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RHEL 9 Beta

RHEL 9 Beta

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 Beta

Red Hat announced the beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 in the blog post What’s new in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 Beta on 3 November 2021.

Let’s have a look at some facts about the beta:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9

Official Documentation – Beta

What to expect

On 23 February 2022, the The Red Hat Enterprise Linux YouTube Channel hosted an hour long overview of what to expect in RHEL 9.0.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHeXhlAWqWc

Notes

This post is not endorsed or affiliated with Red Hat – the information provided is based on experience, documentation and publicly available information. Feel free to leave feedback at the end of this page if anything needs correction.
For an up to date roadmap discussion on RHEL please contact your Red Hat Account rep.

Getting Started

The easiest way to get the RHEL 9 Beta is to sign up for the no-cost developer program. Once done you can download a QCOW image, Boot ISO or Binary DVD from the Red Hat portal by clicking on the Downloads link in the top bar, and first selecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. On the following page change the ‘product variant’ to ‘Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 Beta’ and the page should refresh with ‘9.0 Beta (latest)’.

Alternatively, you can follow this link: No-cost RHEL for developers subscription

Updates

Be aware that as of 16 January 2022, Red Hat had published three dated sets of ISOs. One with a modification date of 30 October 2021, one with a modification date of 8 December 2021 (labelled Update 1) and another with a modification date of 11 January 2022 (labelled Update 2). You will most likely want the most up to date version. (Note: that the link on the developers website wasn’t updated for update 1 or 2 when I visited on 13 January)

Revisiting the Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 Beta 9 in the middle of February 2022 we saw that Update 3 has been released, in March 2022 we have Update 4 and April 2022 we have Update 5 – here’s a quick table to sumarise:

LabelModified Date
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0 Beta Binary DVD2021-10-30
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0 Beta Update 1 Binary DVD2021-12-08
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0 Beta Update 2 Binary DVD2022-01-11
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0 Beta Update 3 Binary DVD2022-02-01
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0 Beta Update 4 Binary DVD2022-03-01
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0 Beta Update 5 Binary DVD2022-04-05
RHEL 9 Beta Releases

One nice surprise is that if you installed an earlier release (I installed update 1) and registered it with Red Hat, you will be able to receive the updates. There’s no need to re-install.

RHEL 9 Updates

Note that these updates are just package updates rather than formal ‘errata’ with Security, Bugfix and Enhancement classifications.

Significant Changes

RHEL 9 was officially released on the Red Hat portal on 17 May 2022. For a full list of significant changes, please visit RHEL 9 Resources as this page details exactly what has ended up in the final GA release.

Downstream rebuilds

AlmaLinux

I couldn’t find anything formal about an Almalinux 9 Beta as of April 2022, On 19 April 2022, AlmaLinux have announced that AlmaLinux 9 Beta is now available. Links:

Rocky Linux 9

We have begun initializing the foundation (release and core packages) needed to start on Rocky Linux 9. We have begun importing the RHEL 9 beta sources as well as CentOS Stream 9 sources. In the coming days, we plan on bootstrapping the necessary components for 9. We look forward to sharing more about this with you very soon.

https://rockylinux.org/news/community-update-december-2021/
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