14 DAY TRIAL // Oracle announced today, March 28, 2017, the release and general availability of the Oracle Linux 6.9 operating system, the ninth update to the Oracle Linux 6 stable series.
Prominent features of Oracle Linux 6.9 include support for TLS (Transport Layer Security) 1.2 on all system components, along with vsftpd support for TLS 1.2 and auditd support for incremental_async, implementation of the cpuid utility supporting AMD, Intel, and VIA CPUs, improved SSSD (System Security Services Daemon) support for Active Directory (AD), and better support when running as a Hyper-V guest.
Under the hood, the OS is powered by Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) Release 4 (4.1.12-61.1.28.el6uek) for 64-bit (x86_64) platforms, Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) Release 2 (2.6.39-400.294.3.el6uek) for 32-bit (i386) systems, and a Red Hat Enterprise Linux-compatible kernel (2.6.32-696.el6) for both 32- and 64-bit machines.
Oracle Linux 6 .9 also addresses various bugs and regression from previous releases, such as a glibc issue that could make the Oracle Database to not start under certain conditions, and backports all the security fixes from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.9, with which it's binary compatible.
The last point release for Oracle Linux 6
Oracle Linux 6.9 comes about ten months after the release of Oracle Linux 6.8 on May last year, and it's based on the recently released Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.9 operating system, which Red Hat said that it's the last maintenance update in the series.
Oracle also states in today's release notes that this is the final update that will be released for Oracle Linux 6. Users can download the Oracle Linux 6.9 ISO images from Oracle Software Delivery Cloud, and they can find individual RPM packages on the Oracle Linux Yum Server and Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN).
If you're using Oracle Linux 6.8 or a previous version on your infrastructure, it is recommended that you update to Oracle Linux 6.9 as soon as possible. Also, we recommend that you consider upgrading to the Oracle Linux 7 operating system series in the coming months as there won't be any updates released for Oracle Linux 6.