The Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation (RESF) has announced general availability (GA) of Rocky Linux 8.5. It’s an important milestone because it’s the first Rocky Linux release that officially supported Secure Boot.
For those of you unfamiliar with Secure Boot, it’s a feature found in the startup software for your computer that’s designed to ensure your computer starts safely and securely by preventing unauthorized software like malware from taking control of your PC at boot-up.
In other words, Secure Boot allows only software or firmware signed with approved keys to execute during the boot process.
Rocky Linux 8.5 Features
Under the hood a repository URL is no longer required when using Boot-only media and performing Network-based installations of Rocky Linux 8.5. During network installation, the list of mirrors hosting BaseOS content from the MirrorList will be used by the FastestMirror DNF plugin, sorted heuristically by the time it takes to open a connection to the mirrors on their given protocol’s port.
In fact, Rocky Linux 8.5 ships with the same features you’d find in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5, such as:
New Modules
- Ruby 3.0
- nginx 1.20
- Node.js 16
Updated Components
- PHP to version 7.4.19
- Squid to version 4.15
- Mutt to version 2.0.7
Compilers and Development tools
- GCC Toolset 11
- LLVM Toolset 12.0.1
- Rust Toolset 1.54.0
- Go Toolset 1.16.7
- Open Java Development Kit 17 (OpenJDK 17)
Download
You can download the ISO from the project’s website. It is is available for x86_64 and ARM64 with multiple ISO varieties. The official announcement is here.
You can also now use Rocky Linux 8.5 as a container image via Docker Hub or hosted on a third-party cloud service, such as Amazon Web Services or Azure.
For those who are currently using CentOS 8, and are looking for an easy way to migrate to Rocky Linux, I recommend going through our guide CentOS 8 to Rocky Linux 8 Migration: A Step-by-Step Tutorial.
If you are already using Rocky Linux 8.4 and want to upgrade to the latest stable 8.5 version, just type in terminal:
sudo dnf -y upgrade
Monday I installed Centos 8 and today I moved from Centos 8 to RockyLinux with not a single problem. I have been using Centos for many years in my business, but now I look forward to the Rocky road ahead.
Glad to hear it, Anthony. Rocky is one of the best alternatives for a CentOS replacement.