Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4 now generally available

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4, which was pre-announced on April 27 at Red Hat Summit, is now generally available. We encourage Linux developers to download this latest release and try out the new software. We also recommend updating both development, and production systems to the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.4 release.

What's new in RHEL 8.4?

RHEL 8.4 delivers a streamlined path from development to deployment that unifies teams across a single open platform, including the tools and analytics needed to build and manage these systems on any footprint—from the data center to the cloud to the edge, and beyond. With access to the latest tools, programming languages, and enhanced container capabilities, development teams can achieve faster time to value when producing new code. You can learn more about what RHEL 8.4 provides here.

If you’re a developer, here are some key highlights that you need to know about Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4.

Leverage the latest database technology

Now, you can leverage the latest database technology in your applications:

• PostgreSQL 13, now available through RHEL application streams, improves database performance and lets developers modernize their applications, especially in the cloud.
• Redis 6, now available in RHEL application streams, allows developers to build modern apps that can leverage the new database security enhancements, and client-side caching features to boost performance.
• MariaDB 10.5, now available in RHEL application streams, lets you build apps that can leverage added database features, including IPv6 (INET 6) data type support, more granular privileges, and clustering with the Galera plugin.

Power your applications with the latest application runtimes

Application runtime updates bring new features to your applications:

• Python 3.9 brings several new enhancements including timezone-aware timestamps, the new string prefix, and suffix methods, and dictionary union operations, so that developers can modernize their apps.
• Go 1.15 brings improved memory allocation for small objects, improvements to the Go linker, and several other core library improvements.
• Rust 1.49 allows developers to write high-performance applications that run with a low memory footprint making it highly suitable for edge use cases. Additionally, Rust is a statically typed language making it easy to catch errors at compile-time and maintain.
• With the latest LLVM toolset, developers can take advantage of fresher tooling, and compatibility with other code built with compatible versions of LLVM/Clang.

Build, share, and collaborate on RHEL applications with your friends and customers

Container updates make it easier to build, share, and collaborate on RHEL applications:

• Red Hat Universal Base Image (UBI): The certified language runtime containers have been updated and include containerized environments for some of the languages listed above. Additionally, with RHEL 8.4, a new, micro UBI container offering is available in the catalog to provide an even smaller than minimal base container image.
• Looking for a specific container image? Check out the Red Hat Certified Containers through the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog. This makes it easier to build and deploy mission-critical applications using the supported application streams for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift environments.

Get started with RHEL 8.4 today

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4 continues Red Hat’s commitment to customer choice in terms of the underlying compute architecture, with availability across x86_64, ppc64le, s390x, and aarch64 hardware.

Developers with active subscriptions can access Red Hat Enterprise Linux downloads. If you’re new to using Red Hat products, register for the Red Hat developer program to get access to the Individual Developer subscription for RHEL, which can be used in production for up to 16 systems. For information about a Red Hat Developer for Teams subscription, contact your Red Hat account representative.

For more information, please read the full release notes.