When Rocky Linux 10 is released, it will join a growing number of Linux distros that support the open source RISC-V instruction set.
It doesn’t seem that long ago that the folks at SiFive, RISC-V International, or others I met at a RISC-V Summit predicted it would be several years before the open source instruction set, RISC-V, would power desktops, laptops, or servers. Back then, open source silicon supporters were elated just because companies like Western Digital were ready to use the ISA to build accelerators and the like.
Those days are gone. At least three companies are now offering laptops with a RISC-V option. There are quite a few RISC-V-based single board computers available, and the ISA is even starting to make tentative inroads into servers and data center space. Also, those who get their hands on a RISC-V laptop or SBC won’t have trouble finding something to run on it, since at least six major Linux distributions have been ported to run on RISC-V silicon.
That number soon goes up to seven, since the popular Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone, Rocky Linux, will soon release version 10 with RISC-V capabilities, according to Alexia Stein, the distro’s community lead.
Rocky Linux 10 should be coming soon. Red Hat announced on Tuesday that it’s officially released RHEL 10, so Rocky 10 will probably be here in a couple of weeks. Although the distro hasn’t yet released an alpha or beta, development on Rocky 10—based on CentOS Stream 10—has been ongoing since last winter, with weekly internal testing releases.
In announcing the RISC-V port on Rocky Linux’s website, Stein pointed out that the distro’s AltArch SIG adapted the port from work done by Fedora developers, the latter chronicled by Fedora Magazine. Currently, it will only install on a limited range of RISC-V hardware.
“Thanks to the incredible work of the Fedora RISC-V Community and Rocky’s AltArch SIG, this release will include a riscv64gc build, targeting the same platforms supported by Fedora—such as the StarFive VisionFive 2 (VF2), QEMU, and the SiFive HiFive Premier P550,” she said.
Here’s the lowdown on Rocky’s RISC-V efforts so far, taken pretty much directly from Stein’s news item:
- The port works out-of-the-box on the VisionFive 2 and in QEMU, using the standard EL10 kernel.
- It supports the P550 and similar platforms via vendor kernels, though some features may be limited.
- The project is built on an upstream-first approach, with active collaboration with the Fedora community to advance RISC-V support across the ecosystem.
- New hardware targets and extensions (like RVA23) can be enabled by the AltArch SIG.
Stein also thanked RISC-V International, RISE, Rivos, and the Fedora community “for their ongoing technical and hardware support.”
She also said that download availability and an install guide will be “coming soon.”
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
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