Chapter 1. Overview
Product life cycle
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 is now in the Maintenance Support phase of the product life cycle. Future minor releases will focus on retaining and improving stability and reliability rather than adding new features. See the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle document for more details.
In-place upgrade
An in-place upgrade offers a way of upgrading a system to a new major release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux by replacing the existing operating system. For a list of currently supported upgrade pahts, see Supported in-place upgrade paths for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
In-place upgrade from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8
With the release of RHEL 8.2, the supported in-place upgrade path is:
- From RHEL 7.8 to RHEL 8.2 on the 64-bit Intel, IBM POWER 8 (little endian), and IBM Z architectures
- From RHEL 7.6 to RHEL 8.2 on architectures that require kernel version 4.14: 64-bit ARM, IBM POWER 9 (little endian), or IBM Z (Structure A)
Instructions on how to perform an in-place upgrade from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 using the Leapp utility are provided by the document Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8. Major differences between RHEL 7 and RHEL 8 are documented in Considerations in adopting RHEL 8. The Leapp utility is available in the RHEL 7 Extras repository.
If you are using CentOS Linux 7 or Oracle Linux 7, you can convert your operating system to RHEL 7 using the convert2rhel utility prior to upgrading to RHEL 8. For instructions, see How to convert from CentOS Linux or Oracle Linux to RHEL.
In-place upgrade from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7
The procedure of an in-place upgrade from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7 and the usage of the Preupgrade Assistant and the Red Hat Upgrade Tool is documented in the Upgrading from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7 guide. Significant differences between the two major releases are documented in the Migration Planning Guide. Note that the Preupgrade Assistant and the Red Hat Upgrade Tool are available in the RHEL 6 Extras repository.
If you are using CentOS Linux 6 or Oracle Linux 6, you can convert your operating system to RHEL 6 using the convert2rhel utility prior to upgrading to RHEL 7. For instructions, see How to convert from CentOS Linux or Oracle Linux to RHEL.
Security
SCAP Security Guide now provides a profile compliant with the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) Essential Eight Maturity Model.
See Section 4.11, “Security” for more information.
Desktop
Workspace switcher in the GNOME Classic environment has been modified. The switcher is now located in the right part of the bottom bar, and it is designed as a horizontal strip of thumbnails. Switching between workspaces is possible by clicking on the required thumbnail. For details, see Section 4.5, “Desktop”.
Additional resources
- Capabilities and limits of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 as compared to other versions of the system are available in the Knowledgebase article Red Hat Enterprise Linux technology capabilities and limits.
- The Package Manifest document provides a package listing for RHEL 7.
- The Red Hat Insights service, which enables you to proactively identify, examine, and resolve known technical issues, is now available with all RHEL subscriptions. For instructions on how to install the Red Hat Insights client and register your system to the service, see the Red Hat Insights Get Started page.
Red Hat Customer Portal Labs is a set of tools in a section of the Customer Portal. The applications in Red Hat Customer Portal Labs can help you improve performance, quickly troubleshoot issues, identify security problems, and quickly deploy and configure complex applications. Some of the most popular applications are:
