Red Hat Inc. kicked off its Red Hat Summit conference in Boston today with the much-anticipated announcement that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 is now available.

The release comes nearly six months after the newest version of the company’s flagship platform entered beta testing and nearly five years after the last major release hit the streets.

In keeping with the ascendance of cloud computing during that interval, Red Hat said this version is “redesigned for the hybrid cloud era” and built for deployment across multiple public clouds. The company also offered up a pot-sweetener to non-Red Hat customers in the form of a Universal Base Image that enables applications built in software containers to run on RHEL 8 without requiring a license.

Among the highlights of the hundreds of new features introduced in this version is Red Hat Insights, an automated diagnosis and systems management service that uses predictive analytics to identify and solve issues ranging from security vulnerabilities to stability problems. Also new is Image Builder, which enables customer to build one operating system image and then deploy on whatever infrastructure they choose.

Red Hat Smart Management is an add-on that the company said helps minimize the complexity of building and managing hybrid clouds. The software combines Red Hat Satellite for on-premise systems management, cloud management services for distributed Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployments and Red Hat Smart Management for managing, patching, configuring and provisioning Linux deployments across a hybrid cloud.

A feature angled at developers is Application Streams, a repository that consolidates all the applications a user wants to run in a private, dedicated space. Designed to keep pace with the rapid stream of updates that characterize many languages, frameworks and developer tools, Application Streams applies patches and enhancements automatically without an impact on the core operating system.

A new graphical web console consolidates managing and monitoring of Linux instances and RHEL 8 adds support for in-place upgrades to streamline conversion from RHEL 7. Security has been beefed up with support for the OpenSSL 1.1.1 and TLS 1.3 cryptographic standards.

Container-friendly

Given the surging popularity of software containers, which are portable operating environments that include all the software an application needs to run, RHEL 8 is heavy on new features for building and managing them.

The included Red Hat container toolkit helps developers create, run and share containerized applications and eliminates the need for less secure container daemons, which are services that run on a host operating system.

The Universal Base Image can be used with or without a RHEL option to build applications that can run anywhere. A UBI isn’t a full operating system but includes a set of base images, language runtime images and associated packages that satisfy common application dependencies. When run on top of a RHEL or Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, applications get full Red Hat support.

“Previously, the RHEL binaries weren’t free and that was creating instability,” said Gunnar Hellekson, director of product management for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. “UBI is a secure, stable base that can be used by independent software vendors] and upstream developers.” When running on a RHEL platform, “The ISV will not be responsible for the RHEL bits and will no longer have to keep track of patches and security fixes; Red Hat will do that for them,” Hellekson said.

The UBI is intended both as an incentive for developers to build on RHEL and to encourage consistency across the Linux ecosystem, said Brian Gracely, Red Hat’s director of product strategy. “ISVs can use this and know its certified RHEL,” he said. “They you don’t have to worry about shipping something they’re not entitled to ship.”

RHEL 8 is available immediately.

Image: Flickr CC