I think Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 is the most developer-friendly Red Hat Enterprise Linux that we've delivered, and I hope you agree. Let's get down to business, or rather coding, so you can see for yourself. You can read the Red Hat corporate press release.
For this article, I'll quickly recap Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 features (architecture, containers), introduce the very new and cool Red Hat Universal Base Image (UBI), and provide a handy list of developer resources to get you started on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.
TL;DR
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 architecture
To simplify your development experience, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 has three pre-enabled repositories:
- BaseOS —“mostly” has operating system content
- Application Streams (AppStream) — most developer tools will be here
- CodeReady Builder — additional libraries and developer tools
Content in BaseOS is intended to provide the core set of the underlying operating system functionality that provides the foundation for all installations. This content is available in the traditional RPM format. For a list of BaseOS packages, see RHEL 8 Package Manifest.
Application Streams, essentially the next generation of Software Collections, are intended to provide additional functionality beyond what is available in BaseOS. This content set includes additional user space applications, runtime languages, databases, web servers, etc. that support a variety of workloads and use cases. The net for you is to simply use the component and version that you want. Once there's market demand, newer stable versions of components will be added.
Linux containers
Linux containers are a critical component of cloud-native development and microservices, so Red Hat’s lightweight, open standards-based container toolkit is now fully supported and included with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. Built with enterprise IT security needs in mind, Buildah (building containers), Podman (running containers), and Skopeo (sharing/finding containers) help developers find, run, build and share containerized applications more quickly and efficiently—thanks to the distributed and, importantly, daemonless nature of the tools.
Introducing Universal Base Image
Derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the Red Hat Universal Base Image (UBI) provides a freely redistributable, enterprise-grade base container image on which developers can build and deliver their applications. This means you can containerize your app in UBI, and deploy it anywhere. Of course, it will be more secure and Red Hat supported when deployed on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but now you have options. There are separate UBI 7 and UBI 8 versions for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and 8, respectively. Read more about them in the Red Hat Universal Base Image introduction.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 developer resources
Over the past few months, we have produced a number of how-to documents specifically for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. Here's a list in case you missed them:
- Intro to Application Streams—a primer about how Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 has been re-architected with developers in mind
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Cheat Sheet—your quick reference to new Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 commands, and a list of the more common developer tools
- Introduction to Builder Repo—read what it is and why you'll find it handy
- Installing Java 8 and 11—no more to say
- Set up your LAMP stack—with Apache, MySQL, and PHP
- Building containers without daemons—intro to using Podman, Buildah, and more.
- XDP part 1 & part 2
- Network debugging with eBPF
- Quick install on VirtualBox
- Quick install on bare metal
- Python in RHEL 8
- Quick install: Node.js
- What, no python in RHEL 8?
- Quick install: Python
- Introduction to Red Hat Universal Base Image (UBI)
Red Hat Developer Subscriptions
Red Hat Developer members have been enjoying no-cost developer subscriptions for 3+ years now, and RHEL 8 is now automatically part of that. If your company wants developer support, there are several Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Subscriptions options with Red Hat support, too.
