OpenJDK 15 is out today as the latest general availability release for this open-source Java implementation.

Oracle has put out another VirtualBox 6.1 point release though making it notable this time around is support for the upstream Linux 5.8 kernel.

While Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 6 is the latest and greatest series for Oracle's kernel spin derived from upstream Linux 5.4 as an alternative on Oracle Linux to their "Red Hat Compatible Kernel", for those still making use of the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 5, a new update was issued today.

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.

Solaris 11.4 continues chugging along per the Oracle/Solaris maintenance terms but still with no signs of life beyond the 11.4 series with any radical changes. The twenty-fourth stable release update was issued on Tuesday for Oracle Solaris 11.4.

While still on the Solaris 11.4 series and no signs of major advancements beyond it, SRU21 was released this week by Oracle with quite a number of package updates.

While Red Hat Enterprise Linux deprecated Btrfs and no longer supports it on RHEL8, Oracle does continue supporting this Linux file-system on their RHEL-based Oracle Linux when using the company's "Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel" alternative to their Red Hat Compatible Kernel. An Oracle engineer put out a lengthy post outlining the highlights of Btrfs in their new Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 6.

Oracle today released GraalVM 20.1 as their latest big feature update to this virtual machine implemented in Java that also supports not only JIT compilation but ahead-of-time compilation for Java software as well as supporting an LLVM runtime and other languages.

Oracle's Anthony Yznaga has sent out a proposal for "PKRAM" as a new means of being able to preserve memory pages of the currently running kernel so that they can be restored after launching a new kernel via kexec.

Following the recent release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2, Oracle has now released Oracle Linux 8 Update 2 as their RHEL8-based distribution with various extra features on top and even an alternative kernel option.

It turns out our recent OpenJDK 8 through OpenJDK 14 benchmarks caught some on Oracle's Java team by surprise. But they were able to replicate the outcome and as a result OpenJDK 15 will be seeing better out-of-the-box performance.

With no sign of Solaris.Next either as Solaris 11.5 or Solaris 12, nor is it really expected to happen following Oracle's actions in recent years from layoffs to dismissing Solaris 12 when it was on their road-map at one point for 2017, Solaris 11.4 continues just being SRU'ed.

Oracle has announced their newest major release of their "Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel" that they continue spinning as an option for users of Oracle Linux and being the default within the Oracle Cloud.

The Oracle Linux team has released Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 5 Update 3 as the newest version of their optimized downstream Linux kernel catering to cloud workloads.

Java 14 has reached general availability today with numerous updates to the JDK.

Oracle continues releasing new updates to Solaris 11.4 but there still aren't any public signs of life past v11.4. Out now is Oracle Solaris 11.4 SRU19 with one interesting addition.

Oracle today has released Solaris 11.4 SRU18 as the newest version of the long-running Solaris 11.4 series.

Oracle's Daniel Kiper provided an update on the GRUB boot-loader efforts and their hopes on sticking to a yearly release cadence.

Oracle has released a developer preview of their forthcoming Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 6 to Oracle Linux users, the company's spin of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. With Oracle UEK 6, Linux 5.4 serves as the new base.

There's still nothing on Solaris past the v11.4 series, but Oracle is ending out 2019 with a last stable release update for the year.

Oracle has released VM VirtualBox 6.1 with better integration around the public Oracle Cloud, continued work on their new 3D support brought forward in VirtualBox 6.0, user-interface improvements, and much more.

In addition to Oracle having shipped a Solaris update this past week, prior to calling it a weekend their virtualization crew released VirtualBox 6.1 RC1.

While there is no sign of Solaris 11.5 or Solaris.Next (last year was a road-map pointing to Solaris 11.Next in H2'19 or H1'20 that has since been removed), Oracle does continue putting out more updates to the Solaris 11.4 series.

Fresh off the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1 at the beginning of November, Oracle is now shipping Oracle Linux 8 Update 1 as their spin of RHEL 8.1 with various changes on top -- including their "Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel" option.

While we normally hear of rewriting code from Python and other scripting languages into C/C++ when its a matter of performance, in the case of Oracle Solaris it was taking old C code and modernizing it in Python 3 to yield a ~17x performance improvement.

Oracle has reaffirmed their "long term commitment to deliver innovation on Oracle Solaris" though it still doesn't look like anything past Solaris 11 will materialize.

While we haven't heard anything yet about Oracle's plans for Solaris post-11.4 whether that means Solaris 11.4 or the reportedly killed Solaris 12, Oracle today did release Solaris 11.4 Stable Release Update 12 as their newest installment for their supported Solaris operating system release.

Back in May we wrote about Oracle's initial plans for introducing an eBPF back-end to GCC 10 to allow this GNU compiler to target this general purpose in-kernel virtual machine. Up to this point LLVM Clang has been the focused compiler for eBPF but those days are numbered with Oracle on Friday pushing out the newest GCC patches.

Based on last week's release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7 is now Oracle Linux 7 Update 7 with many of the same changes.

While DTrace prospects for the Linux kernel are no longer viewed as magical or groundbreaking as they once were more than a decade ago, Oracle continues to work on its DTrace port to Linux and extending its reach beyond just their "Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel" for their RHEL-cloned Oracle Linux. Oracle now says they are working towards upstreaming more work as well as getting an eBPF-based implementation for the kernel.