The latest release of Rocky Linux 9.7 distribution kit has been presented, with the goal of providing a free alternative to RHEL and filling the gap left by the discontinuation of CentOS. This distribution is compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and can be utilized as a replacement for RHEL 9.7 and CentOS 9 Stream. Support for Rocky Linux 9 will extend until May 31, 2032. Installation iso images for Rocky Linux 9.7 are available for x86_64, aarch64, ppc64le, and s390x (IBM Z) architectures. Live builds featuring GNOME, KDE, Cinnamon, and Xfce desktops are also offered for the x86_64 architecture. Additionally, the latest update, Rocky Linux 10.1, based on RHEL 10 branch, was released last week.
In comparison to CentOS, Rocky Linux packages have been modified to remove any association with the Red Hat brand and eliminate RHEL-specific packages like redhat-*, insights-client, and subscription-manager-migration*. Otherwise, the changes in Rocky Linux 9.7 align with those in RHEL 9.7.
Among the unique features of Rocky Linux are the delivery of openldap 2.6.8, iftop 1.0, and nmon 16q packages in additional repositories such as plus, NFV, CRB, RT, HighAvailability, ResilientStorage, SAP, and SAPHANA. Rocky Linux also supports the SIG group NFV for virtualization of network components. Furthermore, an experimental package with the Linux kernel, kernel-uki, is included to provide a unified UKI image for SecureBoot, certified with a separate key.
Development of Rocky Linux 9.7 involves sourcing packages from the OpenELA repository, which is a collaborative effort with Oracle and SUSE. The change in development processes was necessitated by Red Hat no longer hosting the source code for RHEL rpm packages in the public repository git.centos.org.