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The Rocky Linux team have announced a new release of their Red Hat Enterprise Linux
clone, Rocky Linux 9.0.
The new release offers GNOME 40, the ability to run different applications on different
video cards, and filesystem improvements to reduce latency.
"Rocky Linux 9 ships with GNOME 40 as the default desktop environment.
Redesigned core apps, settings, and UI make it easier than ever to use Rocky Linux as
a desktop operating system.
The Activities look and feel provides a better experience when working, launching applications
and arranging your personal workspace.
Other notable improvements for desktop usage include: Software can be run on a separate
graphics card by right-clicking and selecting the appropriate option; the ability to mute
notifications by selecting Do not disturb, which will appear as a separate button in
the notification; each screen can use a different refresh rate; the Activities program allows
you to group application icons into folders using a drag-and-drop method; fractional display
scaling."
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The 9.0 version of Rocky Linux , a distribution designed to be 100% compatible with Red Hat
Enterprise Linux and managed by CentOS project founder Gregory Kurtzer, was announced by
Louis Abel.
While it is stated that the Rocky Linux team is happy to announce the 9.0 version, it is
stated that the version is ready for x86_64, aarch64, ppc64le and s390x architectures.
Rocky Linux 9.0 based on RHEL 9.0 sources will be supported until May 31, 2032 (ten
years).it is stated.
Rocky Linux 9.0 ships with GNOME 40 as the default desktop environment; The redesigned
core applications, settings and user interface make it easier than ever to use Rocky Linux
as a desktop operating system.
While NFS offers the option of "willing write" mounts to help reduce latency; the system
has most of the latest runtimes and compilers including GCC 11.2.1, LLVM (13.0.1), Rust
(1.58.1) and Go (1.17.1).
It is reminded that errors or problems can be reported via Bugzilla.
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Rocky Linux 9 Officially Released with GNOME 40 Desktop, Improved Security
The Rocky Linux devs announced today the general availability of the long-anticipated Rocky
Linux 9 operating system as a drop-in replacement for CentOS Linux and CentOS Stream.
Based on the freely distributed sources of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 operating system
series, Rocky Linux 9 is here with GNOME 40 as the default desktop environment, support
for Direct Access (DAX) operations in XFS for direct access to byte-addressable persistent
memory, as well as the “eager write” mount option in NFS to help reduce latency.
Security-wise, Rocky Linux 9 series disables root user authentication with a password over
SSH by default to prevent attackers from gaining access using brute-force password attacks,
and OpenSSL 3.0 support.
Other noteworthy changes include an updated Cockpit web console with an improved performance
metrics page to better identify causes of high CPU, memory, disk, and network resource
usage spikes, the mptcpd or MultiPath TCP daemon instead of iproute2 to configure MultiPath
TCP endpoints, and support for key files in NetworkManager to store new connection profiles.
Rocky Linux 9.0 also comes with some of the latest runtimes and compilers, including GCC
11.2.1, LLVM (13.0.1), Rust (1.58.1), and Go (1.17.1), an updated toolchain consisting
of GCC 11.2.1, GNU C Library 2.34, and GNU Binutils 2.35, as well as many other great
Open Source technologies, including Python 3.9, PHP 8.0, Perl 5.32, Ruby 3.0.3, and Node.js
16.
Check out the full release notes for more details about the updated packages.
Rocky Linux 9.0 is available for download right now from the official website for the
64-bit (x86_64), AArch64 (ARM 64-bit), PowerPC 64-bit Little Endian (ppc64le), and IBM system
Z (s390x) hardware architectures as Minimal, DVD, and Boot editions.
Cloud images are also available for download here.
Existing Rocky Linux 8 users will be able to upgrade their installations to the Rocky
Linux 9 series, but the devs highly recommend a fresh install.
Keep in mind that Rocky Linux 8 will continue to be supported until May 31st, 2029, while
Rocky Linux 9 will be supported until May 31st, 2032.
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Rocky Linux 9.0 (Blue Onyx) Is Here with 10 Years of Support
Rocky Linux 9.0 is generally available for download now, with important security improvements
and an updated package base.
After Red Hat released a stable version of its enterprise Linux distribution RHEL 9.0
two months ago, the business Linux market expected it to be followed by releases from
the other “big three” players – AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, and Oracle Linux.
All three distributions are based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and provide 1:1 binary compatibility
with it.
Recently, AlmaLinux 9.0 and Oracle Linux 9.0 have already released their RHEL 9-based versions,
and today Rocky Linux 9.0 completes the cycle.
So let’s see what it brings us.
Rocky Linux 9 (Blue Onyx)
Rocky Linux 9.0, codenamed “Blue Onyx,” focuses on security.
The SHA-1 message digest for cryptographic purposes has been deprecated.
Because of numerous known successful attacks based on identifying hash collisions, the
digest produced by SHA-1 is not considered secure.
OpenSSL 3.0.1 is now available, including a provider concept, a new versioning method,
an enhanced HTTP(S) client, support for additional protocols, formats, algorithms, and many other
enhancements.
On top of that, OpenSSH is distributed in version 8.7p1, which has numerous advancements,
bug fixes, and security improvements.
Furthermore, Rocky Linux 9.0 prohibits users from logging in as root via SSH with a password
to avoid brute force attacks on passwords.
Apart from those mentioned above, SELinux performance has been improved, including the
time it takes to load SELinux policy into the kernel, memory overhead, and other parameters.
But now it’s time to address something that stood out to us and on which we want to focus
our readers’ attention.
It’s about Peridot, the new build system utilized in Rocky Linux 9.
Until the 9.0 release, Rocky Linux was built with the Koji build tool, which the Fedora
Project initially developed.
However, it was developed for physical hardware rather than cloud-native systems.
As we all know, cloud computing is one of the major driving forces in the IT sector
these days, and Rocky Linux 9.0 bets wisely on it.
Anyone can use Peridot to recreate the exact steps taken by Rocky Linux engineers during
the distribution building process.
If you’re wondering what this means in practice, let us give you an example right away.
Companies that rely on enterprise Linux distros can rebuild Rocky Linux 9.0 but include additional
packages to give specific cloud functionality that is needed but not provided by default
in the distribution.
As a result, the flexibility and adaptability of the distro in a cloud environment rise
significantly, and we can only admire Rocky Linux’s intelligent approach in this case.
Under the hood, Rocky Linux 9.0 comes with Linux kernel 5.14 and systemd 250-6.
In addition, XFS now enables Direct Access (DAX) operations, which provide direct access
to byte-addressable persistent memory while avoiding the latency associated with typical
block I/O conventions.
It’s worth noting that the official announcement also highlights the desktop side of things.
This is interesting given that this distro mainly focused on the server Linux market.
So, if you plan to use Rocky Linux 9.0 as a desktop system, you get GNOME 40, which
runs on Wayland by default, and the availability of the Pipewire audio server.
Last, we will not overlook one of the most key aspects for developers and system administrators
– the language runtimes and tools.
They will not be disappointed because they will find plenty of application updates, including
Node.js 16, Perl 5.32, PHP 8.0, Python 3.9, Ruby 3.0, Git 2.31, Subversion 1.14, Apache
2.4.51, Nginx 1.20, Varnish Cache 6.6, Squid 5.2, MariaDB 10.5, MySQL 8.0, PostgreSQL 13,
Redis 6.2, LLVM Toolset 13.0.1, Rust Toolset 1.58.1, Go Toolset 1.17.7, GCC 11.2.1, Grafana
7.5.11, Maven 3.6, and Ant 1.10.
Rocky Linux 9.0 comes with ten years of support until May 2032.
You can visit the official announcement or check the release notes for additional information
about the latest release.
The distro is available for four architectures, including x86_64, aarch64, ppc64le, and s390x,
and can be freely downloaded from the project website.
However, since the full installation DVD file is large, 7.9 GB, the recommended way to download
it is to use a tool like wget.
So, go right ahead and use it.
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