Linux 8 New Updates

RHEL 8 is based on Fedora 28 and uses upstream Linux kernel 4.18. This release provides a stable, secure and good foundation for hybrid cloud deployments to support customer’s workloads.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 provides support for following architectures.

AMD and Intel 64-bit architectures

The 64-bit ARM architecture

IBM Power Systems

IBM Z

New Features:

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1.The Cockpit is now available by default

2.RHEL 8 comes with a new version of the YUM version which is based on DNF. This new version is compatible with YUM v3 (RHEL 7)

3.RPM v4.14 is distributed in RHEL 8. RPM now validates the whole package contents before starting the installation

4.RHEL 8 content is other file systems through the two main repositories: BaseOS and Application Stream (AppStream)

5.RHEL 8 support up to 4PB of physical memory

6.Wayland is the default display server instead of the Xorg server in RHEL 8

7.XFS now supports shared copy-on-write data extents

8.nftables replaces iptables as the default network filtering framework

9.Python 3.6 is the default Python version in RHEL 8

10.PHP 7.2 comes with RHEL 8

11.Nginx 1.14 is available in core repository in RHEL 8

Cockpit – a web-based interface for a system admin to perform admin tasks is now available by default RHEL repositories.

The cockpit is now compatible with mobile browsers and makes it easier to manage systems from a mobile device.

The Cockpits front page now includes the warning for missing updates and expired Red Hat subscription.

As a major enhancement, the Cockpit’s Networking page includes Firewall section that let the users to manage (add, remove, modify) firewall rules as well as to change the status (enable or disable) of the firewall.

Kernel:

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While RHEL 7 support maximum of 64TB of physical memory, RHEL 8 support up to 4PB of physical memory.

The sosreport can now report any loaded eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filtering) programs and maps in RHEL 8

Software management:

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The software is now managed by the new version of YUM which is based on DNF in Fedora. This new version has similar syntax and compatible with the previous version YUM v3 (RHEL 7).

The new version provides increased performance, support for modular content and stable APU for integration with tooling.

On RHEL 7, RPM utility verifies payload content of individual files while unpacking which leads to serious issues as if the payload is damaged, it is only validated after executing script actions, which are irreversible.

On RHEL 8, RPM command validates the entire package before installation using the hash.

Web servers, databases, dynamic languages:

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MySQL 8.0, MariaDB 10.3, PostgreSQL 10 & 9.6 and Redis 4.0 are included in RHEL 8.

Now, in RHEL 8, Nginx 1.14 is available through the base repository. Nginx was previously obtained via Software Collection.

RHEL 8 is distributed with Python 3.6 and PHP 7.2. Python 2.7 is also available in the python2 package.

File systems and storage:

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The XFS file system supports shared copy-on-write data extend functionality. This is similar to copy-on-write (COW) functionality on other file systems which enables two or more files to share a common set of data blocks. When there is any change in files, XFS breaks the link to common bocks and creates a new file.

Startis is a new local storage manager, and it provides managed file systems on top of storage pools.

Networking:

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IPtables:

nftables replaces iptables as the default network filtering framework, and it uses tables for storing input, output and forward chains, as like iptables.

You can also convert your existing iptables or ip6tables rules into the suitable ones for nftables.

FirewallD:

nftables becomes the default backend for the firewalld daemon.

Security:

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OpenSSH package has been upgraded to 7.8p1, and it removed the support for SSH version 1 protocol.