Thank you for supporting Rocky Linux. These are the release notes for Rocky Linux 8.5, available for x86_64 and aarch64 (ARM) architectures.
There was an amazing amount of work and collaboration that went into this release. The Rocky Release Engineering team went far and above the call of duty to make 8.5 a reality so quickly. Please send them gratitude, happy thoughts, and lotsa beers at our first available moment!
In less than 48 hours from RHEL-8.5 being released, we had successful tests on our ISOs and just before we were about to pull the string to go GA with 8.5, Microsoft countersigned our Secure Boot shim. We quickly deliberated and decided to backtrack and incorporate that into the 8.5 release.
There were some things that we had to get in order and resolved, but it is with great pleasure that this release includes the official Rocky Linux signed shim. Here is the full thread to the shim review: https://github.com/rhboot/shim-review/issues/194.
As with any security related diligence, it is important to be able to validate the Secure Boot shim is exactly what you expect and that it is properly activated. After installing Rocky Linux 8.5, please log in and run these commands to validate our secure boot shim:
Open Java Development Kit 17 (OpenJDK 17) is now available. For more information about the features introduced in this release and changes in the existing functionality, see OpenJDK features.
OpenJDK 11 has been updated to version 11.0.13. For more information about the features introduced in this release and changes in the existing functionality, see Release notes for OpenJDK 11.0.13.
OpenJDK 8 has been updated to version 8.0.312. For more information about the features introduced in this release and changes in the existing functionality, see Release notes for OpenJDK 8.0.312.
During network installation, the list of mirrors hosting BaseOS content from the MirrorList will be used by the FastestMirror DNF plugin, sorted heuristically by the time it takes to open a connection to the mirrors on their given protocol's port (Source code).
This change means that a Repository URL is no longer required when using Boot-only media and performing Network-based installations of Rocky (and other Enterprise) Linux!
Migrations to Rocky Linux 8.5 are supported from various Enterprise Linux distributions including, but not limited to CentOS Linux (including CentOS Stream) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. For more details regarding supported upgrade paths and instructions on migrations, please consult the documentation.
Please see Chapter 5 - Bug Fixes and Chapter 8 - Bug Fixes of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 release notes for more information regarding bugs and known issues in the upstream distribution.
Please report any bugs you encounter to the Rocky Linux Bug Tracker. We also welcome you to join our community in any way you wish be it on our Forums, Mattermost, IRC on Libera.Chat, Reddit, Mailing Lists, or any other way you wish to participate!