Bringing enterprise Linux to the robotics frontier: ROS2 adds Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a tier-1 supported platform

The convergence of enterprise IT and physical computing is accelerating. As artificial intelligence transitions from purely digital environments into autonomous systems, industrial automation, and smart edge devices, the software foundation behind these systems must be as resilient as the physical machines themselves.

To power this next generation of intelligent systems, we’re pleased that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is now supported by Robot Operating System (ROS2) as a tier-1 platform. As a tier-1 platform for ROS2, the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform brings enterprise-grade security, mission-critical lifecycle stability, and broad hardware enablement directly to the global robotics community.

ROS2 provides developers with an open framework for building robotic applications to build, test, and deploy ROS-based applications, while RHEL delivers an enterprise Linux foundation designed around the operational requirements of organizations running critical workloads. ROS2  tier 1 platforms, like RHEL, are considered high priority systems that receive regular testing and bug fixes. Bringing these two ecosystems together creates a validated path for developers to building ROS2 applications on enterprise-grade infrastructure.

Key benefits for roboticists and enterprise teams

• Production-grade stability: Deploy ROS2 workloads on a more consistent, hardened, trusted platform engineered for long-term lifecycle support.
• Unified hardware acceleration: Simplify integration with GPUs, NPUs, and specialized edge processors using RHEL’s validated driver ecosystem.
• Consistent security from kernel to edge: Apply enterprise security compliance, threat monitoring, and container security across your entire robotic infrastructure.
• Extendable digital twin architecture: Test, validate and apply reinforced learning techniques to your physical automation workloads on Red Hat's platform, either in your development workflow or automated pipelines, by bringing your own simulation engine and avoiding vendor lock-in.

Fueling open collaboration in physical AI

This support for RHEL reflects a broader commitment to engage the developer community and advance the openness and collaborative spirit of physical AI, the integration of artificial intelligence into physical machines that perceive and interact with the real world. Physical AI presents unique infrastructure challenges because autonomous mobile robots, spatial perception models, drones, and other technologies demand precise coordination across operating system kernels, edge chips, hardware accelerators, and communication frameworks.

This is where open source can make a difference. As technology ecosystems grow, developers need new technologies to work together within shared frameworks in order to have a common place to build, test, and contribute. Closed, proprietary stacks create fragmented environments that hinder progress. ROS2’s tier 1 support of RHEL is an example of this approach within robotics,  empowering developers to share tools, avoid vendor lock-in, and scale autonomous systems with greater security capabilities from sandbox experiments to production fleets while furthering an open ecosystem for physical AI.

Open source does not remove the complexity of physical computing, but it creates a shared foundation for addressing that complexity together and paves the road for innovation across organizational boundaries. As physical AI expands into new applications and hardware platforms, this collaboration allows ecosystems to evolve without requiring every developer to start from scratch. Open source has repeatedly proven to be an exponential innovation engine. By lowering barriers to entry and experimentation and supporting ROS2 to run on RHEL, we look forward to shaping the open future of physical AI together with the community.

Ready to scale your physical AI and robotics workloads? Discover how RHEL powers mission-critical industrial systems, or connect with our team at redhat.com/industrial. If you want to learn more about deploying robotics workloads on Linux using ROS2, join the Fedora Robotics Special Interest Working Group.