Red Hat announced a few days ago the release of the new version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5. The 8.x branch, which will be supported until at least 2029, is evolving according to a new predictable development cycle, which involves the formation of releases every six months at a predetermined time.
What’s New in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5?
Linux Container Improvements
Containers are a crucial component of modern DevOps implementations. RHEL 8.5 continues the tradition of new features and improvements for running Linux containers.
The latest RHEL version brings full support for containerized Podman in CI/CD systems as well as other operating environments. On top of that RHEL 8.5 offers better performance when building and running rootless containers, with native support for OverlayFS.
For those of you unaware, OverlayFS is a union mount file system on Linux. It is used to overlay an upper directory tree on top of a lower directory tree. These are virtually merged even if they belong to different file systems.
Support for OpenJDK 17 and .NET 6
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 brings support for OpenJDK 17 and .NET 6, which lets you modernize and build next-generation workloads and applications.
OpenJDK 17 is the latest LTS (Long Term Support) release for the Java SE platform. Now you can start take advantage of the language’s new features, while also strengthening the stability of existing application environments.
RHEL 8.5 includes .NET 6, which is also a Long Term Release. .NET Core 6 builds on the success of .NET Core 5 and adds performance improvements to the base libraries, garbage collector, and Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler.
SQL Server Enhancements
The ability to run SQL Server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is not new. Red Hat and Microsoft have had a very successful collaboration. Because of this SQL Server runs very well on RHEL.
Customers running Microsoft SQL Server on RHEL will see a number of enhancements to help configure, manage and operate RHEL more efficiently.
Now RHEL System Role for Microsoft SQL Server is available for RHEL 8.5. This system role allows IT administrators and DBAs to more quickly install, configure and tune SQL Server in an automated fashion. In addition, the SQL Server Assessment API for Red Hat Insights helps provide an optimal user experience for system and database administrators, by delivering information from Microsoft’s SQL Server assessment API.
Kernel Live Patching
Kernel live patching is also now available for the RHEL minor releases with the ability to access kernel live patches for a six month period after a specific kernel is released. Moreover you can manage kernel live patching from within the Red Hat Enterprise Linux web console to reduce the complexity of performing critical maintenance.
Other Highlights
Later versions of the following components are now available as new module streams: The programming languages Ruby 3.0 and PHP 7.4.19, the runtime environment Node.js 16, the web server Nginx 1.20, the proxy server Squid 4.15 and the mail client Mutt 2.0 .7.
Some compilers and development tools are also available in new versions: GCC Toolset 11, LLVM Toolset 12.0.1, Rust Toolset 1.54.0 and Go Toolset 1.16.7.
At the moment of writing this, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 is still in beta and expected to release around May next year.
Additionally, more details on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 are available from the official RedHat announcement.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 is available through the Red Hat Customer Portal, so it requires a subscription as usual. Of course users can also use CentOS Stream as a preview of what is coming in RHEL.
