Ever since it was released as a successor to CentOS 8 which was prematurely discontinued, Rocky Linux has proven to be a reliable, and formidable operating system for handling enterprise-grade workloads.
It’s completely free and open-source and 100% bug-to-bug compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It provides rock-solid stability for enterprise workloads, regular updates, and a 10-year support cycle.
Rocky Linux 9 is the latest release and was made available on July 14. 2022, and users can now download the ISO image and install it on their servers. It ships with a number of improvements and enhancements which we shall look at shortly.
Major Changes in Rocky Linux 9
Being 100% bug-to-bug compatible with RHEL, major changes that come with Rocky Linux 9 are in line with those that come with RHEL 9.
Here are the major highlights of Rocky Linux 9.
Updated Language Runtimes and Developer Tools
Rocky Linux 9 ships with the latest language runtimes and compilers, which include:
- GCC 11.2.1
- LLVM 13.0.1
- Rust 1.58.1
- Go 1.17.1
In addition, it comes with updated versions of developer toolchains which include:
- glibc 2.34
- binutils 2.35
Newer Web Programming Languages Versions
Rocky Linux 9.0 also ships with the latest versions of web-related and dynamic programming applications and version control packages.
Here is a list of some of the notable applications.
Dynamic Programming
- PHP 8.0
- Python 3.9
- Perl 5.32
- Ruby 3.0
- Node.JS 16
Web Servers
- Apache HTTP webserver 2.4.51
- Nginx 1.20
Version Control
- Git 2.31
- Subversion 1.14
Database Servers
- MySQL 8.0
- MariaDB 10.5
- PostgreSQL 13
- Redis 6.2
Compiler Toolsets
- Rust Toolset 1.58.1
- LLVM Toolset 13.0.1
- Go Toolset 1.17.7
Security Enhancements
Rocky Linux 9.0 has seen a couple of security most notably:
- SELinux Improvements – Memory overhead, loading time, and performance have been substantially improved.
- OpenSSH 8.7 p 1 is the latest version. Notable improvements include the replacement of SCP/RCP protocol with SFTP protocol which offers solid encryption and more predictable handling of filenames.
- OpenSSL 3.0.1 is the newest version. It provides improvements such as a new versioning scheme, support for new protocols & algorithms, and an improved HTTP(S) client among many others.
- Deprecation of SHA-1 message digest for cryptographic purposes. The hash functions associated with SHA-1 are no longer considered secure.
Filesystem Improvements
The XFS filesystem now supports Direct Access (DAX) operations allowing direct access to byte-addressable persistent memory. This helps to avoid the latency of leveraging traditional block I/O conventions. Additionally, NGS introduces an “eager write” mount option for minimizing latency.
GNOME 40
In Rocky Linux 9, GNOME 40 is the default desktop environment. GNOME 40 is freshly redesigned to provide a sleeker UI for a desktop operating system. Now more than ever, it’s much easier to launch your applications and arrange your personal workspace.
Notable improvements for desktop usage include:
- Fractional display scaling.
- Ability to group applications into folders using the drag and drop method thanks to the revamped ‘Activities‘ application.
- Ability to mute notifications by toggling on “Do not disturb” which appears as a separate button in the notification.
- The different refresh rates for every screen.
Download Rocky Linux 9 DVD ISO Images
Rocky Linux 9, just like Rocky Linux 8 provides DVD, Minimal, and Boot ISO images. The images are provided for the following architectures: x86_64, ARM64 (aarch64), s390x, and ppc64le.
Head over to the Rocky Linux Official Download Page to download any of the Rocky Linux 9 ISO images.
That’s it for this article. All the best as you try out Rocky Linux 9.
