The Rocky Linux project has announced the general availability of Rocky Linux 10.2, released on May 28, 2026. This version tracks Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.2 closely, landing just days after its upstream base and reaffirming the project’s commitment to staying aligned with RHEL.
What is Rocky Linux
Rocky Linux is a community-driven, open-source enterprise distribution that is binary-compatible with RHEL, created after CentOS changed direction. It targets servers, critical infrastructure, cloud workloads and production environments that need long-term stability without paying for licenses. The 10 branch has general support until May 31, 2030 and security updates through May 31, 2035.
Key highlights of Rocky Linux 10.2
- Expanded post-quantum cryptography. OpenSSH now supports ML-KEM hybrid key exchange, and the
FUTUREcryptographic policy now allows only hybrid ML-KEM key exchange algorithms, which strengthens protection against future quantum threats. - Flatpak by default on the desktop. Firefox and Thunderbird now ship primarily as Flatpaks, and the Anaconda installer preinstalls them automatically when you pick a graphical environment.
- Refreshed toolchain. The system ships updated toolchain components including GCC 14.3, LLVM Toolset 21.1.8 and Rust Toolset 1.92.0, so you can develop with newer compilers.
- Podman with Sequoia-PGP. Podman switches from GnuPG to Sequoia-PGP for OpenPGP image signature verification, and it supports post-quantum algorithms.
- Larger /boot partition. The default
/bootpartition size grows from 1 GiB to 2 GiB to fit larger initramfs images. - Virtualization and networking improvements. QEMU adds native Forced Unit Access (FUA) I/O support, improving virtual storage performance for database workloads. The industrial PRP and HSR protocols (IEC 62439-3) also move from Tech Preview to fully supported.
Updated installation, container, cloud and live images are already available for download. As always, read the official release notes for known issues and detailed changes before you upgrade production environments.
You can find all the details about this distribution on its page at /en/rocky-linux.