Oracle Linux 8 Beta Released - Based On RHEL 8

While next week we may see the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 (RHEL8) or at least learn a release date during Red Hat Summit 2019 Boston, the Oracle folks today released their first public beta of Oracle Linux 8.

There's been the RHEL 8 Beta since last November while Oracle engineers have now readied their beta of their RHEL8-derived Oracle Linux 8.

Oracle Linux 8 Beta carries the big changes over from RHEL8 including DNF Yum support, LUKS2 disk encryption, Cockpit management, GNOME Shell 3.27 and Wayland being used by default on supported configurations, and many other changes and simply a lot of updated packages that with RHEL7 / Oracle Linux 7 have been years out-of-date compared to upstream.

Oracle Linux 8 Beta at this stage just appears to have a Linux 4.18 "Red Hat Compatible Kernel" with no signs yet of a new Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel "UEK" that they tend to offer alongside Oracle Linux with various extras like DTrace integration and other Oracle bits. But presumably a new Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel version option will come in time for the official Oracle Linux 8.0 debut.

More details on the Oracle Linux 8.0 Beta via the Oracle.com blog.