Oracle Linux 5.7, Based on RHEL 5.7, Is Now Available

Oracle Linux 5.7, a Red Hat Enterprise clone created by Oracle, has been released. The latest version brings all of the new features and fixes found in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7, which has been available for a little over a week, plus a few patches of its own.

For all intents and purposes, it is fully compatible with RHEL 5.7, all apps and components should work the same, which was always the aim, but it is missing the Red Hat logos, artwork and other specific components.

"Oracle is pleased to announce the general availability of Oracle Linux Release 5 Update 7 for x86 (32 bit) and x86_64 (64 Bit) architectures," Oracle announced.

Most of the changes made by Oracle refer to the kernel and drivers support, Oracle Linux 5.7 comes with three kernel versions.

The first is Oracle's own Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 2.6.32 (200.13.1.el5uek) which is also the default. The second option is the vanilla Red Hat compatible kernel 2.6.18 (274.el5), which is also installed by default, but is not the default option.

Finally, a Red Hat compatible kernel 2.6.18 (274.0.0.0.1.el5) with bug fixes and patches from Oracle is offered, but it is available for both supported architectures, but can only be installed manually.

Oracle Linux 5.7 is based on RHEL 5.7, which came in late last month. It didn't take long for Oracle to strip the proprietary Red Hat elements and add its patches before releasing its own branded version of the popular enterprise Linux distro.

RHEL 5.7 boasts several changes and updates, notable among which is improved support for the Xen hypervisor, which is only supported in the older 5.x branch but not in the newer RHEL 6.x branch.

Oracle Linux is available for download here.