Red Hat Confirms RHEL 8 Will Drop Python 2

While it could have been pretty much assumed up until now that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 would ship without Python 2 considering that next enterprise Linux OS release isn't even out yet, its long-term maintenance support, and Python 2 reaching EOL at the start of 2020, but now it's been made official.

As part of today's Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 release, Red Hat issued their latest deprecation notices. Most notable this time around with RHEL 7.5 as a new deprecation notice is that of Python 2.

The notice mentions, "Python 2 will be replaced with Python 3 in the next Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) major release."

Really no surprise but the first time Red Hat has made it official. Most Linux distributions continue working on moving all of their packaged programs and scripts away from Python 2 and over to Python 3 in time for the 2020 expiration.

We're expecting to hear more about RHEL8 next month. Other current expectations are that Btrfs will be completely gutted in favor of the company's own Stratis Linux storage tech, the workstation session using GNOME on Wayland by default, shipping with the GCC 7 compiler, and possibly shipping with the Linux ~4.14 kernel. We're expecting an alpha sometime soon and would be perfect if announced at May's Red Hat Summit 2018.