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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3 Beta Released

• By John K. Waters
• July 28, 2020

Red Hat today announced the beta availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3 (RHEL 8.3), the latest minor release of the RHEL 8 platform. The RHEL 8.3 beta keeps the open-source software provider on track to provide a predictable six month release cadence for minor updates. This update includes new security profiles, updated and expanded RHEL System Roles, and updated developer tools via Application Streams.

The Application Streams (AppStreams) repository, introduced to RHEL 8 in 2018, allows Red Hat to deliver components as modules, which are collections of packages representing logical units--say, an application, a language stack, a database, or a set of tools. These packages are built, tested, and released together.

With AppStreams, Red Hat can deliver software components used for app development in parallel with the underlying base operating system packages. The RHEL 8.3 beta, for example, provides access to several stable, open-source tools via AppStreams, including: Git 2.26, NGINX 1.18, Node.js v14, Perl 5.30,PHP 7.4, and Ruby 2.7.

This beta release also includes new System Roles (introduced in RHEL 27.4), which are collections of roles and modules executed by Ansible to assist Linux admins in the configuration of common GNU/Linux subsystems. This beta comes System Roles for System Logging and Metrics, among others. "Each of these roles provides easily repeatable configurations, independent of the supported version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployed, reducing the burden of maintaining and provisioning large-scale Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployments and providing additional levels of confidence that systems are properly configured and secured," the company said in a blog post.

The list of new security profiles in this beta includes profiles for the Center for Internet Security (CIS) benchmark and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Available as SCAP profiles within RHEL these security profiles are designed to deliver additional security configurations for IT administrators to help meet stringent compliance requirements in both the commercial and healthcare verticals. The RHEL 8.3 beta also adds a System Role for Network-Bound Disk Encryption (NBDE) "to help add consistency and repeatability for configuring disk encryption as well as logging," the company said, and System Roles for 802.1x Networking and Certificate Management, which provide "further standardization when configuring corporate networks and renewing security certificates."

The RHEL 8.3 beta also updates a number of performance tools and debuggers "to help keep Red Hat Enterprise Linux capabilities aligned with the latest innovations coming from related open source communities."

The RHEL 8.3 beta release is available now to RHEL customers via the Red Hat customer portal and as part of the no-cost Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Subscription at developers.redhat.com.