Oracle has announced the release of the UEK-Next 6.10 nucleus, which is part of the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel for Linux. In the Oracle Linux distribution, instead of using the Red Hat Enterprise Linux nucleus, the UEK 7 nucleus is based on the Linux 5.15 core. The UEK-Next branch is a continuously updated option for developers, providing access to the latest improvements from the main nucleus branch while retaining access to the UEK nucleus for expanded capabilities like DTRACE integration, improved BTRFS support, and optimizations for Oracle software and hardware.
The UEK-Next nucleus is created by applying corrections and improvements from the Mainline-Yaro Linux to the UEK nucleus. This branch is not meant for production use but undergoes basic testing to allow developers to adapt applications and workloads to new versions of the main nucleus. Eventually, a long-term support cycle will be provided for one of the nuclear nuclei, which will serve as the foundation for UEK 8.
The release of UEK-Next 6.10 came two months after the release of the main 6.10 nucleus. This delay is due to the time required for patch formation, adaptation for the new core, review, and testing. Some of the specific improvements in the UEK-Next 6.10 nucleus include support for the “Scheded_ext” (SCX) mechanism, allowing the use of EBPF for creating CPU schedulers. The plan is to transition this feature to the main sched_ext nucleus in the 6.12 release.