Oracle Linux 7 U9 Beta Bringing Updated Drivers, Wayland Tech Preview

Along with Solaris 11.4 SRU24, another operating system update out this week from Oracle is the beta of their forthcoming RHEL7-based Oracle Linux 7 Update 9.

Oracle Linux 7 Update 9 is based on the upstream Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.9 but with various extras, including Oracle continuing to offer a "Red Hat Compatible Kernel" (RHCK) that for EL7 is based on an aging Linux 3.10 kernel or Oracle's "Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel" currently tracking Linux 5.4 LTS. The Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel is up to v5.4.17-2011.4.4 with various improvements from the upstream branch as well as continuing to carry Oracle extras like DTrace and other features and performance optimizations.

Like upstream RHEL7, Oracle Linux 7 Update 9 is now offering Wayland support as a "technology preview" for those interested. Upstream RHEL7 is offering Wayland as a technology preview in conjunction with the GNOME desktop, assuming you are not using multiple GPUs, the NVIDIA binary driver is not used, and the other common limitations of Wayland known.

Added to Oracle Linux 7 Update 9 Beta is also an updated virt-v2v to support Ubuntu and Debian conversion from VMware virtualization to Oracle Linux KVM.

More details on the changes coming to Oracle Linux 7 Update 9 can be found via Wednesday's release announcement.