Is Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX) Compatible with Debian* 11?

• CentOS* 8, a Linux* OS supported by Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX), will reach end-of-life (EOL)* on December 31, 2021.
• Unable to determine if Intel SGX for Linux will run on Debian* 11, as an alternative to CentOS.

The supported operating systems (OS) list for Intel SGX on Linux* consists of OSes that were fully validated by Intel to work with Intel SGX. Intel cannot validate every OS in the ecosystem, but Intel validates the major operating systems, especially those with Long Term Support (LTS), such as Ubuntu* and Red Hat Enterprise Linux* (RHEL*).

The Intel SGX Ubuntu .deb packages may work on Debian, but Intel has not validated the functionality and dependencies.

An alternative to Debian is Rocky Linux*, which is the CentOS creator’s new distribution. Rocky Linux continues to be downstream from RHEL, unlike CentOS, which is upstream. Though brand new, it is the closest to the traditional CentOS. Some Intel SGX users have found that the Intel SGX components work in Rocky Linux, but it has not been validated by Intel; therefore, it is not officially supported.