Hi, I apologize if this question is stupid but I have not found clear information about it.
What is the real EOL of RL8? Here:
on the top part you can read:
Rocky Linux 8 End of Life May 31, 2029
on the bottom part, related to v8.9, it says: Enf of life May 2024
So which one is correct?
Thanks
There are two EOL dates for two versions of Rocky. Let’s say that you’re on Rocky 8.9, the packages for the 9th minor release of Rocky 8 will go EOL on 2024/05. But if you keep updating, you should reach the “final” minor version of Rocky 8, which will be Rocky 8.10, which will be EOL-ed on 2029/05/31.
Though if you look carefully at these dates, Rocky 8.10 is actually actively maintained only for 6 more months from it’s release (expected in 2024/11). After that (2025/05), 8.10 will be on extended support. You have 5 more years to migrate from 8.10 to any other major version of Rocky.
If you do look at Product Life Cycles | Red Hat Customer Portal you will see that
Full Support for RHEL 8 ends 2024-05-31 and Maintenance Support 2029-05-31.
RHEL 8 is currently at 8.9 and support for it will end the moment the 8.10 is released (this month).
In other words, the full support period for 8.10 will be about 0.
(The full support phase adds features and fixes. The maintenance support phase adds only critical fixes.)
Rocky releases a bit after corresponding RHEL, but in practice access to patches stops when Red Hat stops releasing them for RHEL, i.e. EOL for RHEL is definitely EOL for Rocky too.
So even with 8.10, “full support” will end 2024-05-31, that’s only a month from now?
That is correct. “Full support” means that any critical or important security patches and urgent/selected high priority bug fixes are released when they become available. During this support phase, new or improved hardware enablement and updated software and libraries may be released too. This is generally the case, consider the example of postgresql 16, which will be coming with 8.10, a minor release.
Maintenance support, which starts at the end of “full support”, will only provide critical/important security fixes or high priority bug fixes. New functionality will not be available for the next 5 years, all the way till the end of life in May 2029.
In practice the release of last point update for a RHEL major version is the end of full support (for that major version) – by definition no more new features will be added after that.