale
File System - OpenSSL 3.0 adds a provider concept, a new version control scheme, and improved HTTPS
- XFS now supports direct access operations (DAX), allowing direct access to byte-addressable persistent memory, helping to avoid the latency of using traditional block I/O conventions. NFS introduces the "eager write" mount option to help reduce latency.
Finally, for those interested in knowing more about it about this new release, you can consult the details in the following link.
Download and Get
For those who are interested in being able to test or install this new version on their computer, you should know that Rocky Linux iso images are prepared for x86_64, aarch64, ppc64le (POWER9) and s390x (IBM Z) architectures. Additionally, there are live builds with GNOME, KDE, and Xfce desktops released for the x86_64 architecture and can be obtained from the following link.