Introducing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.7

When we build a new major version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), our engineering teams learn a lot about what modern IT demands and what customers need to thrive. Those lessons shape the new capabilities and features we tout on the Red Hat Summit stage at launch. After the celebration of a launch, of course, comes the work of bringing those new capabilities to more RHEL customers by building them into previous editions. Today, with the launch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.7, some of the most important security features of RHEL 10 are available to more people who need them.

Cryptography for a post-quantum world

RHEL 10 is the first major Linux distribution fully equipped for post-quantum cryptography (PQC), and now we're introducing PQC algorithms to RHEL 9.7. These algorithms enable secure key exchange, which is crucial for countering future threats from quantum computers. Key exchange enhances data integrity, and building it into RHEL 9.7 prepares your security infrastructure for emerging threats.

This is just the start for RHEL and PQC. We plan to continue adding algorithms to future releases, so you can keep up with evolving security practices and compliance mandates.

That's not the only improvement coming with RHEL 9.7. It's full of new features and capabilities to help you innovate quickly, improve continuously, and operate Linux more simply.

AI assistance, anywhere

The RHEL command-line assistant has become an essential tool for customers who have struggled to fill the skills gap among their RHEL users. With RHEL 10.1 and RHEL 9.7, we're introducing an offline, locally available version. Now, users with a Red Hat Satellite subscription can get AI-powered RHEL guidance, even in a disconnected or air-gapped environment. The locally available command-line assistant is currently in developer preview, with a full rollout coming soon. With fully supported offline assistance, customers in government, defense, finance, and other tightly regulated industries can access AI-backed guidance without sacrificing compliance. The offline, locally available command-line assistant requires a Red Hat Satellite subscription.

One other command line assistant improvement: an increased context limit, from 2KB to 32KB. With more working memory, the command-line assistant can analyze larger log files, pipe more complex data streams, retain more information across prompts, and ultimately take on more intricate tasks.

Better tooling and less toil for developers

An updated RHEL means updated developer tools. RHEL 9.7 ships with these modern versions of popular programming languages and services:

• Go 1.24 adds new standard library packages for weak pointers and crypto algorithms, support for generic type aliases, and several runtime performance improvements that reduce CPU overhead.
• LLVM 20 includes expanded hardware support, improvements to core libraries, and modernized just-in-time linking infrastructure, plus updates to the Clang and Flang tools.
• Rust 1.88 includes a stabilized Rust 2024 edition with significant language changes, and makes specific CPU features for high-performance computing accessible directly in safe Rust.
• GCC 15 supports increased program reliability with runtime assertions in the C++ standard library, now enabled by default for unoptimized builds. GCC Toolset 15 also includes a preview of the C++ standard library module.
• .NET 10 features better runtime performance, new APIs for working with cryptography, globalization, numerics, collections, and ZIP files. It also features extended support for containers in the .NET SDK, and support for OpenAPI 3.1 in web applications.
• Valkey 8 brings intelligent multicore utilization and asynchronous I/O threading, improved cluster scaling with automatic failover for new shards and replicated migration states, faster replication with dual-channel relational database and replica backlog streaming, and better visibility through improved per-slot and per-client metrics.
• Node.js 24 features a new URLPattern added as a global object for further web compatibility, an update to the V8 JavaScript engine, and a promotion for the permission model from the experimental stage to production usage.

Reproducible image builds reduce management complexity

We introduced image mode in RHEL 9.6 to simplify the process of deploying your operating system and layering applications on top of it. Whether deploying to virtualized machines, hardware, or public clouds, image mode was a welcome alternative to package-based. With RHEL 9.7, RHEL image mode now supports reproducible builds for container tools. That means container images built with identical content will yield identical images, with no timestamps or other metadata creating inconsistencies. Container images generated using RHEL's container tools are now reproducible.

Hybrid cloud encryption and new telemetry support

OpenTelemetry Collector, included in RHEL 9 and 10 cloud images, now supports Trusted Platform Module (TPM) on AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

TPM support helps protect cryptographic keys and attestation data that were previously stored only in software. Now, actions like key generation, signing, and system integrity checks can happen inside tamper-resistant hardware, improving the overall integrity of operations.

For cloud virtual machines, virtual TPM (vTPM) adds more protection. It supports secure identity verification, encrypted key storage, and compliance with strict security standards. This is especially important for regulated or multi-tenant workloads. Even in virtual environments, systems can now benefit from hardware-level security and verifiable integrity.

Try RHEL 9.7 now

These are just some of the improvements packed into our latest update to RHEL 9.7 The official RHEL 9.7 documentation and release notes have more details on new features in this edition. To experience them yourself, download RHEL 9.7 today and get started!

Additional resources:

• RHEL 9.7 Product Download
• RHEL 9.7 Release Notes
• RHEL 9.7 Documentation
• What's New in RHEL 10.1 Blog
• RHEL 10.1/9.7 Press Release

About the author