RHEL 8.4 Released to developers and public.
Hmm, it looks like AlmaLinux and Oracle Linux has already released their 8.4 update. Let’s see how fast Rocky Linux can update to 8.4. [This will be the TRUE test to see how fast Rocky Linux can be updated to 8.4 compared to other RHEL clones.]
Oracle Linux could be reasonably expected to release early, given they’ve had 14 years to optimize their development and QA processes. Some other projects have a different definition of “production ready” than we do. Rocky 8.4 will be tested and available soon enough, and the pace of updates will only get faster over time.
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FWIW, AlmaLinux went through a beta cycle for their 8.4 update, based on the pre-release RHEL8.4 packages… So they had a leg up – when RHEL8.4 was actually released, they’d worked through most issues already and they just needed to kick their machines and reroll.
Oracle Linux 8.4 was rolled out seemingly “as the packages were rebuilt”… Oracle’s packages appeared in their repo first, but it was incomplete – with bunches of packages from the secondary/extra streams/repos (HA, etc.) not available from 8.4 initially. This made me have to do a bunch of “–nobest” partial updates over at least three days. Finally my Oracle-based test VM updated cleanly today.
AlmaLinux 8.4 may have dropped ~1 day after Oracle, but it was a clean update from the start.
With RockyLinux, I think it’s a case of unfortunate timings – it’s really tough to be in the middle of initial rollout when the next release drops. Do you finish what’s in progress, or simply jump forward to rebase the initial release on 8.4? Some will prefer one approach, others the other…
To me, it would make some sense to finish the 8.3 release (with proviso that 8.4 is coming ASAP…), then turn right around and work through the process to roll out the 8.4 release. It might be more work, and no rest, but it does establish the initial baseline, fulfills promises, and then exercises the new-release process(es) sooner rather than having to wait 6-8 months for the next one.
As much as I would like to see Rocky 8.4, I can wait a bit to allow the processes to solidify now rather than later.
(I haven’t seen a thing on any CentOS prospect for 8.4… with how slowly package updates have been dropping from CentOS8, I don’t know that I would expect anything anytime soon.)
The plan now is to get a 8.4 RC out there and then push that to a GA release. We learned a lot from our 8.3 RC, and we’re excited to apply that to 8.4.
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Just a quick update to my previous post: CentOS 8.4 was apparently just released today. (showed up this afternoon in the middle of updating some of my CentOS 8 VMs.)
Glad to hear that there is a Rocky 8.4 RC “in the pipe” and coming soon… looking forward to rebuilding my Rocky 8.3 RC test VMs and giving it a good workout.
People at Cloud Linux have recent experience in building a CentOS clone.
Maybe that is why their engineers are releasing faster.
This is one of the criterias on evaluating when using a RHEL clone distro. RHEL 8.4 was released and AlmaLinux and Oracle released an update very fast. Even CentOS 8.4 was released and yet Rocky linux hasn’t updated their RC to 8.4 yet. The speed as to how fast a distro updates its own packages is important to people. I remember waiting for months for CentOS to update while other distros update updates within a week or two. Such a pain.
Very true – speed of release of updates will be seen as a quality criteria when folks choose which alternative distro to use for their systems.
I’ve been seeing several weeks before RHEL-released patches show up on my CentOS systems… and this seems to have slowed since the RedHat’s December decision. It would not surprise me if this was intentional, to drive toward RHEL.
As long as these other RHEL-clone distros prove to be faster than CentOS at getting updates out, they will be seen by many as better choices.
That said, it is important to note (and take into consideration) that Rocky is ‘late to the table’ due to “getting it right organizationally, first” – and the timing is unfortunate that Rocky’s first RC came at the very end of the 8.3 cycle, leaving not much time to turn-and-burn on the 8.4 RC. But they did, and the Rocky 8.4 RC1 released just hours after the CentOS 8.4 release. Major Kudos there!
I am quite confident that the process will be smoother, and the distro/package release-timings will shorten nicely before the next RHEL release is due.
Rocky 8.4 updated without a hitch today… Looking Excellent !!!
Greg Ennis
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There is no downloadable Rocky 8.4 GA, right ? The download button seems to indicate a 8.3 RC !
You went from 8.3 RC to 8.4 ? Is it GA ?
The current download is Rocky 8.4 RC, it’s not GA yet, but it is built from the RH 8.4 sources.