Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 10.2 and RHEL 9.8 are now available, providing an enterprise-ready foundation for recent upstream innovations. Many of these tools first appeared in community distributions, but moving new technology into production requires long-term stability and expert support. These latest releases add features and update tools that help you focus on building applications. They also provide a consistent development experience across physical, virtual, private, public cloud, and edge environments.
Unless otherwise noted, features are available in both RHEL 10.2 and RHEL 9.8.
Simplify container management with Red Hat build of Podman Desktop
Podman Desktop is a graphical tool for working with containers and Kubernetes. It simplifies container management by letting you create, manage, and delete containers. It uses the Podman container engine, which provides a security-focused foundation for local development.
Enterprise-ready development
Red Hat build of Podman Desktop is our primary tool for developing traditional and bootable (image mode for Red Hat Enterprise Linux) container applications. It helps you build and deploy containers while prioritizing security in any environment.
Scale and migrate from Docker with ease
Red Hat build of Podman Desktop provides a security-focused, supported local environment that scales from development to production. It is designed for easy migration from Docker. You can keep your existing container images, Compose files, volumes, and workflows without making changes.
Availability and support
Versions are available for macOS, RHEL, and Windows. The RHEL version is now available for RHEL 9 and RHEL 10 through the Extensions repository. Red Hat also offers separate cross-platform developer support. Read the full announcement for more details.
AI assistance for the command line
RHEL 10.2 and 9.8 include tools that provide AI assistance directly in your terminal.
goose
RHEL 10.2 includes goose, an optional command-line tool that provides AI assistance. The fully supported command-line assistant remains available in the AppStream repository. goose is available in the Extensions repository for users who want more features.
It connects to the same AI backend but includes features like streaming responses. It can also integrate with the Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for RHEL (available as a developer preview). goose provides a more responsive experience with faster access to the information you need.
RHEL command-line assistant
RHEL 10.2 and 9.8 now support color output. Color output visually separates commands and scripts from the rest of the text. This makes responses easier to read and use.
Latest updates to databases and tools
RHEL 10.2 and 9.8 include updated versions of popular database management systems and developer tools.
PostgreSQL 18
PostgreSQL 18 includes asynchronous I/O support and skip scan lookups to help speed up queries. It also introduces UUIDv7 generation for timestamp-ordered UUIDs, which improves data locality. To simplify maintenance, database upgrades are now faster and retain planner statistics after the update to ensure consistent performance.
MariaDB 11.8
MariaDB 11.8 improves performance for AI applications by adding a new VECTOR data type and vector indexing. The TIMESTAMP data type now supports dates up to the year 2106. This fixes the previous limit of 2038, which provides better long-term stability for your applications.
The latest versions of toolsets and compilers
RHEL 10.2 and 9.8 provide updated compilers and languages to help you build and maintain modern applications.
Python 3.14
Python 3.14 supports free-threaded builds to improve performance. This release removes the Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) to enable true multithreaded parallelism for CPU-bound applications. Deferred evaluation of annotations reduces runtime overhead. To simplify coding and testing, the interactive shell now includes live syntax highlighting and autocompletion.
Go 1.26
This release includes a new default garbage collector called Green Tea that is optimized to reduce tail latency. To help with testing, the compiler now defaults to DWARF 5 debug information. The go build -asan command also detects memory leaks when a program exits.
LLVM Toolset 21
This toolset introduces a new ThinLTO backend that implements DTLTO for compile-time optimizations.
Rust Toolset 1.92
New safety lints, such as dangling_pointers_from_locals, help prioritize security. To improve testing, it provides reliable debugging using default unwind tables for -Cpanic=abort and native workspace publishing in Cargo.
OpenJDK 25
OpenJDK 25 includes Ahead of Time (AOT) profiling for faster application startup. It also adds Generational Shenandoah and Late Barrier Expansion for the G1 garbage collector.
Ruby 4.0
Ruby 4.0 includes a new ZJIT compiler and Ractor improvements for better concurrency.
PHP 8.4 (RHEL 10.2 only)
Available as a new application stream, this release adds object property hooks and asymmetric property visibility.
Git 2.51
A new path walk object collection method groups objects by file path to reduce pack file size. The ORT merge engine replaces the legacy recursive strategy for faster conflict resolution in your monorepos and large-scale CI/CD pipelines. The git switch and git restore commands are now stable replacements for the overloaded git checkout command.
Faster workflows with image mode for RHEL
Updates to image mode for Red Hat Enterprise Linux simplify how you build and test hardened images.
Pre-download updates
A new Download Only switch lets you pre-download OS updates to a fleet of machines without applying them immediately. This helps reduce deployment times during scheduled maintenance.
Sealed images (RHEL 10.2 Technology Preview)
RHEL 10.2 includes a technology preview for sealed images, which provide cryptographic integrity protection. You can use Secure Boot keys to sign images during the build process to help prevent tampered hosts from booting.
Efficient container storage
This architecture keeps a separate copy of the OS in a container store to reduce disk space and network bandwidth usage. It also improves system resilience by protecting critical host files from being accidentally deleted by commands like podman system reset.
Bootable containers and virtualization kit
The bootable containers and virtualization kit helps you quickly create and provision ephemeral virtual machines (VMs). You can move from a local build to an automatically provisioned VM test environment to verify your work faster.
Build here, go anywhere
Red Hat Developer provides resources to help you test new code without waiting for infrastructure or budget approvals. With this no-cost program, you can build on a production-ready platform. We offer two paths to get Red Hat Enterprise Linux for your environment:
- Red Hat Developer for Individuals: This subscription is for personal use. It provides access to RHEL for individual development, testing, and production workloads at no cost.
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Business Developers: This subscription is for corporate environments. It gives teams access to RHEL for development and testing without traditional licensing requirements.
Select the subscription that matches your environment and start building on a production-ready foundation today.
