A look back on Red Hat Enterprise Linux in 2022

Happy holidays! It has been a very busy year for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but now 2023 is right around the corner. We have a lot more work to do in the New Year, but before it arrives, let’s take a look back at some of our most notable RHEL releases for 2022.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.6

On May 11, we launched RHEL version 8.6. This update introduced a number of new features, including web console support for smart card authentication, support for SAP HANA, security features designed for SAP solutions, Stratis storage support in the web console and much more. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9

RHEL’s most important launch in 2022 was RHEL 9.

Released on May 18, this latest version of the world’s leading Linux platform was a major update that builds upon decades of relentless innovation. It is the first production release built from CentOS Stream—the continuously-delivered Linux distribution that tracks just ahead of RHEL. With CentOS, organizations are able to develop, test and contribute to a continuously-delivered distribution, providing a more seamless contribution path to the next minor release of RHEL.

RHEL 9 incorporates a number of valuable new features and benefits, including support for Python 3.9, Gnu Compiler Collection 11 (GCC 11) and the latest versions of LLVM, Rust, Go compilers and more. Plus, for the first time in RHEL, Link Time Optimization (LTO) was enabled by default in userspace for deeper optimization of application code to help build smaller, more efficient executables.

Additional benefits of RHEL 9 include:

• Modern application streams: Building on the introduction of application streams and module packaging in RHEL 8, all packaging methods in RHEL 9 are incorporated into application streams.
• Continued commitment to multiple architecture support: Open source software gives users greater control over their digital future by preventing workloads from being locked into a specific vendor. RHEL extends this control beyond the source code by enabling diverse CPU architectures for users that need an evolving business environment.
• Container improvements: If you're building applications with Red Hat universal base image (UBI) container images, you'll want to check out the RHEL 9 UBI images. The standard UBI image is available, as well as micro, minimal and the init image.
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for edge: RHEL 9 introduces automatic container updates and rollbacks, which expands the capacity to update container images automatically. Together with existing operating system-level rollbacks, this provides new levels of reliability for applications, which is essential for edge deployments.
• Image Builder as a service: Enhancements to Image Builder in RHEL 9 help organizations save time and drive greater system consistency at scale. Organizations can now build a standardized and optimized operating system image through our hosted service and deploy it to a cloud provider of their choice.
• Identity and security: New capabilities added to RHEL 9 help simplify how organizations manage security and compliance when deploying new systems or managing existing infrastructure. RHEL 9 now offers Integrity Measurement Architecture (IMA) to verify the integrity of the OS dynamically.
• Automation and management: Organizations now have access to the enhanced performance metrics page in the RHEL 9 web console to help identify potential causes of high CPU, memory, disk and network resource usage spikes. In addition, customers can more easily export metrics to a Grafana server. 
• Predictive analytics: Red Hat Insights now encompasses resource optimization, which evaluates performance metrics to identify workload utilization and right-sizes RHEL in the public cloud. Insights then provides visibility and recommendations for optimizing to a more suitable instance for the workload needs.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Workstations on AWS

On October 20, Red Hat launched Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Workstations on Amazon Web Services (AWS), bringing our powerful, cloud-based virtual workstation platform to a whole new audience. 

Delivered via NICE DCV—Amazon’s high-performance remote display protocol with enhanced security components—this release brings power and flexibility to compute-intensive tasks across the AWS cloud to help AWS users mitigate hardware costs and administrative overhead.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.7

Red Hat continued to bring innovation to RHEL 8 with the November 9 release of RHEL 8.7. With this update, customers are able to automate manual tasks more efficiently, standardize deployments at scale and simplify the day-to-day administration of their systems.

RHEL 8.7 introduced the ability to view and manage system-wide crypto policies for greater consistency and risk mitigation, as well as label and optionally encrypt data in SOS reports generated in the web console. It also included new system roles, such as the new Redfish Ansible automation modules, which allow customers to control the power state of a system, manage the order of boot devices, manage Redfish accounts and virtual media, and more.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.1

Last but not least, on November 16 we released the first minor update for RHEL 9: version 9.1. This update brought customers a number of new features, refinements and capabilities, including enhancements to SQL, Red Hat Smart Management with Red Hat Satellite, Red Hat Insights, and Workstations.

Enhanced capabilities added to RHEL 9.1 help simplify how customers manage system security and compliance when deploying new systems or managing existing infrastructure. These expanded features include:

• New Ansible tooling
• Storing identities in an external source to access Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems
• Multi-level security (MLS) to match customer needs and remotely verify OS integrity
• Support for Mozilla Firefox on RHEL for Workstations 9.1
• New Red Hat Insights features such as Snow Software integration, malware detection and more

Here’s to a great New Year

2022 brought some amazing releases that helped push the value Red Hat Enterprise Linux can provide for organizations even higher. We’re looking forward to continuing to work hard in 2023 to bring increased innovation and value to the cloud and open source community.

Once again, Happy Holidays to you and yours, and a Happy New Year!