On November 9th 2021 Red Hat released RHEL 8.5 the fourth service pack for their leading Linux enterprise version. This is an intermediate release but it has a few interesting features, which may be the reason to upgrade to this version.
The kernel level for RHEL 8.5 is kernel-4.18.0-348.el8. Since RHEL 8.3 it’s now the third version with full support as KVM host and guest.
Here are a few highlights of the new features:
- .NET 6 : Finally System Z is fully supported – both as rpm or als a container base image. No more extra support contracts or special arrangements. For me this is the biggest enhancement in this release.
- OpenJDK 17
- NodeJS 16
- gcc toolset 11
Here is my usual summary of links to more information:
- Complete RHEL 8 documentation
- IBM documentation
- RHEL limits
- KVM limits
- RHEL lifecycle with the end date for the Extended Update Service (EUS)
- RHEL 8 Application Streams Life Cycle
- RHEL 8 package list (will be updated always to the latest service pack)