Recently, Oracle announced the exciting news of the general availability of Oracle Linux 9. This release includes the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 7 (UEK R7), along with the Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK).
Oracle Linux is an optimized and secure operating environment for application development and deployment. Oracle Linux 9 with UEK R7 provides kernel, performance, and security enhancements including:
UEK R7, based on the mainline long term support (LTS) 5.15 release, offers the latest hardware support and is aligned with the Linux kernel community for more timely delivery of critical fixes and security updates. This release includes core scheduling, a security feature to help avoid side-channels attacks; adds CTF (C-type format) debug info data as part of the core kernel installation, allowing developers to debug their systems without having to install additional packages; and improves the default page size to 4 KB for the 64-bit Arm (aarch64) platform. UEK R7 is also available with Oracle Linux 8.
OpenSSL 3.0 in Oracle Linux 9 includes a number of new concepts and structural enhancements for application developers and users. OpenSSL 3.0's new FIPS module prevents non-FIPS algorithm use while the FIPS flag can be set in the kernel without the need to switch OpenSSL to FIPS mode.
File system enhancements with UEK R7 include Btrfs, with new asynchronous SSD trimming, parallel filesystem sync capabilities, and fewer checksum tree lookups. XFS supports Direct Access (DAX) operations, permitting direct access to byte-addressable persistent memory, helping avoid the latency of using traditional block I/O conventions. NFS introduces the "eager write" mount option to help reduce latency.
VirtualBox shared folder (vboxsf) is natively supported in UEK R7. This facilitates the sharing of folders between Oracle Linux guests and the host operating system with Oracle VM VirtualBox.
Refer to the Oracle Linux 9 release notes for more details on these and other enhancements.
Oracle Linux is free to download, distribute and use--even in production--and has been since its release in 2006. Installation media, updates and source code are available on the Oracle Linux yum server with no login or authentication requirements.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) platform images are operating system images that make it quick and easy for you to launch instances within minutes. OCI provides Oracle Linux 9 platform images that can be deployed on Intel-64 (x86_64), AMD-64 (x86_64), and Ampere (aarch64) compute shapes.
Optimized, cloud-ready Oracle Linux on OCI
OCI is the best cloud service provider for testing and developing on Oracle Linux. Oracle Linux is tested and optimized for deployment on OCI, which includes tools and services that help enhance the deployment and developer experience in the cloud.
Here are several great reasons why you should consider deploying and running Oracle Linux in OCI:
Oracle Linux platform images are made available in OCI for easy deployment, and are frequently updated to help ensure access to the latest updates and software. Oracle Linux platform images include OCI utilities that allow the instance to access information about and provision infrastructure resources in OCI.
The Oracle Linux yum server is mirrored inside OCI to enable faster downloads of the latest Oracle Linux bug fixes, security, and container images for Oracle software. Because all network traffic stays within the OCI data centers, no internet traffic bandwidth is consumed, and no network charges are incurred.
Oracle Ksplice is pre-installed with OCI Oracle Linux platform images. Using Ksplice, the Oracle Linux kernel and user space (glibc,openssl) are updated and patched with the latest critical fixes without incurring operational costs or planned downtime.
Oracle OS Management Service is an OCI integrated solution that helps automate common management tasks for Oracle Linux and Windows Server systems. It provides update and package management and security and compliance reporting tools. OS Management helps simplify and automate patching operations.
Oracle Linux Support is included at no additional cost with your OCI subscription. You can take advantage of all the benefits Oracle Linux Support provides for free in OCI, including access to the latest packages and updates, 24x7 expert support, the My Oracle Support portal with an extensive Linux knowledge base, Oracle Ksplice zero-downtime updates, and the use of OS Management Service to manage and monitor Oracle Linux instances, and more.
Oracle Linux is an ideal choice for Red Hat or CentOS users who need a stable, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)-compatible alternative at no additional cost for OCI subscribers. Oracle Linux is 100% application binary compatible with RHEL. Since the intial launch, customers have been running Oracle Linux with no compatibility bugs logged. Whether running on UEK or RHCK, Oracle Linux remains fully compatible with RHEL.
Launching Oracle Linux 9 instances in OCI made easy
You can quickly launch an Oracle Linux 9 instance in OCI in minutes by following a few simple steps:
Login to the OCI Console, select Instances from the left main menu, click on Instances under Compute, and click on Create instance.
From the Create compute instance screen, under Image and shape, you will need to click on the Change image button which will bring you to the image source for Platform images.
Under the Oracle Linux image name, select OS image version 9, and click on Select image.
This will take you back to the Create compute instance screen where you can complete the availability domain, shape, networking, SSH keys, and boot volume configuration of the instance. Refer to the instructions in the documentation, if you need further assistance on how to create a compute instance.
Getting started
OCI Cloud Free Tier resources are also available for you to test drive Oracle Linux 9. You can take advantage of Always Free Cloud Compute and other services for an unlimited time and access a 30-day trial with up to $300 in free cloud credits. Subscribe to OCI today, and start test driving and developing next generation applications on Oracle Linux 9.
For more information, visit the following links:
Documentation, Training and Hands-on Labs
Oracle Linux Documentation and Training Resources
Oracle Linux 9 Release Notes
Oracle Linux Certifications
Oracle Linux and Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) Releases
Oracle Linux Blog
GitHub
Oracle Linux on GitHub
UEK source on GitHub
Switch from CentOS to Oracle Linux
OCI Blog
Oracle Linux 9 cloud-ready platform images now available in OCI