Major updates are coming to Flatcar Stable!

[Thilo Fromm]

Hello Flatcar Container Linux devs!

Since the CoreOS EOL earlier this year, our primary focus has been on maintaining compatibility and easing migrations. This has meant that, until now, we have been conservative with version updates in the Stable channel, for example of the Linux kernel.

With most users having made the transition, we are now happy to announce that our first major update will be coming to the Flatcar Stable channel in the second half of September. Most of the changes have been in Alpha since late May, and in Beta since late July. With our Beta-2605.2.0 release we’re entering the next step in our stabilisation process; version 2605 is currently planned to go to Stable on the 21st of September. As always, that is subject to change as we will prioritise stability over meeting a specific date.

Stable will see significant updates to the Linux kernel (4.19 to 5.4), systemd (v245), Docker (19.3), and other key components, e.g. openssl (1.1.1), mdadm (4.1), bind-tools (9.16), and iproute2 (5.8).

We have thoroughly tested and stabilised these changes in order to minimise any upgrade risk, but we can’t test workloads or environments that we are not aware of. 

This is where you come in: we strongly encourage you to test the Beta-2605.2.0 release with your workloads, and report any issues you may be experiencing to our issue tracker: https://github.com/flatcar-linux/Flatcar/issues. This will ensure a seamless transition of your workloads when 2605 is promoted to Stable.

As always, we really value and appreciate your feedback, so please do let us know your experiences (good or bad) with the current Beta and the new Stable release.