KernelCare Is Another Alternative To Canonical's Ubuntu Live Kernel Patching

Earlier this week Canonical announced their Kernel Livepatching Service for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS users. Canonical's service is free for under three systems while another alternative for Ubuntu Linux users interested in a commercial service is CloudLinux's KernelCare.

The folks from CloudLinux wrote in to remind us of their kernel patching solution, which they've been offering since 2014 and believe is a superior solution to Canonical's service. KernelCare isn't limited to just Ubuntu 16.04 but also works with Ubuntu 14.04 and other distributions such as CentOS/RHEL, Debian, and other enterprise Linux distributions.

Another big difference to Canonical's Livepatch is that KernelCare does support rollback functionality while Canonical doesn't appear to support it at this time. KernelCare can also handle custom patches, 32-bit support, and they share they plan to soon begin offering livepatching support for glibc, OpenSSL, and QEMU.

The downside though is that KernelCare appears to rely upon some binary blobs as part of its service. Pricing on KernelCare ranges from $25 to $45 USD per year depending upon the number of licenses being purchased.

Those interested in learning more about KernelCare for live kernel patching, visit CloudLinux.com.