Rocky Linux 9.6 Available Now

Announcements
1

Rocky 9.6 has been released. See the release announcement here:

2

In the linked announcement, I see “PHP 8.3 and 8.4”

Only PHP 8.3 is new in 9.6
PHP 8.4 is not there
And PHP 8.1 is now EOL

So 9.6 really have PHP 8.0, 8.2 and 8.3

1 Like
3

Thanks Remi, I’ve brought it to the teams attention to get that bit fixed.

True, PHP 8.1 is EOL, although it’s still possible to install, as is PHP 8.0.

root@rocky9:~# dnf info php | grep -B1 Version
Name         : php
Version      : 8.0.30

root@rocky9:~# dnf module list php
Last metadata expiration check: 1:01:13 ago on Thu 05 Jun 2025 07:46:52 AM CEST.
Rocky Linux 9 - AppStream
Name                Stream                Profiles                                  Summary                             
php                 8.1                   common [d], devel, minimal                PHP scripting language              
php                 8.2                   common [d], devel, minimal                PHP scripting language              
php                 8.3                   common [d], devel, minimal                PHP scripting language
4

True, PHP 8.1 is EOL, although it’s still possible to install, as is PHP 8.0.

Indeed, it was not removed, but it won’t receive any security updates.

1 Like
5

Also new is the “redis” extension in the php:8.3 stream (php-pecl-redis6 package)

1 Like
6

One can basically check from Red Hat Enterprise Linux Application Streams Life Cycle | Red Hat Customer Portal the “retirement dates”, after which a stream may still be available, but definitely will not receive any security updates.

1 Like
7

It’s good news getting PHP 8.3 in RHEL9.6, and interesting that you can use streams to choose a version, including an earlier version. In 9.6 we have modules, streams and software collections (scl); will RHEL10 continue to have streams, modules and scl?

8

SCL were used in EL-6 and EL-7, not in higher version (only for GCC)

I don’t think (and hope to be wrong)

9

That is a question for Red Hat, and RHEL docs do say: Chapter 4. Application Streams | Considerations in adopting RHEL 10 | Red Hat Enterprise Linux | 10 | Red Hat Documentation
(just like the “Application Streams Life Cycle”) that there will be “streams”.

They also say that there will be no “DNF modules”, as that technology was not as good as it did seem initially.

So “streams” yes. Some of them (like GCC toolsets) as “software collections”. Some probably like the pythons where every version – e.g. python3.11, python3.12 – is directly on PATH, but only one can be used via (alternatives) symlink ‘python3’. And RH does mention “flatpaks” too.