Red Hat has recently announced a change in the process of preparing intermediate releases of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution. This change will take effect with the release of RHEL 9.5. Moving forward, packages for future intermediate updates will be produced earlier using a continuous publication cycle, eliminating the need to wait for a full release. The updated packages will be accompanied by updated documentation, installation media, and virtual machine images.
Prior to version 9.5, beta versions of the distribution were typically produced about a month before the next intermediate output. However, with the upcoming release, Red Hat will introduce a new approach. Instead of separate beta releases for RHEL intermediate updates, beta versions of packages will be published as they become available, starting four months before the release. Additional updates to the beta versions will be released on a weekly basis.
The test versions of the packages will now be stored in separate repositories named “Rhel-9-for-Baseos-Beta-RPMS” and “RHEL-9-FOR-PPStream-BETA-RPMS”. There will no longer be installation carriers for beta versions, but users can generate their own installation kits or virtual machine images using Red Hat Image Builder tools.
For major versions like RHEL 10 and 11, beta versions will be released approximately six months prior to the official release date. Additionally, development will continue for CentOS Stream and RHEL 8 branches. These changes are intended to allow for more thorough testing of updates, as the previous one-month timeframe for intermediate versions was deemed insufficient for comprehensive testing and issue identification.