EuroLinux 8.5 focuses on a reconstruction of EuroLinux Gaia

Version 8.5 of the EuroLinux operating system is compatible with the latest upstream version, and focuses on a rebuild of the EuroLinux Gaia. The EuroLinux construction system has been enhanced with the ability to template configuration files. Now, instead of 4 different files (for the x86_64, i686, aarch 64 (ARM 64) and ppc64le architectures) everything is configured at the level of a single file. Customers who develop their own Linux based on EuroLinux sources already have access to the latest version of the compilation system.

Additional improvements have been made to the build stack. We've added the Vardøger project (written in ASCII characters as vardoger) - which improves packet comparison capabilities over the upstream solution.

In addition to increasing the capacity of the construction system, we made marketing changes. According to the suggestions, we decided to change the name of this project, because the word beast has both positive and negative connotations. During the vote, the name was chosen from the Greek mythology "Gaia" meaning Mother Earth.

EuroLinux 8.5 is the first version that includes high availability warehouses and durable storage from the beginning. These significantly increase the system's capabilities and allow for easier migration, especially from very expensive cluster solutions from other vendors.

HA and RS repositories have been added to buildroots. These are only available for the x86_64 architecture.

EuroLinux 9 is under development. EuroLinux is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux source code, and the technical goal is to achieve 1: 1 binary compatibility. As the release date of the stable upstream version is unknown, information on the launch of EuroLinux 9 is not included.

EuroLinux is available and supported in 8.x, 7.x and 6.x versions. The latest versions supported by EuroLinux are:

- 8.5 fully supported system
- 7.9 fully supported system
- 6.10 the system is supported by EuroES (Extended Support - individual subscription).

EuroLinux is a recommended alternative to CentOS, which will stop receiving stable updates at the end of 2021 and will become an experimental distribution. Because CentOS is part of the Enterprise Linux family, it can use stable updates from EuroLinux. This process is completely secure, reversible and does not require reinstalling the system. This makes it possible to extend the CentOS life cycle until 30.06.2029.

New versions of the following are now available:

Ruby 3.0 - the rubyflow of 3.0 modules.
nginx 1.20 - nginxflow of modules 1.20
Nodejs 16 - nodejflow of modules 16

Compiler toolkit

Compilation toolkits have been updated in EL 8.5:

GCC Toolset 11 - software collectiongcc-toolset-11
LLVM Toolset 12.0.1 - llvm-toolsetflux of modulerhel
Rust Toolset 1.54.0 - rust-toolsetflux of modulerhel
Go Toolset 1.16.7 - go-toolsetflux of modulerhel

Security

Most security features are connected to rebated / updated versions of packages. The most important security changes include:

rsyslog - now accepts OpenSSL
OpenSCAP framework - added new profiles and more changes and enhancements
Cryptopolitics have been updated - these system-wide cryptographic policies in this release accept different policies for different backends (policies in the field)

High availability and durable storage

cmirror has been updated to version 2.03.12
corosync has been updated to version 3.1.5
pacemaker has been updated to version 2.1.0
The resource-agents-paf package has been added to the HA and RS repositories

General updates and improvements

Among other things, the following packages have been updated and improved:

NetworkManager has been updated to 1.32.10 from 1.30
OpenIMP has been updated to 2.0.31 from 2.0.29
that has been updated to 3.1 from 2.8
bluez has been updated to 5.56 from 5.52
chrony has been updated to 4.1 from 3.5
cockpit has been updated to version 251.1 from 238.2
Cryptopolitics has been updated to 20210617 from 20210209
dnf has been updated to 4.7.0 from 4.4.2
elfutils has been updated to 0.185 from 0.182
freeipmi has been updated to 1.6.8 from 1.6.6
gnutls has been updated to 3.6.16 from 3.6.14
ibacm has been updated to 35.0 from 32.0
libmodulemd has been updated to version 2.13.0 from 2.9.4
libreswan has been updated to version 4.4 from 4.3
GCC main has been updated to 8.5.0 from 8.4.1
opencryptoki has been updated to version 3.16.0 from 3.15.1
rsyslog has been updated to version 8.2102.0 since 8.1911 .0
sssd has been updated to version 2.5.2 from 2.4.0

New packages

adwaita-qt5

ansible-collection-microsoft-sql
ansible-colectie-redhat-rhel_mgmt
teste-ansible-freeipa
ansible-pcp
compact-hwloc1
coreos-installer
pachete-dotnet-build-reference-packages
dotnet-sdk-3.1-sursa-built-artefacts
dotnet- sdk-5.0-source-built-artifacts
dotnet5.0-build-reference-packages
eth-tools
flatpak (i686) included in PowerTools
java-17-openjdk *
libadwaita-qt5 libcap
-of-python3
libcomps-devel is now included in PowerTools
libvoikko-devel - is now included in PowerTools
lpsolve (i686) is now included in PowerTools
mobile-broadband-provider-info-devel is now included in PowerTools
modulemd-tools
pcm
python3-cloud-ce
python3-libstoragemgmt
python3-pillow (i686) is now included in PowerTools
python3-pyghmi
qt5-qtserialbus-devel is now included in PowerTools
resource-agents-paf (resistance storage)
rsyslog-openssl
samba-vfs-
sblim-gather
sblim-gather-provider is now included in PowerTools
sevctl
stratisd-dracut
tesseract
tss2
udftools
unicode-ucd-unihan
xapian-core and its development packages are now included