Oracle Linux 9.0 Officially Released

Oracle Linux 9 for Intel-64, AMD-64 (x86_64), and Arm (aarch64) has been officially released as a fork of Oracle’s RHEL 9.

The kernel versions used in Oracle Linux 9.0 images include Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 7 (UEK R7) and Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK).

Oracle Linux 9 with UEK R7 provides kernel, performance and security enhancements including:  

• UEK R7 is based on Linux 5.15 LTS release, provides the latest hardware support, aligns with the Linux kernel community, delivers critical fixes and security updates more timely, UEK R7 is also available for Oracle Linux 8 .
• OpenSSL 3.0 in Oracle Linux 9 includes many new concepts and architectural enhancements. The new FIPS module prevents the use of non-FIPS algorithms, while the FIPS flag can be set in the kernel without switching OpenSSL to FIPS mode.
• Filesystem enhancements for UEK R7: including Btrfs, new asynchronous SSD trimming, parallel filesystem sync capabilities, and fewer checksum tree lookups. XFS supports direct access (DAX) operations, allowing direct access to byte-addressable persistent memory, helping to avoid the latency of using traditional block I/O conventions. NFS introduces the “eager write” mount option to help reduce latency.
• UEK R7 natively supports VirtualBox shared folders (vboxsf). Useful for sharing folders between Oracle Linux guest and host operating systems using Oracle VM VirtualBox. 

Additional content can be found on the Oracle blog .