RLC Pro is an enterprise Linux for the AI era

CIQ, the company building the popular Rocky Linux distribution, has launched RLC Pro, a new commercially supported enterprise Linux distribution that bundles compliance, long-term support, and engineering fixes into a single subscription.

Positioned as a next-generation platform for workloads spanning AI, high-performance computing (HPC), and regulated industries, RLC Pro offers long-term support (LTS), FIPS 140-3 validation for its cryptographic capabilities, indemnification, and direct engineering support from CIQ.

One price, no add-ons

The company says these features, which it claims are often available only as costly add-ons in traditional enterprise offerings, come standard in RLC Pro.

“AI is driving a true inflection point for enterprise infrastructure,” says Gregory Kurtzer, CIQ CEO and founder of Rocky Linux, in a statement. “RLC Pro brings together the infrastructure capabilities organizations need into a use-everywhere model that prioritizes efficiency, security, and usability. When you hit a bug, we fix it.”

According to CIQ, RLC Pro addresses a persistent challenge in the enterprise Linux ecosystem: the trade-off between open-source flexibility and commercial-grade reliability. Organizations using community distributions often dedicate significant internal engineering resources to managing patches and compliance. Meanwhile, users of commercial platforms may face escalating subscription costs to access capabilities similar to those offered by open platforms.

RLC Pro combines both models under a single subscription. It includes:

• Bundled Long-Term Support (LTS): Stable lifecycle management for 3–5 years without forced upgrades.
• FIPS 140-3 validation: Compliance-ready packages for use in government, defense, financial, and healthcare environments.
• Direct bug and security fixes: Responsive issue resolution from CIQ engineers tied to customer feedback.
• Enterprise License Agreements (ELAs): Coverage across hybrid deployments spanning core, cloud, and edge infrastructure.

RLC Pro vs the competition

You may be asking, “What’s the difference between RLC Pro and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?” RLC Pro is essentially positioning itself as a “RHEL-like bundle by default,” while RHEL gives you the same categories of capabilities but slices them into multiple add-ons and tiers.

Diving deeper, the base subscription model for RLC Pro offers a three to five year horizon without forced point upgrades. With a RHEL subscription, you get a standard 10‑year lifecycle per major release (Full + Maintenance + Extended Life phases), with 9 or more minor point releases along the way. 

Another comparison that comes to mind is AlmaLinux OS. Like CIQ’s Rocky Linux, Alma emerged in response to Red Hat’s discontinuation of CentOS Linux.

Here, the differences are what RLC Pro bundles into a single subscription. AlmaLinux splits this between the free community OS and commercial options from TuxCare (FIPS, extended lifecycle, live patching, enterprise support). With AlmaLinux, you remain on a community distro and choose commercial add-ons as needed. With RLC Pro, the “enterprise” layer is the default product, with those features positioned as baseline rather than bolt-ons.

Neither CIQ nor AlmaLinux/TuxCare publish their license fees.

Rocky Linux remains among the most widely deployed enterprise Linux distributions, with CIQ citing telemetry from Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) showing more than 2.75 million active instances worldwide. The company says RLC Pro builds on that community momentum by providing a path for enterprises that require commercial accountability, lifecycle guarantees, and compliance assurance.

“The real transformation here is what this enables enterprises to do,” says Bjorn Hovland, CIQ president. “Organizations can deploy in regulated environments immediately, plan infrastructure with confidence, and let developers focus on innovation instead of OS maintenance.”

RLC Pro is available now through CIQ and cloud marketplaces, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. RLC Pro will be added to the CIQ Portal later this year.

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