Red Hat Enterprise Linux Version 7.5 Released (redhat.com)

On Tuesday Red Hat announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 7.5. An anonymous reader writes: Serving as a consistent foundation for hybrid cloud environments, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 provides enhanced security and compliance controls, tools to reduce storage costs, and improved usability, as well as further integration with Microsoft Windows infrastructure both on-premise and in Microsoft Azure.

New features include a large combination of Ansible Automation with OpenSCAP, and LUKS-encrypted removable storage devices can be now automatically unlocked using NBDE. The Gnome shell has been re-based to version 3.26, the Kernel version is 3.10.0-862, and the kernel-alt packages include kernel version 4.14 with support for 64-bit ARM, IBM POWER9 (little endian), and IBM z Systems, while KVM virtualization is now supported on IBM POWER8/POWER9 systems.
See the detailed release notes here.

Comments

I Hope

[jmccue]

I hope the replaced kernel 3.10.0-693.21.1.el7.x86_64 with a better kernel :). For some laptops models, DRI had to be disabled in X to prevent hangs. That kernel was applied in 7.3 to fix a vulnerability and was carried over to 7.4.

Re:I Hope

[Espectr0]

why in earth would you use an enterprise / server side distro for a laptop?

Re:I Hope

[arth1]

why in earth would you use an enterprise / server side distro for a laptop?

RHEL Workstation is a good OS for laptops, especially if you want to maintain binary and package version compatibility with your servers.
Development is a good example of where this is useful. Automounts that contain binaries and/or libraries is another. And remote X. Sometimes compatibility wins over bleeding edge.

Re:I Hope

[Anonymous Coward]

why in earth would you use an enterprise / server side distro for a laptop?

RHEL Workstation is a good OS for laptops, especially if you want to maintain binary and package version compatibility with your servers.
Development is a good example of where this is useful. Automounts that contain binaries and/or libraries is another. And remote X. Sometimes compatibility wins over bleeding edge.

RHEL won't work on hardware that is released after it was. You'll get warnings at boot time and your hardware will not work. Software updates will not fix the problems because the updates are not coming. RHEL is for certified hardware and you can't certify hardware that doesn't exist yet.

Python 2: goodbye in RHEL 8

[Anonymous Coward]

In the "Deprecated Functionality" chapter, it is mentioned that Python 2 will not be shipped in the OS:

* https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/7.5_release_notes/chap-red_hat_enterprise_linux-7.5_release_notes-deprecated_functionality

If you need it in RHEL 8, you need to either get it via EPEL, another third-party repo, or compile-from-source.

Re:Python 2: goodbye in RHEL 8

[KiloByte]

I can't stand having two pythons installed to do the same job >:(

So do like me: ignore both pythons, consider them necessary evil (unless you have good replacements for programs implemented in Python), and use Perl for actual work.

Re: Python 2: goodbye in RHEL 8

[buchanmilne]

"In the "Deprecated Functionality" chapter, it is mentioned that Python 2 will not be shipped in the OS:"

That's because it is already deprecated upstream and will receive no upstream support after 1 Jan 2020 (https://pythonclock.org/). If RHEL8 were to ship with Python 2.7, it would be supported for about 1/10th of the OS support lifetime, which does seems unreasonable.

"If you need it in RHEL 8, you need to either get it via EPEL, another third-party repo, or compile-from-source."

No, if you're going to need Python 2.7 on RHEL8, you should be doing the work to run on Python 3 *now*. Install python3 on RHEL7 using software collections and make sure all your run on both versions (using 2to3 and six), and run RHEL7 in production until you can switch (you havr a few years left). Any other approach (e.g. investing at all in keeping python 2.7) is a poor investment of your time.

Re:Dangerous to use open source

[F.Ultra]

I think that the best advice you can give your very powerful clients is to base all their IT on Adobe Flash, that would save them from the horrors of open source.

Re:Just use CentOS

[Junta]

There are a few reasons to buy RHEL:

-You don't know what you are doing and you are going to be paying *someone* to know what they are doing. Many may believe that such a Linux customer is a unicorn, but I have seen many people relying heavily upon their enterprise vendor.
-You need urgent human attention to problems as they arise. Recently I worked with a company that needed to understand the root cause of a kernel panic they were hitting *immediately*, and RedHat was there for that.
-To pass the buck when things do go south.

You are correct that from a technical perspective, CentOS is all the capability but none of the hassle. It just doesn't have any of the guaranteed human attention, and that is really what you are paying for. All that said, their entitlement scheme is terribly convoluted and even if I would be willing to pay, it's enough to make me not want to use them.