1. Release Notes for Oracle Linux 9.1
  2. About Oracle Linux 9

1 About Oracle Linux 9

The current Oracle Linux 9 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 OS adaptable to different types of deployment such as on-premises installations, hybrid deployments that combine on-premises and cloud installations, and full cloud deployment.

Important:

Upgrading from an Oracle Linux Developer Preview release to its later official version is not supported. If you are running the Developer Preview version, you must reinstall the official Oracle Linux release upon its general availability.

System Requirements and Limitations

To determine whether a specific hardware is supported on the current Oracle Linux 9 release, check the Hardware Certification List at https://linux.oracle.com/hardware-certifications. Note that as hardware becomes available and validated, the hardware is added to the list.

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

Available Architectures

The release is available for installation on the following platforms:

  • Intel® 64-bit (x86_64) (x86-64-v2)

  • AMD 64-bit (x86_64) (x86-64-v2)

  • 64-bit Arm (aarch64) (Arm v8.0-A)

    The aarch64 platform is supported with Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK), which currently is the only kernel that is supported on this platform.

Shipped Kernels

For the x86_64 platform, the current Oracle Linux 9 release ships with the following default kernel packages:

  • kernel-5.14.0-162.6.1.el9_1 (Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK))

  • kernel-uek-5.15.0-3.60.5.1.el9uek (Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 7 (UEK R7))

    For new installations, the UEK kernel is automatically enabled and installed. It also becomes the default kernel on first boot.

For the aarch64 platform, Oracle Linux ships with the UEK kernel only.

The Oracle Linux release is tested as a bundle, as shipped on the installation media image. When installed from the installation media image, the kernel's version included in the image is the minimum version that is supported. 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 (Oracle Linux) that is independent of the kernel version that underlies the operating system. Existing applications in user space continue to run unmodified on UEK R7 with no required recertifications for Oracle Linux certified applications.

Obtaining Installation Images

The following installation images for the current Oracle Linux 9 release are available:

  • Full ISO of Oracle Linux for typical on-premises 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:

To prepare a downloaded image for installing Oracle Linux, see Oracle Linux 9: Installing Oracle Linux.

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.

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 use the Raspberry Pi hardware platform, Oracle provides an unsupported developer release image, which includes the required firmware to boot this platform. For more information about using the Raspberry Pi hardware platform, see Install Oracle Linux on a Raspberry Pi.

Upgrading From Previous Oracle Linux Releases

You can upgrade an Oracle Linux 8 system to the Oracle Linux 9 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 the system, see Oracle Linux 9: Performing System Upgrades With Leapp.