Rocky Linux 8.3 RC1 Available Now

Rocky Linux 8.3 Release Candidate 1 Availability

The Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation (RESF) is pleased to announce the general availability of the Rocky Linux 8.3 Release Candidate 1 for x86_64 and aarch64 architectures.

To download the release, visit https://rockylinux.org/download.

FAQ

What is a release candidate?

A release candidate is a beta version of a product that has the potential to be stable. The intent of a release candidate is for the community to test and validate expected functionality of Rocky Linux and report any bugs if present.

Where can I download the release candidate?

https://rockylinux.org/download

How can I help mirror the release candidate and future Rocky Linux releases?

Please email mirrors@rockylinux.org to express your interest.

Can I use the release candidate in production?

Under no circumstance should you use a release candidate in a production environment. A release candidate is provided for testing and validation purposes only.

I encountered a bug while testing the release candidate, what can I do?

First, create an account using Rocky Linux Account Services, then head over to our Bugzilla server to report any bugs.

How can I get involved with the Testing team?

Please join the ~Testing channel on our Mattermost server to get started. There’s also a testing topic on the forums for more durable conversation.

Where can I find the latest news about Rocky Linux?

Stay tuned to our website, Twitter, LinkedIn, forums, and other platforms listed in our link directory for the latest announcements.

What if I have feedback or my question wasn’t answered here?

Please email us: hello@rockylinux.org and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.


This release is the culmination of months of hard work from every corner of the community. What started in a comment thread on a Red Hat blog in December of 2020 grew to a community over ten thousand strong in a Slack channel in a matter of days. From there you pulled together to build teams around infrastructure, branding, website, development, special interest groups, and more. By February of 2021, over 80 million hits had been recorded across various social media platforms and news sites.

And now, four months later, we have a true open enterprise community operating system. More than that, we have a community, extending far beyond the scope of simply a Linux distribution.

We’d like to extend a special thanks to our sponsors and our partners, whose contribution of resources, financial backing, software, and infrastructure were all critical in supporting our efforts:

  • CIQ
  • 45Drives
  • Amazon Web Services
  • Fosshost
  • Fastly
  • GitLab
  • Mattermost
  • MontaVista
  • NAVER Cloud
  • OpenDrives

This is just the beginning. Our commitment to you is the long-lasting development and support of an open enterprise operating system by the community, and for the community.

We have so much more to do. From testing and validation of the core OS to the refinement of our build infrastructure and special interest groups, the work is not done. Come build the next open enterprise operating system with us at https://rockylinux.org.

23 Likes

Welcome Rocky!. By the way ,we need a new Forum Design for Rocky Linux 8 (General Support,Hardware,Software,Security,Network …etc )

Thanks! We will definitely be reevaluating our topic structure on here as we grow.

2 Likes

Absolute legends all of you.
I downloaded the DVD image, created a VM in VirtualBox on my Fedora 33 desktop, installed Rocky Linux - screens all nice and familiar as per my past installs of CentOS/RHEL these past years - felt right at home and ‘business as usual feel’ so this will now become my server install of choice for customers and myself here internally.
I also prefer XFCE desktop which I did a groupinstall of and other packages I like - all perfectly installed from the epel-release.
I will now test setting up SendMail and Dovecot - I am an old guy working with SendMail since the 90s so PostFix gets the flick :slight_smile:
For myself and customers CentOS runs as e-mail and php based web servers so will start the torture process in coming weeks to see if there are any issues, but based on this excellent run so far, it just all feels the same which is exactly what I wanted/needed.

Who could I report ‘how-to’ or testing blurbs to here based on my travels through Rocky Linux? Happy to pass on whatever I discover.

Job well done and hoping I can help in some way as this is the birth for a wonderful Linux and well worth the wait.

3 Likes

Hey, good to have you with us.

If you’re interested in sharing some ‘how-to’ articles, the documentation team seems like a good fit. They chat in the ~Documentation channel on our Mattermost server. As for testing, the team can be found in the ~Testing channel.

Bravo !

Viva Rocky Linux.

Michel-André

1 Like

Amazing achievement! Thank you to everyone involved in making this happen.

1 Like

Finally it’s happening now… :heart: Thanks a lot…

1 Like

Did some testing in Virtualbox on an Ubuntu Host, yesterday and today works great, other then i have problems with updating packages via dnf

1 Like

Created a new KVM VM on a Centos8 host using Rocky as guest.
The Virtual Machine manager does not have Rocky as a OS type in the selectbox.

Installation of headless server went perfect.
Configuration of postfix / dovecot mailserver just great.
Local dns / named installed without any problem

dnf is working correctly.

Great job

1 Like

Congrats!

It’d have been nice to get some sort of notice by email. I’m pretty sure I’m signed up to all possible communications channels and I’m not seeing any notifications.

I doubt that I’m alone in wanting to receive notifications about stuff like this. So, that may be something to look at in the future.

Congrats!

Thanks for good work :slight_smile:
I will start testing ASAP

Install to Proxmox OK!!!

Fantastic work guys - getting this far so quickly.

I’m currently downloading and will be installing later today.

The company I work for has a fairly large CentOS estate as well as RHEL. They are pushing to go Ubuntu for the CentOS stuff, I’m hoping to persuade them to take the Rocky road for a good number of reasons.

Once again, thanks to all involved on this fanastic acheivement.

1 Like

Hi, is https://download.rockylinux.org/pub/rocky/8.3/ResilientStorage/ replying with 403 intentional? I’m just doing basic testing… you know… what repos are there etc. :wink:

something weird happens when i install it on virtualbox, so i have to enable the network manually in the installer but unlike the centos installer it doesnt give up on the downloading metadata and keeps trying to download metadata without a repo specified

Working flawlessly on a QCT QuantaPlex T42SP-2U!!

1 Like

Many of us looked forward to this day! Thanks to everyone involved in the project! Very good!! :heart_eyes: :heart:

1 Like

Can the content on CentOS 8 be directly transferred to rocky 8.3. Only php7.4 and mysql8 nginx

Hey guys amazing Job, I updated today and is working so similar to the defunct Centos 8.3, seems so stable.

1 Like