CentOS 8 is now available

CentOS 8 is now available!

CentOS 8 and RedHat Enterprise Linux 8 releases are consistent, both based on Fedora 28 and kernel 4.18. Tools that support traditional and emerging workloads provide users with a stable, secure, and consistent foundation across hybrid cloud deployments. CentOS fully complies with Red Hat's redistribution policy and strives to be fully functionally compatible with upstream products. CentOS's modifications to the components are primarily to remove Red Hat's trademarks and artwork. This version also includes the new CentOS Streams, which is a rolling release Linux distribution that exists between the upstream development of Fedora Linux and the downstream development of RHEL. You can think of CentOS Streams as a way to experience the latest Red Hat Linux features without having to wait too long.

The main highlights of this release include:

Distributions / Repositories

• CentOS 8 is distributed primarily through two repositories: 1) BaseOS 2) Application Stream AppStream;
• BaseOS repository: mainly includes the core of the operating system functions, provided in RPM format;
• AppStream repository: mainly includes user space applications, supports new extension modules in traditional RPM format, and can install multiple versions of components;

Software Management

• The YUM package manager is based on DNF technology, has been improved in performance, supports modular content, provides a stable API and integrates with other tools;

Shell scripts and command line tools

• RHEL 8 mainly provides version control tools: 1) Git 2.18: distributed architecture distributed control tool; 2) Mercurial 4.8: lightweight distributed version control tool that can effectively handle large projects; 3) Subversion 1.10: centralized version control tool

Dynamic programming languages, web and database servers

• Python 3.6 is the default Python environment in RHEL 8, with limited support for Python 2.7;
• Node.js is a new feature in RHEL. Other dynamic programming languages ​​mainly include: PHP 7.2, Ruby 2.5, Perl 5.26, SWIG 3.0;
• RHEL 8 provides database servers, including MariaDB 10.3, MySQL 8.0, PostgreSQL 10, PostgreSQL 9.6, and Redis 5.
• RHEL 8 ships with Apache HTTP Server 2.4 and introduces a new web server: nginx 1.14.
• The Squid version has been upgraded to 4.4, and a new proxy cache server, Varnish Cache 6.0, has also been provided.

desktop

• GNOME Shell has been upgraded to 3.28. The main features include: 1) New features for GNOME Boxes; 2) New on-screen keyboard; 3) Extended device support, integrated Thunderbolt 3 interface; 4) Improvements to GNOME Software, dconf-editor and GNOME Terminal;
• GNOME Session and GNOME Display Manager use Wayland as the default display server, which is still available as the default display server in RHEL 7;

Installer and Image Creation

• The Anaconda installer can take advantage of LUKS2 disk encryption and support NVDIMM devices on the installation system;
• Image Builder tool to create custom system images containing additional packages, accessible through a graphical user interface and output to multiple formats;
• RHEL 8 supports the ability to install from DVD using the Hardware Management Console HMC and Support Element SE on IBM Z hosts;

Core Kernel

• Extensions enable userspace to attach custom programs to various points, mainly including: (sockets, tracepoints, packet reception) for receiving and processing data;
• BPF is a tool for creating efficient kernel tracing and manipulation programs;

File systems and storage

• The LUKS2 format replaces the old LUKS1 format. The dm-crypt subsystem and cryptsetup tool use the LUKS2 encrypted volume format by default.

Safety

• By default, the system-wide password policy is applied, mainly covering TLS, IPsec, SSH, DNSSEC and Kerberos protocols. Administrators can use the command: update-crypto-policies to easily switch between different modes: default, legacy, future and fips;
• Support for PKCS#11 for smart cards and hardware security modules (HSM)

network

• The nftables framework replaces the iptables default network packet filtering tool;
• The firewalld daemon uses nftables as the default backend;
• IPVLAN virtual network driver that supports network connectivity for multiple containers;
• eXpress Data Path (XDP), XDP for Traffic Control (tc), and Address Family eXpress Data Path (AF_XDP), available as part of the Berkeley Packet Filtering (eBPF) extension feature;

Virtualization

• Virtualization supports modern PCI Express-based computer types, which are automatically configured in virtual machines created in RHEL 8. The functionality and compatibility of virtual devices have been gradually improved.
• Supports RHEL 8 Web console to create and manage virtual machines; QEMU emulator introduces sandbox function, calling
• QEMU can enforce configurable restrictions on which systems it can use, making virtual machines more secure;

Compilers and Development Tools

• The GCC compiler has been updated to version 8.2, supporting the latest C++ language standard version, better optimizations, new code hardening techniques, improved warnings, and new hardware capabilities.
• Various tools for code generation, manipulation, and debugging can now experimentally process the DWARF5 debug information format;
• The kernel supports eBPF tracing for use with tools such as BCC, PCP, and SystemTap.
• The glibc library has been upgraded to 2.28 with support for Unicode 11, updated Linux system calls, key improvements mainly in the DNS stub resolver, additional security enhancements and performance improvements;
• RHEL 8 provides OpenJDK 11, OpenJDK 8, IcedTea-Web, and different Java tools such as Ant, Maven, or Scala;

High availability and clustering

• The cluster resource manager has been upgraded to version 2.0.0, fixing a number of bugs and making improvements.
• In RHEL 8, the pcs configuration system fully supports Corosync 3 knet and node names;

Releases for CentOS Linux 8 and CentOS streams

https://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2019-September/023449.html

Full RedHat Enterprise Linux 8 Release Notes

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/html/8.0_release_notes/overview

iso file download address

http://mirror.centos.org/centos/8/isos/x86_64

http://mirror.centos.org/centos/8-stream/isos/x86_64

CentOS 8 Download

https://centos.org/download/

Domestic mirror download

http://mirrors.neusoft.edu.cn/centos/

Okay, that’s all I have to say for this article. Thank you for reading!