We are pleased to announce the general availability of Rocky Linux 8.9. This release is currently available for the x86-64 and aarch64 architectures.
Please review the release notes at https://docs.rockylinux.org/release_notes/8_9 - These notes contain important information including known bugs and more comprehensive details about changes in this version.
Notable / Breaking Changes:
* java-21-openjdk was introduced providing a new version of Java * Node.js 20 is now available as a new module stream * gcc-toolset-13 was introduced as a new compiler toolset * Azure images for Rocky Linux 8.9 will be published under a new publisher name: "resf", instead of the previous long, unreadable name. These images are not published yet, but should be available by the end of the week and will be accompanied by another news post. * The optional guest-agents group, previously available within both the Minimal Install and Custom Operating System base environments in anaconda, is no-longer available for selection as additional software for those environments. Consult release notes for more details. * The KDE live image for Rocky Linux 8.9 had problems during the testing phase. For this, we will be providing the older 8.8 images until we can build and provide a working image. * AWS AMI images now set the boot-mode parameter to "uefi-preferred” per https://bugs.rockylinux.org/view.php?id=4390
Testing:
Rocky Linux releases are put through thorough testing to ensure correctness and stability. Testing consists of hundreds of manual and automated checks covering all manner of environments and configurations. Rocky Linux 8.9 was subjected to a week of testing before receiving the team's approval. Testing logs, discussion, and the release checklist can be viewed at https://chat.rockylinux.org/rocky-linux/channels/rocky-release-v89. We encourage users interested in the process to join the team on Mattermost.
Downloads:
* Minimal, DVD, boot and torrent downloads: https://rockylinux.org/download * Live images in GNOME, KDE, XFCE, MATE, and Cinnamon flavors: https://rockylinux.org/alternative-images * Cloud images: https://rockylinux.org/cloud-images
Upgrades and Conversions:
Current users of Rocky Linux 8 can upgrade to 8.9 from the terminal via dnf update, or from the desktop with GNOME Software, KDE Discover, etc. Users of other Enterprise Linux 8 distributions can upgrade and convert to Rocky Linux 8.9 via the conversion script at https://rockylinux.org/migrate2rocky.sh.
Special thanks:
We are grateful to the many Rocky Linux project volunteers and leaders for producing, testing, and documented this release. As well at the sponsors and partners who provide the resources to build, test, and produce Rocky.
We would like to thank the following individuals in particular for their contributions to this release:
* Al Bowles * Alan Marshall * Adam Augustine * Boris Reisig * Brian Clemens * Bryan (@codedude) * Chris Stackpole * Krista Burdine * Louis Abel * Lukas Magauer * Mustafa Gezen * Neil Hanlon * Omer Sen * Pratham Patel * Sherif Nagy * Skip Grube * Steven Spencer * Taylor Goodwill * Trevor Cooper
Getting Help / Engaging with the community:
The Rocky Linux ecosystem is sustained by community-driven help, guidance, and love of RPM distributions, Enterprise Linux and its ecosystem. The best place to start for new users is at https://docs.rockylinux.org.
You can communicate with us and other community members on various mediums:
Mattermost: https://chat.rockylinux.org https://chat.rockylinux.org/ Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/rockylinux Forums: https://forums.rockylinux.org https://forums.rockylinux.org/ Mail list: https://lists.resf.org https://lists.resf.org/ Libera IRC: #rockylinux Bug Tracker: https://bugs.rockylinux.org https://bugs.rockylinux.org/
Thank you, we hope to enjoy the release!
Sincerely, Release Engineering @ The Rocky Linux Project