It's a busy day in the software and hardware space today as well as a busy week for Oracle with several big releases this week. The latest is the general availability of the long-awaited MySQL 8.0 update.

Tuesday was a very busy release day for Oracle folks as in addition to shipping an updated Solaris 11.4 beta and Oracle Linux 7 Update 5, their compiler folks also announced the GraalVM 1.0 virtual machine release.

While some at Oracle were busy releasing Oracle Linux 7 Update 5 as their RHEL7 downstream, the remaining Solaris developers were putting out a refreshed public beta spin of Solaris 11.4.

Just one week after launching Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5, Oracle has released the latest version of their RHEL7-derived Oracle Linux 7. The Oracle Linux 7 Update 5 pulls in the latest *EL7 changes while also offering their "Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel" option.

While the source to Oracle's "Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel" has been available via the company's own servers, now the organization is publishing their source kernel changes to GitHub in a bid to increase the popularity of their patched version of Linux.

JDK 10 has reached general availability as the first Java release under Oracle's new six-month release model.

Oracle has made available updated installation media for Oracle Linux 7 for ARM64.

Oracle published a SPARC and Solaris road-map updated for March 2018.

If for some reason you are still riding the Linux 4.1 kernel series, you really should think about upgrading to at least a newer LTS series in the near future. But if you still plan on riding it for a while longer, at least it's getting page table isolation support for Meltdown mitigation.

You may recall from last year that Oracle was looking to offload Java EE to someone else. They ended up putting the code on GitHub for Java Enterprise Edition and offering Java EE to the Eclipse Foundation, but that didn't include the name.

Oracle's current Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) release is making use of Linux 4.1 that is definitely showing its age... Fortunately, for those using this Oracle spin of the Linux kernel on their RHEL-clone Oracle Linux have UEK Release 5 in the pipe that is transitioning to Linux 4.14 LTS.

The OpenSolaris/Illumos-based OpenIndiana operating system has finally moved past GCC 4.9 as its base user-land compiler and is now using GCC 6.4.

A decade ago Linux users were clamoring for Sun Microsystems to bring Solaris' DTrace and ZFS to Linux. While there are still petitions for Oracle to more liberally license ZFS so it could see mainline Linux support, it's been years since hearing much interest in DTrace for Linux. Over time other dynamic tracing implementations have come about and improved in comparison to DTrace, but for those still wanting this dynamic tracing framework that originated at Sun Microsystems, Oracle remains working on the Linux port.

Oracle's Mark Reinhold spoke at last weekend's FOSDEM conference about the state of OpenJDK for open-source Java.

MySQL 8.0 should presumably appear this year although no public release date has been set. At last weekend's FOSDEM conference in Brussels were many talks about developers and database administrators eager for MySQL 8.0, well, at least for those not on the MariaDB bandwagon.

After all the Oracle/Solaris controversies last year, it's good to see Oracle today releasing their first public beta of Solaris 11.4 as an update to the Solaris 11 operating system.

For those happening to use Oracle Solaris on desktops/workstations, Solaris 11.4 will finally be making the transition from GNOME 2 to the GNOME 3.24 Shell.

Oracle has announced the release of their Linux Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 4 Update 6.

As part of the push for upstreaming VirtualBox guest driver support in Linux, not only are kernel drivers being upstreamed driver-by-driver, but their DDX driver has now done its official X.Org christening.

Following Red Hat promoting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 for ARM under general availability, Oracle with their RHEL7-derivative, Oracle Linux 7, also now supports ARM.

The latest talent to have departed Oracle is a longtime GNOME contributor who has at Oracle/Sun Microsystems for nearly the past two decades.

It was more than one year ago that VirtualBox 5.1 was released while today it's finally been succeeded by a new feature release.

While Oracle recently let go of some of their SPARC team, today marks the launch of the SPARC M8.

Besides incorporating the RHEL 7.4 changes from Red Hat into their recent Oracle Linux update, their Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) has received a few updates of its own.

Since last month's announcement by Oracle that they were essentially looking to offload Java EE to a new foundation, that new steward has now been named.

While Oracle recently laid off a ton of SPARC staff (and Solaris), not everyone was let go and it's still not instantly a dead platform. With Linux 4.14 there are some SPARC improvements for those relying upon this ex-Sun hardware.

While Oracle is slashing Solaris and SPARC jobs, their RHEL-derived Oracle Linux operating system continues getting pushed forward. Oracle Linux 7 Update 4 is now available as their re-based version off Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4.

Following word last month Oracle was looking to move Java EE off to a new (more open) steward, today developers have noticed Java EE in its entirety is available via GitHub.

It looks like the Oracle layoffs just before the US Labor Day indeed hit the SPARC and Solaris groups hard.

Oracle is celebrating Labor Day in America this weekend by reportedly doing a fresh round of layoffs and it's sounding like it could affect a number of heads.