1. Release Notes for Oracle Linux 8.1
  2. About Oracle Linux 8

1 About Oracle Linux 8

The current Oracle Linux 8 release contains new features and enhancements that improve performance in different areas including automation and management, security and compliance, container management, and developer tools. These enhancements are especially designed to make the operating system adaptable to different types of deployment from strictly on-premises installations, hybrid deployments that combine on-premises and cloud installations, and full cloud deployment.

System Requirements and Limitations

To determine whether your hardware is supported on the current Oracle Linux 8 release, check the Hardware Certification List at https://linux.oracle.com/hardware-certifications. Note that hardware is listed as it becomes available and is validated.

Note that Oracle Linux 8 for the aarch64 platform is primarily engineered for use with Ampere™ eMAG™-based EVK platform and the Marvell ThunderX2® processor. Other hardware may be supported and added to the Hardware Certification List in future.

CPU, memory, disk and file system limits for all Oracle Linux releases are described in Oracle Linux: Limits.

Supported Architectures

The following architectures are supported in Oracle Linux 8:

  • Intel x86_64

  • AMD 64-bit

Note:

The 64-bit Arm (aarch64) platform can be installed as a developer preview release in Oracle Linux 8. See unresolvable-reference.html#ol8-arm-only.

Shipped Kernel

The Oracle Linux 8.1 release ships with the kernel-4.18.0-147.el8 Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK) kernel package.

The Oracle Linux release is tested as a bundle, as shipped on the installation media image. When installed from the installation media image, the minimum kernel version that is supported is the kernel that is included in the image. Downgrading kernel packages is not supported, unless recommended by Oracle Support.

About the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel

The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) is a Linux kernel built by Oracle and supported through Oracle Linux support. UEK is tested on Arm (aarch64), Intel x86, and AMD x86 (x86_64) platforms. Each release contains additional features, bug fixes, and updated drivers to provide support for key functional requirements, improve performance, and optimize the kernel for use on Oracle products such as Oracle's Engineered Systems, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and large enterprise deployments for Oracle customers.

Typically, a UEK release contains changes to the kernel ABI relative to a previous UEK release. These changes require recompilation of third-party kernel modules on the system. To minimize impact on interoperability during releases, the Oracle Linux team works closely with third-party vendors regarding hardware and software that have dependencies on kernel modules. Thus, before installing the latest UEK release, verify its support status with your application vendor.

The kernel ABI for a UEK release remains unchanged in all subsequent updates to the initial release.

The kernel source code for UEK is available after the initial release through a public git source code repository at https://github.com/oracle/linux-uek.

For more information about UEK such as tutorials, notices, and release notes of different UEK versions, go to Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel documentation.

User Space Compatibility

Oracle Linux maintains user space compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that is independent of the kernel version that underlies the operating system. Existing applications in user space continue to run unmodified on UEK R6 and UEK R7, with no required recertifications for RHEL certified applications.

Obtaining Installation Images

The following installation images for the current Oracle Linux 8 release are available:

  • Full ISO of Oracle Linux for typical on-premise installations

  • Boot ISO of Oracle Linux for network installations

  • Boot ISO of the supported UEK release for installing on hardware that is supported only on UEK

  • Source DVDs

You can download these images from the following locations. Note that the images in these locations are for both the x86_64 and aarch64 platforms, unless indicated otherwise:

Note:

Oracle Linux 8 (aarch64) is available as a developer preview on Oracle Linux 8.0 and Oracle Linux 8.1. The developer preview images for Oracle Linux 8 for the 64-bit Arm (aarch64) platform are available at https://www.oracle.com/linux/downloads/linux-beta8-downloads.html.

To prepare a downloaded image for installing Oracle Linux, see Oracle Linux 8: Installing Oracle Linux.

For information about the available ISOs for the three most recent updates to the Oracle Linux releases, refer to https://yum.oracle.com/oracle-linux-isos.html.

For developers who are making use of the Raspberry Pi hardware platform, Oracle provides an unsupported developer release image, which includes the firmware that is required to boot this platform. For more information about making use of the Raspberry Pi hardware platform, see Install Oracle Linux on a Raspberry Pi.

Note:

Aside from installation ISOs, you can also use Oracle Linux images to create compute instances on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. For information about these images, see the release notes for the specific image that you are using on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Documentation page.

To use Oracle Linux on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, see https://docs.oracle.com/iaas/oracle-linux/home.htm.

Upgrading From Oracle Linux 7 to Oracle Linux 8

You can upgrade an Oracle Linux 7 system to the latest Oracle Linux 8 release by using the leapp utility. For step-by-step instructions, as well as information about any known issues that you might encounter when upgrading your system, see Oracle Linux 8: Performing System Upgrades With Leapp.