The team behind the RHEL-clone Linux distribution hopes that, with the help of the cloud-native build system, it will be able to release new versions of Rocky within a week of the release of new RHEL editions.

Rocky Linux 9.0, the latest version of the open-source enterprise operating system designed to be bug-for-bug compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), is now generally available. The update includes new security and networking features, as well as a new open-source build system called Peridot.

Rocky Linux 9.0, released on 14 July, includes all the build chain infrastructure tools for developers to adopt Rocky Linux, or to extend or reproduce the operating system, should a developer wish to undertake a project independently of the community or any upstream supporting organisation. According to project representatives, the primary aim of developing the new, cloud-native build system was to ensure that new versions of Rocky could be released within a week of the release of new RHEL versions.

Peridot’s source code is available on GitHub, and according to the project’s plans, it will also be easy to install using Helm charts. Rocky Linux can be downloaded from rockylinux.org. Rocky Linux, operated by the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation (RESF), was created by Gregory Kurtzer, one of the original founders of CentOS and CEO of CIQ, to fulfil CentOS’s original purpose of serving as a production-ready downstream variant of RHEL.

Peridot, developed by CIQ and handed over to RESF, serves as a cloud-native stack for building and managing Rocky Linux. The stack has been released as open source. Rocky Linux uses open-source tools to ensure a ‘reproducible’ operating system, so that the problems associated with the end of the CentOS lifecycle are not repeated, the project stated.

Other key features of Rocky Linux 9.0 include the following security enhancements and networking features:

• SELinux performance, memory usage and load times have improved.
• OpenSSL, currently at version 3.0.1, features a new version numbering scheme, an enhanced HTTP(S) client, and support for new protocols and formats.
• Rocky Linux supports the automatic configuration of PCI-DSS, HIPAA, DISA and other security compliance settings via the Anaconda installer, saving you time and effort.
• OpenSSH, currently at version 8.7p1, replaces the SCP/RCP protocol with the SFTP protocol, which offers more predictable file name handling.
• The use of SHA-1 message digests is obsolete, as the cryptographic hash functions produced by SHA-1 are no longer considered secure.
• The Multipath TCP Daemon, or mptcpd, can be used instead of iproute2 to configure Multipath TCP endpoints.
• NetworkManager now uses configuration files by default to store new connection profiles, but it still supports ifcfg.
• The network-scripts package has been removed; network connections must now be configured using NetworkManager.

Video: Introduction to Rocky Linux and Peridot (CentOS)

The Fate of Peridot

Peridot built the Rocky Linux 8 and 9 releases. According to the announcement of Rocky Linux 10.0, packages for the 10 series are now being built using the Koji build system, as the new generation of Peridot is not yet ready, and Koji also supports IMA signatures.

We’ve written about the software versions in the 9.0 release, how to download it and the support period in our article ‘Rocky Linux 9.0 is out’. Rocky Linux 9 will receive updates until 31 May 2032.

Rocky Linux is an operating system available on both our KVM VPS servers and our dedicated servers.

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