Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.3 Beta: Brings Updated AppStream repository

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.3 Beta is finally out after a six-month development cycle, and succeeds the current RHEL 8.2 release, with promise to deliver more stability and production innovation to the enterprise.

While RHEL 8.3 beta has a number of new changes, including system roles for logging, storage, system metrics, disk encryption, kernel, and bootloader, with the new role aimed at helping users to manage large installations through consistent and repeatable configurations at scale.

The Red Hat owned Enterprise Linux (RHEL) platform is targeted at the commercial market, as it restricts the free re-distribution of officially supported versions, albeit it still freely provides the source code.

What's new in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.3 Beta?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.3 Beta includes pre-configured Ansible playbooks that simplifies the automation and configuration of common admin tasks like the allocation of storage resources.

It also brings updated Application Streams (AppStream) repository with new languages and tools. Other notable packages in AppStream with their new version are as follows:

Ruby 2.7
Perl 5.30
Nginx 1.18
Node.js v14
PHP 7.4
Git 2.26

Additionally, RHEL 8.3 beta includes the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), with security profiles for the Center for Internet Security (CIS) benchmark. And system administrators can now use the new SCAP (Security Content Automation Protocol) profiles to configure their systems based on the best security practices.

How to Download Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.3 Beta

For existing users with an active subscription for RHEL, RHEL 8.3 beta can be downloaded directly from Red Hat’s Portal. And if you are a new user who wants to try out RHEL 8.3 beta, you can download it from developer.redhat.com as part of the no-cost Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Subscription.

You can check out the release notes for full list of new features, improvements, and security fixes that are available on the RHEL 8.3 beta release.