Why RLC Pro

The operating system underneath your workloads sets the ceiling for everything above it. Compliance posture, AI performance, long-term security coverage, and the pace at which engineering teams can operate all begin at the OS layer. The right foundation makes every layer above it easier to build and cheaper to maintain.

Rocky Linux is that foundation. It is the only community Linux distribution that achieves bit-for-bit binary compatibility with Enterprise Linux. Applications, certifications, and workflows built for Enterprise Linux run identically on Rocky Linux. That compatibility is the reason more than 2.75 million instances are actively deployed across research universities, federal agencies, financial services, healthcare systems, and AI infrastructure worldwide.

RLC Pro is the enterprise-grade tier built on that foundation, with the support model, compliance posture, and operational guarantees that production environments require.

Why the base matters: Rocky Linux and binary compatibility

Binary compatibility with Enterprise Linux carries operational weight that other forms of compatibility do not. When an OS achieves true bit-for-bit compatibility, certified workloads run as certified. ISV support applies without exceptions or asterisks. Compliance frameworks transfer directly. Teams already proficient in Enterprise Linux operate Rocky Linux with exactly the same knowledge.

Rocky Linux is the only community OS that delivers this. Other distributions offer compatibility at varying levels of completeness. Rocky Linux delivers it fully, which is why it serves as the foundation for RLC Pro and the starting point for organizations that require Enterprise Linux reliability without proprietary licensing constraints.

Build on Rocky Linux and the foundation your organization already depends on carries forward intact.

What RLC Pro adds to that foundation

RLC Pro is CIQ-built and maintained. CIQ builds and signs the Rocky Linux kernel at the core of every RLC Pro variant, with patches included. Long-Term Support (LTS) covers Pro tiers, and support through the CIQ Portal extends up to four years, including minor versions. For a full breakdown of what separates RLC Pro from RLC+, see Community Rocky Linux, RLC+, and RLC Pro: Which option fits your infrastructure?.

LTS versions .2, .6, and .10 achieve Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-3 certifications 5095, 5113, 5116, and 5117 out of the box. Compliance arrives with the distribution. Security maintenance runs through May 2032, with committed CVE response timelines and indemnification as standard.

GPU drivers for NVIDIA and AMD come pre-installed. RLC Pro also functions as a direct replacement for Amazon Linux 2 (AL2) workloads on AWS, giving organizations a tested migration path to a stable, compliance-ready foundation as AL2 approaches end of life on June 30, 2026. For a detailed look at that migration path, see Own your enterprise Linux upgrade timeline with RLC Pro.

The support model, and the team behind it

RLC Pro includes two support tiers:

Standard: business hours coverage with a one-hour Sev 1 response.

Premium: 24x7 follow-the-sun coverage with a 30-minute Sev 1 response and a named Customer Success Manager.

The engineers who respond to support requests run Rocky Linux in CIQ's own environment. When a vulnerability is disclosed, the CIQ team is already inside it, and customers get answers before they have to ask.

In May 2026, three critical local privilege escalation vulnerabilities arrived within three weeks. Copy Fail (CVE-2026-31431) hit on April 29. Dirty Frag (CVE-2026-43284 and CVE-2026-43500) followed on May 8. Fragnesia (CVE-2026-46300) arrived on May 13. CIQ delivered Knowledge Base guidance to customers the same day each vulnerability was disclosed, patched kernels reached production ahead of other distributions, and federal customers with IPsec dependencies received guidance built around their actual configurations, not a standard playbook response. Each fix went back to the Rocky Linux community immediately, because protecting the broader community takes priority over any commercial consideration.

A customer security lead wrote at the end of that period: "Every time I thought I was going to have to start making calls, there was already a KB article and someone on your team reaching out on applying the fixes. I am not used to that."

That outcome is the product of a team that treats your infrastructure challenges as its own.

Who RLC Pro serves

RLC Pro serves enterprise organizations that operate at scale and require compliance. System administrators, DevOps and DevSecOps teams, platform engineers, and security leads who carry responsibility for infrastructure stability are the primary audience.

Organizations across research universities, HPC centers, government and defense, financial services, healthcare, and AI and compute-intensive data center environments have standardized on RLC Pro. Common deployment patterns include GPU-accelerated AI and machine learning infrastructure, large-scale simulation, High Performance Computing (HPC), regulated environments requiring FIPS 140-3 and government certifications, hybrid cloud and container deployments, GitOps workflows, immutable edge deployments, and fleet management.

"Enterprise customers expect to move from infrastructure deployment to workload execution quickly," said Gregory Kurtzer, CEO of CIQ and founder of Rocky Linux. "Rocky Linux is already the OS of choice for performance-intensive computing. Adding AMD-specific optimization and keeping it freely accessible makes that combination even stronger for AI and HPC workloads."

Get started

Start at the CIQ portal. For background on what RLC Pro delivers and how CIQ built it, see CIQ launches RLC Pro Enterprise Linux. From there:

1. Retrieve your credentials: navigate to My Products, select Rocky Linux from CIQ, and open the Deploy tab to find your username and token.
2. Take a snapshot or full backup of your current server and disable any third-party repositories.
3. Request the migrate2rlc script from CIQ Support and run it with your credentials: sudo ./migrate2rlc.sh -r -u YOUR_USERNAME -p YOUR_TOKEN -t rlc-pro
4. Restart your system.