Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 with focus on "the cloud" is now available
IBMs subsidiary Red Hat announced the general availability of RHEL 8 at the Red Hat Summin in Boston on May 7th. The new version of this server-focused distribution targets cloud customers with improved container support and "Red Hat Enterprise Linux System Roles" which automates a lot of common configuration tasks.
RHEL 8 also introduces the concept of "Application Streams" which allows you to use the latest and most updated versions of the languages and frameworks you are using while keeping the core system on older and rock solid stable versions.
It also has a "Red Hat Enterprise Linux web console" which aims to provide a easy to use graphical interface for managing and monitoring the systems as well as virtual machines running on it.
For desktop users it's noteworthy that RHEL 8 "deprecates" the KDE Plasma desktop environment in favor of GNOME meaning KDE users will no longer get any official support from Red Hat. KDE was never really supported on Red Hat to begin with so this does not change all that much.
For those who would like to use RHEL 8 and not pay the Red Hat subscription fee there's CentOS 8 coming something like 2-3 months from now.
You can find RedHat's RHEL 8 press release here.
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