Oracle Linux vs Oracle Solaris vs SUSE Linux Enterprise comparison

Oracle Linux is a stable, reliable, and scalable operating system primarily used for deploying and running Oracle databases. It is also suitable for various other functions, including managing operating systems and web servers, supporting traffic surveillance, and identity management. 

Oracle Linux is highly valued for its stability, reliability, scalability, good technical support, and ease of use. It has helped organizations to achieve faster DNS queries, stable development environments, reduced vulnerability issues, good performance for Oracle applications, and improved ability to run test scenarios and parallel queries across massive databases.

Oracle Linux Features

Oracle Linux has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

• The software is 100% free (no cost) to use, distribute, and update

• Ksplice allows for zero-downtime kernel and user-space upgrades

• DTrace provides comprehensive kernel and application tracing

• For Oracle Linux Support clients, Linux management and high availability are available at no additional cost

• It's Oracle-optimized and works well with Oracle Database and Oracle Applications
  
• New workload optimizations:
  
  • Enhanced memory performance by attempting to better locate a process near its memory and better placement of tasks that do not fit on a single NUMA node
    
  • SPECjbb's performance has been improved by up to 3.6 times thanks to optimizations that help reduce lock contention.
    
  • With bcache, it's simple to employ SSDs as a block cache for slower block devices. A new, scaled block layer subsystem supports many millions of IOps on NVM-Express and high-end PCI-E devices.
    
• Oracle Linux has three deployment options:

• Linux in the cloud: Oracle Linux Premier Support is included in all Oracle Cloud Infrastructure subscriptions at no additional cost.
  
• Linux on premises: This is the industry's most comprehensive and open Linux distribution.
  
• Embedded Linux design: Embedding a feature-rich Linux distribution is an optimized, cost-effective solution for your business.

 Oracle Linux Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Oracle Linux. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

• Save money by only paying for support for the systems you need
  
• Improve security by applying patches faster and spending less time troubleshooting and updating
  
• Improve Oracle software and hardware performance

Reviews from Real Users

Oracle Linux stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its stability and scalability. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews: 

One PeerSpot reviewer, an IT Manager, reports, “I find the virtualization the most valuable.” He adds, “Oracle Linux is the best Linux operating system that I have ever known. It is very stable and strong.”

An Enterprise Architect at a financial services firm writes of the solution, “You also don't have memory issues, especially when it is engineered with platforms like Exadata and Oracle Cluster. These give you the most throughput and performance.” He adds, “It is very scalable, especially on platforms like Oracle Cluster and Exadata.”

Oracle Solaris is a trusted business platform that provides consistent compatibility, is simple to use, is always secure, and is designed to help you run your modern and legacy enterprise applications. The solution is the most recommended enterprise operating system for Oracle Database and Java applications and is engineered for large-scale enterprise deployments.

Oracle Solaris Features

Oracle Solaris has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

• Application binary guarantee
• Unified archives
• Rich selection of DevOps tools
• REST-based configuration and monitoring
• Software security assurance
• Automated installer
• Image packaging system and ZFS boot environments
• Simplified system life-cycle, application life-cycle, and cloud capabilities
• Constraint packages
• Fault diagnosis
• Service management facility

Oracle Solaris Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Oracle Solaris. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

• Portable and scalable
• Interoperable and compatible
• Simple to use
• Infrastructure designed to scale on large systems without code
• Supports a wide range of hardware
• 24 x 7 support from Oracle
• Portability across different architectures
• Supports tools optimized for Oracle hardware devices
• Guarantees binary compatibility for your applications across various Oracle Solaris OS releases
• Supports programming languages such as Perl, Ruby, and Python
• Mitigates risk and easily proves compliance
• Reduces costs
• Helps reduce planned and unplanned downtime

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the Oracle Solaris solution.

A CEO at a computer software company says, “The most valuable feature is virtualization. They have attained virtualization and it's quite simple to create the Oracle Solaris zones. The solution is quite powerful. Oracle Solaris is great due to the fact that it actually is meant for high-end servers. The high availability is great. You can clone and you can do quite a number of things with them. There's also the ZFS File system which is very good. Is one of the best file systems that there is.”

Diego A., Oracle ACE - Specialized in Systems Technologies at Telecom Argentina, mentions, “The most valuable features for me are virtualization (Containers, Zones, Security, PDOM's, LDOM's) and Performance, ZFS, Debugging with Dtrace.”

A Service Manager at a tech services company expresses that the solution is “Stable, scalable, and has easy installation.”

PeerSpot user Marcel H., Oracle ACE Director "Solaris," CEO, Enterprise Consultant at JomaSoft, explains, “Solaris includes two virtualization solutions: LDoms for SPARC and Solaris Zones. Both solutions can be combined to create private clouds. Solaris Zones is ideal to separate applications and to migrate from older to current hardware. LDoms is very efficient because it uses the hardware hypervisor of the SPARC servers. Both technologies increase Security, because they separate the applications from each other. Using the Security Compliance Framework we are sure the systems are set up properly.”

Shafiq K., Senior Manager IT Operations at a financial services firm, states, “The reliability of the solution is excellent. The security has been very good overall. We've found the solution to have good availability. The backup capabilities are quite good. The solution has proven to be quite stable so far. The product can scale. The solution is 100% free to use. It doesn't cost a company anything as it's embedded in the hardware.”

SUSE Linux Enterprise is a versatile operating system ideal for deploying solutions, managing applications, and running certain applications. It is also used for migrating SAP workloads to the cloud, integrating with SAP HANA solutions and products, and as an operating system for application servers. 

The solution is praised for its YaST tool for easier server administration, compatibility with Oracle and SAP, stability, scalability, ease of use, extensive documentation, pacemaker cluster, and SUSE Manager for patching. SUSE Linux offers extended support for each version and a special edition for SAP applications.