14 DAY TRIAL // Oracle has announced that its Oracle Linux operating system has reached version 7.0 RC, bringing new features, updated packages, and numerous features.
It's been a couple of months since the latest development release for Oracle Linux, but the developers have had enough time to prepare the distro for the final release, although a precise date hasn't been put forward.
“It's an exciting day for the Oracle Linux team because the Oracle Linux 7 release candidate is now available for download from Oracle Technology Network! Head on over to the OTN Oracle Linux downloads page and have a look at the Oracle Linux Beta Programs section to get it right now,” said the developers in the official announcement.
As usual, each new version of Oracle Linux comes with multiple Linux kernel versions available for download. Users will have access to the Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK) based on mainline Linux version 3.10, but this is not the default version.
In fact, Oracle Linux 7.0 RC uses Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 3 (UEK R3), starting with 3.8.13, which is based on mainline Linux version 3.8.
According to the changelog, an enhanced graphical interface has been added for the Anaconda installer, a new text interface that can be used in a write-only mode is now available, support has been added for non-partitioned, directly-formatted devices, the default file system type is XFS, which replaces ext4, the event Multi-Processing Module (MPM) and integrated proxy module support for the FastCGI protocol allows the server to serve more concurrent requests, and improvements to asynchronous read and write handling have been implemented.
Also, support has been added for the BIOS, EFI, and Open Firmware, support for additional file system types, including HFS+ and NTFS, has been implemented, swap memory compression has been implemented to reduce I/O overhead (zram), crash dumps can now be recorded on systems with up to 3 TB of memory, DynTick support has been added for suspending the system tick when there is only a single runnable task, Active Directory and LDAP sudo providers are now available for users, parameters defined in /etc/sysconfig files are automatically exported in Oracle Linux 7, and support has been added for the btrfs file system.
More details about the latest Oracle Linux distro can be found in the official announcement. You can download Oracle Linux 7.0 RC right now from Softpedia.
Remember that this is a development version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.