Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Oracle Solaris vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 7, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Oracle Solaris
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
270
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of Oracle Solaris is 2.6%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 10.2%, down from 12.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

Zandile Mushi - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good security features and reliability
The tool is quite complex and difficult for anyone trying to use or study it. The complexity of learning the tool is an area of concern where improvements are required. Oracle Solaris' lighter and simpler version can be introduced. I feel that Oracle Solaris is a user-friendly tool because I am exposed to it.
Bruce Lundberg - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable patch management, high uptime, and incredible knowledge base
In terms of security, it does a lot of things that most people still turn off. SELinux is turned on by default. They have pretty good firewall rules in their defaults. The audit rules always take tweaking, but, overall, it comes out of the box not too bad. I used to write scripts to harden them from there. There are multiple ways to provision and patch. You have everything from local repositories to doing it by hand. Their knowledge base is incredible. There is so much information out there. It has never taken me longer than 30 minutes to find an answer to anything, even very tough ones. One company I worked for was a security company, and we did a lot of patching on everything. It was designed around security and email hosting, and uptime was pretty much whatever we wanted it to be. I have had a couple of times when the uptime was bad, but it was caused by a third-party solution. In fact, the Norton antivirus was definitely the worst. Red Hat had nothing to do with it.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Oracle Solaris provides an ease of use."
"We are able to deploy new environments very quickly and securely. Using the virtualization features, we can migrate the environments very flexibly between our servers."
"It works well. It is very stable and very good. It is also very safe. It cannot be easily infected by viruses or attacks."
"We like that the virtualization is built in, so you don't have to spend extra money on buying licenses for a hypervisor."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"The ability to manipulate the zones and the files within the zones from a global OS provides us flexibility that no other virtualization can match."
"Solaris Zones and Containers are my favorite features."
"Its networking has helped me combine the power of a neural network with the benefits of virtualization to improve the AI's performance."
"It's a rock-solid operating system. We don't need anything fancy from the operating system itself. What we need is something that doesn't crash, stays up to date, and provides the security features that we need to keep external players out."
"We are able to have a Linux system that is open-source and that allows us to do domain trust IBM and all that fun stuff. We have a good solid enterprise Linux."
"The flexible and extensive system makes it easy to cluster, check redundancies, and perform data backups."
"I find the most valuable aspect of Red Hat Enterprise Linux to be its comprehensive support, encompassing both technical and security issues."
"I like its user-friendliness for the admins administering the servers and the ease of doing fix packs on the servers and upgrades with the Red Hat software. It saves time and cost because we don't need to have expensive hires to do the work. We can do it ourselves a lot of times. It's a pretty straightforward, easy-to-learn, and user-friendly operating system."
"Red Hat support is pretty good. They're online, so you can look up things once you have support. Their AB integration has improved. It's easy to manage storage for moving, syncing LBM, etc."
"The most valuable feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is its comprehensive ecosystem."
"The package manager of Red Hat is very convenient and efficient to use. With other Linux versions, such as Arch Linux and Ubuntu, package managers might not always be stable. When installing any software, the dependencies can vary, and there can be conflicts, whereas Red Hat has efficiently managed all of that so that users can install packages without any conflicts."
 

Cons

"More monitoring tools could be included in the product."
"They could also enable Oracle OEM for x86 architecture as well."
"There is an issue where Solaris doesn't give the correct figures for memory use when checked."
"The scalability of the solution can be improved."
"Solaris is not easy to use. It needs better GUI, UI, and configuration tools."
"The solution is pricey and can be improved by lowering the cost."
"Currently, there are two variants, there's SPARC and there's x86. I would have wanted a scenario where they're all just one product."
"This product is not as flexible as other similar solutions on the market today."
"A completely new setup should not be required when upgrading to a new version."
"There's room for improvement with some Linux tools."
"I encountered an issue updating the time zone for one of my assigned countries due to a daylight-saving time change."
"The technical support has room for improvement."
"Some problems may occur with the product if you don't patch it after a year or two."
"An area for improvement in RHEL has to do with security policies. I know they are doing something about this in RHEL 9, but I haven't worked with that version yet. When it comes to security policies in RHEL 8, it is a bit behind. It would be better if we could just enforce a certain security policy such as CIS Level 1. That was not available, out-of-the-box, in RHEL 8."
"I feel like it is going all over the place now. Sometimes it is hard to figure out what is going on. I would like more guidance."
"This solution could be improved if it was easier to set up and run in cloud environments. It can also be costly to manage a large OpenShift environment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As a private user or individual, I wouldn't recommend it to others, considering it is a costly product."
"The solution is expensive and is based on an annual fee."
"There is no OS licensing cost if you use their hardware and purchase hardware maintenance."
"It is more expensive, but very complete and worth enacting."
"The product is inexpensive."
"Solaris is highly priced compared to other solutions, but since it's a niche product, this is to be expected."
"The annual license cost is fair and reasonable."
"Its licensing is on a yearly basis."
"The pricing is a bit on the expensive side, mainly because of the support they provide. However, it is quite affordable if you are an organization. If, as a small company or individual, this is an expensive option, I would recommend CentOS, which is an exact replica of RHEL, minus the customer support."
"That has been mostly handled by Red Hat. As we are a Red Hat shop, we have a lot of people around that already."
"We purchased the Red Hat Enterprise Linux license via Azure and the vendor."
"It is not fairly priced. If they can reduce the price, it would be nice."
"Pricing is something that needs to be worked out with the vendor. The more you have, the less you pay. That is the model nowadays in IT, but it is very cost-effective. You get what you pay for."
"The price point for that is phenomenal because you are paying for support. From a pricing perspective, it is on point. It is definitely a value-add, and it is extremely transparent from a customer standpoint."
"Our client has a direct subscription to Red Hat."
"Operating in the cloud space, we typically point our customers to pay-as-you-go licensing, which comes through the various cloud providers repository services."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Operating Systems (OS) for Business solutions are best for your needs.
839,319 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user281973 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 24, 2017
It's improved our company's system environments that run Oracle databases.
Red Hat is mission critical to our environment Red Hat has improved the mission critical environments running Oracle databases, while CentOS has improved our web environment and MySQL. Oracle and SAP Environment and all HPC environments. 10 years No issues Very stable i don´t find any problem…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Oracle Linux compare with Solaris?
When comparing Oracle Linux and Solaris, I believe that Linux is more secure and more flexible. It is also very suitable for enterprises that are already Oracle solution users. I found Linux to be ...
What do you like most about Oracle Solaris?
We use the solution as an internal operating system.
Which would you choose - RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) or CentOS?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is fantastic. It is an inexpensive solution that has excellent security, performance, and stability, and also lots of features. I specifically like that the solution has fe...
What do you like most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?
It is open source. We can customize it as per our requirements.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?
Red Hat could gain a competitive advantage in the Asia Pacific region by adjusting its pricing strategy. Lowering the cost of enterprise-level offerings could attract organizations seeking operatin...
 

Also Known As

Solaris 11, Solaris
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Siemens, IVV
Travel Channel, Mohawk Industries, Hilti, Molecular Health, Exolgan, Hotelplan Group, Emory University, BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina, HCA Healthcare, Paychex, UPS, Intermountain Healthcare, Brinker International, TransUnion, Union Bank, CA Technologies
Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle Solaris vs. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
839,319 professionals have used our research since 2012.