By @michaellarabel
Publication Date: 2026-03-25 00:50:00
Just days after celebrating the 20th anniversary of their RHEL-based Oracle Linux distribution, Oracle today announced Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 8.2 “UEK 8.2” as an alternative to the RHEL clone kernel with Oracle Linux.
The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel is Oracle’s leading Linux kernel option for Oracle Linux with additional features and other additional protections and capabilities compared to the RHEL compatible kernel version. With UEK 8 Update 2 they are still using a Linux 6.12 LTS base for their kernel, while presumably with UEK9 they will move to the latest Linux 6.18 LTS branch.
Not only does UEK 8.2 inherit the newer upstream Linux 6.12 changes from the later point releases, but it also brings improvements to confidential computing with various backported Intel Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) patches, XFS online repair is validated on this latest UEK kernel build, and there are further improvements to memory protection and diagnostics.
Selected drivers have also been removed…
