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Oracle released today Oracle Linux 8.4 as the latest and greatest version of its enterprise-ready and free operating system based on the freely distributable sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4 and fully compatible with both Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and CentOS Linux distributions, Oracle Linux 8.4 is now available for download as a free alternative Linux server for cloud and on-premises deployments of any size.
Powered by the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) Release 6 Update 2, which is running Linux 5.4.17-2102.201.3, available for both 64-bit (x86_64) and ARM64 (AArch64) platforms, Oracle Linux 8.4 also features the latest Red Hat Compatible Kernel as Linux 4.18.0-305 only for 64-bit (x86_64) platforms.
The updated Red Hat Compatible Kernel is packed with various new features and improvements, such as a free memory page feature to improve the stability and resource efficiency of the host when running Oracle Linux in a virtual machine, the EDAC module for handling ECC (Error Code Correction) memory and detecting/reporting PCI bus parity errors, as well as the kmod-redhat-oracleasm kernel module for the ASMLib utility.
However, the biggest changes in this release are made around security, as Oracle Linux 8.4 introduces a new RPM plugin as a replacement of the previous YUM plugin to notify the fapolicyd daemon, which has been updated to version 1.0.2, about any changes that occur during RPM transactions.
In addition, it ships with libreswan 4.3, which adds support for IPsec-based VPN over TCP encapsulation and IKEv2 support of Security Labels for IPsec, Clevis 15, as well as OpenSCAP 1.3.4, along with scap-security-guide 0.1.54 with an updated Operating System Protection Profile and an updated scap-workbench package with support for scanning remote systems without the need of a the root account.
On top of that, Oracle Linux 8.4 features an updated toolchain consisting of GCC 10, Python 3.9, Swig 4.0, Subversion 1.14, Redis 6, PyMySQL 0.10.1, BIND 9.11.26, and Ghostscript 9.27. For more details, check out the release announcement page.
Meanwhile, you can download Oracle Linux 8.4 right now from the official website as Full, Boot, UEK Boot, or Source ISO images. Individual RPM packages can also be downloaded from Oracle’s Unbreakable Linux Network and YUM server.
Image credits: Oracle
Last updated 3 years ago
