Red Hat, soon to be owned by IBM, has announced the beta version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. As the IT landscaope is changing and the workload is moving from traditional data centers to the cloud, leveraging emerging technologies like Blockchain and machine learning, the expectation from the OS that runs these workloads is also changing.

To keep up with the changing time RHEL 8 maintains a fine balance between past and future.

“Today, we’re offering a vision of a Linux foundation to power the innovations that can extend and transform business IT well into the future: Meet Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Beta,” Red Hat said in a press release.

One of the most notable highlights of this beta is the introduction of the concept of Application Streams to deliver userspace packages more simply and with greater flexibility.

“Userspace components can now update more quickly than core operating system packages and without having to wait for the next major version of the operating system,” said Red Hat.

What it means is users don’t have to worry about ‘rpm hell’ or conflict of packages. “Multiple versions of the same package, for example, an interpreted language or a database, can also be made available for installation via an application stream,” explained Red Hat.

It allows users to consume an agile and user-customized version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux without impacting the underlying stability of the platform or specific deployments.

You can test beta by downloading it from here: https://access.redhat.com/products/red-hat-enterprise-linux/beta