Red Hat Linux bolsters AI assistance

Red Hat has released two updates of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), versions 10.1 and 9.7, with the new releases emphasizing AI-powered Linux management and quantum threat mitigation.

Both versions were unveiled on November 12 and can be accessed now from access.redhat.com.

With AI-powered Linux management, considered foundational to RHEL, the RHEL command-line assistant now has an expanded context limit, making it easier to analyze very large log files and data streams for effective troubleshooting, Red Hat said. The command-line assistant lowers the skills barriers to managing and troubleshooting connected systems, Red Hat said. Additionally, an offline version of the RHEL command-line assistant (available in developer preview) is a self-contained tool that runs locally, so users can receive AI-powered guidance for Linux tasks in disconnected environments. This is key for organizations in highly sensitive and regulated industries where cloud services are restricted, the company said.

Also with the new RHEL releases, Red Hat users now can more easily install validated drivers for leading AI accelerators from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia. This move will have RHEL delivering validated drivers to provide a secure foundation for emerging, mission-critical workloads, helping to reduce bottlenecks and accelerate the AI/ML life cycle, Red Hat said.

The company regularly releases two RHEL versions simultaneously to provide organizations with a choice of features, performance, and support life cycles. The latest RHEL version (10.1) offers the newest security patches and hardware support. In addition, key enhancements are backported to the stable, older version (9.7) so that organizations can get crucial updates without the disruption of a major version upgrade, Red Hat said.

RHEL 9.7 incorporates post-quantum cryptography algorithms to help deal with potential threads by future quantum computing. This follows capabilities introduced in RHEL 10, which arrived May 20. RHEL 10.1, meanwhile, enhances support for post-quantum cryptography in Transport Layer Security (TLS), providing protection for crucial data in transit, Red Hat said.

RHEL 10.1 now offers soft reboots, a new capability in image mode that lets administrators change system states without requiring a full kernel reboot. This makes for faster updates and patching with minimal disruption to business operations. And the OpenTelemetry Collector in RHEL 9 and RHEL 10 Cloud Images now supports Trusted Platform Module (TPM) on AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. This enables sensitive operations to be performed within tamper-resistant hardware.

Finally, RHEL’s Automatic Certificate Environment (ACME) now is generally available. ACME automates the manual and error-prone task of security and certificate updates for production updates to help maintain security and reliability.