Oracle has announced the release of Oracle Linux 9.7, a distribution kit based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.7 package base and fully binary compatible with it. Installation ISO images, sized at 13 GB and 1.3 GB, are available for unlimited downloads for x86_64 and ARM64 (aarch64) architectures. Unlimited and free access to the yum repository for Oracle Linux 9 provides binary package updates to fix errors and security issues, along with separate repositories for Application Stream and CodeReady Builder packages.
Included in Oracle Linux is a kernel from RHEL (based on kernel 5.14) as well as the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 8.1 (UEK 8.1), based on the Linux 6.12 kernel and optimized for industrial software and Oracle hardware. The kernel sources, including individual patches, are accessible in the public Git repository Oracle. The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel, which offers advanced features like DTrace integration and enhanced Btrfs support, is an alternative to the standard RHEL kernel package. Oracle Linux 9.7 and RHEL 9.7 have identical functionality releases apart from the additional kernel.