Oracle Linux Reviews

We use the product in a development environment for development purposes only.

As a developer, I interact mostly with the product's shell. I'm experienced in programming in shell.

Oracle Linux in a VirtualBox provides a good, stable development environment without needing patches and with no hanging.  

The graphical interface is fine. And the documentation is extremely valuable. 

The Oracle Linux graphical interface could be improved by fixing its occasional freezing on personal home laptops. The Oracle Linux development environment in VirtualBox never freezes.

The service could also be improved if the cost of Oracle support was not so expensive.

We've been using the product for more than a year.

The solution is stable.

I have a free version of the product without support. So far, all the answers I've needed were in the extensive Oracle documentation.

Positive

Our previous development environment used to crash in the virtual machine; it was slower, not well integrated with Oracle VM Box, and the support was poor.

Before that, we used Windows 7, which crashed twice, forcing us to start everything from scratch. This is why we switched to Linux.

The initial setup was straightforward, and deployment took less than an hour.

We use the product as a virtual machine in a development environment for development purposes only. We still do not use Oracle Cloud. The company is oriented towards Amazon Web Services, but on Oracle Linux, we are playing with Kubernetes and Docker.

I don't use the Oracle Linux administrative dashboard.

The product is stable and up to date. The Linux command prompt is always the same. I just fit it, and it suits my needs. That's why I would recommend it.

I would rate Oracle Linux a nine out of ten.

Starting with Oracle Linux 5, we’ve started to use ext4, which has provided us better disk performance. The unbreakable kernel has been very secure and has provided us a robust OS that has outperformed many of its counterparts. Starting with Oracle Linux 6, we’ve used LXC containers to lock down applications within the OS. We’ve been extremely happy with the scalability and performance of each version across a multitude of platforms.

The reliability of the product has increased our efficiency. With needing 99.98% uptime, the OS has been incredibly stable. In the 10 years I’ve been using the product, I’ve had to open zero product defects as it has functioned in every way we needed it to.

With many other operating systems, including this one, I would love to have the ability to upgrade the kernel in place. This currently requires a reboot of the OS. With today’s applications and customer needs, having the ability to perform in-place kernel upgrades with no reboots would be huge.

There are some capabilities with Oracle linux to do this, but it is not widely used. KSPLICE can be utilized but there are many features of it such as stack tracing after the fact you may not get what you need and a reboot would still be required. Starting with version 6 you can utilize KSPLICE. Most customers especially hours are hesitant to use such methods like KSPLICE. It does require a higher kernel version (4.x) and many many applications have not yet been supported on that kernel rev that myself and company support.

There is a product you can purchase from cloudlinux called kernelcare. It works well and has fewer nuances. Worth a look for POC at a minimum for any critical business applications. Much like KSPLICE, kernelcare will only work with Oracle linux 6+.

I’ve been using these versions starting with Linux 5 from Oracle since 2007.

We have not had any issues related to stability of the OS. Application-related issues have caused the downtime.

No problems at all with scalability. We’ve been able to extend clusters without issue.

Since I’ve not had to use technical support, I am unable to rate it.

We used to use RedHat. Support costs drived us to switch. We’ve saved thousands of dollars.

Setup is all straightforward; however, we utilize very complex installations. We use a variety of tools to speed up the acquirement of software, deployment of systems, patching, backup and recovery. We believe in segregation and following NIST/IRS/DOD standards in all of our builds. Straightforward is nice, but to protect our customers, we go the extra mile.

With everything from hardware to software, we recommend to analyze all options. Not every customer or application will fit the bill for the Oracle Linux OS products.

We evaluated a few other OS providers. Those include RedHat, CentOS, Debian and openSUSE.

Read the documentation, follow best practices and if you do not have standards in place, follow up on NIST/IRS standards for OS configurations to protect yourself and your client.

I think one of the most valuable features, I can see is Enterprise Linux. and it has been universally supported. There are some enterprise features which Oracxle added, which I don't see in any other Linux. So we recommend it to a lot of our large customers who are running their mission critical applications on Linux.

I think one of the biggest criteria I see is that customers don't have to have any downtime if they have to do patching. Patching is important because customers are running their critical applications, but there is nothing called "planned down-time" for patching. You can literally run your mission critical application, keep on doing patching in the background and I think that's the biggest feature Oracle Linux has which I don't find anywhere else. 

One of the major benefits I have seen is that a lot of customers have unsupported Linux in their datacenters. With Oracle Linux, you have the chance to standardize entirely on one Linux platform. 

The second thing is that if you're running a lot of Oracle workloads on Oracle Linux, you get universal support, you get support 24/7 from the same company -  right from your operating system to the application - and it has enterprise features. I think these are major advantages.

They added a lot of features on Oracle Linux. As a consulting company, and as somebody who's working with customers, obviously the demands from the customers are plenty.

I think they should market it more aggressively now because a lot of people think, "If I have to move from Red Hat Linux to Oracle Linux, it's a migration," when it is not. I call it a movement. You literally can move your large Red Hat Linux to Oracle Linux very simply, there's no migration involved in that. I think they should market these features more aggressively.

One of the things which customers have been asking about is what are the security features that Oracle is going to add. We do a lot of OS hardening, Linux hardening for customers, but I think there should be some tools within Linux where the hardening can be done pretty fast. Now, in this open world Larry Ellison announced, autonomous and self-secured databases, I'm sure those features will come to Linux, and we're looking forward to that.

Linux is an extremely stable platform. You implement it and you can forget it. On top of it, Oracle has added a lot of features which has made it extremely stable. We have been doing this since 2003, I have not faced any major outage at any of my customers or of any mission critical application on Oracle Linux.

The fundamental approach Oracle took in early 2000 is horizontal scaling, and Linux became an extremely important part for the horizontal scaling. We have seen large implementations on Oracle Linux which have been scaled horizontally. 

I think if a customer needs to look into a larger customer, they should look at Oracle. Oracle, themselves, must be the largest user of Oracle. The entire Oracle cloud now works on Oracle Linux so you have thousands of customers running their applications on Oracle Linux. Extremely scalable.

You have to see support from a different angle. Definitely support is good because Oracle is known for that, providing 24/7 support. But the biggest advantage you get here is that, because it's one company supporting you over the entire platform, you can actually get help from them to identify the problem, whether the problem is at the Linux level or the problem is at the database level. You don't get that when you have Linux with some different vendor and the database from a different vendor. We have not faced any problems.

We use this solution internally to develop our systems.

Our developers work in another section to develop the data center. We provide services to the developers and other business units.

It's a good product, and the areas to improve are quite limited.

The good thing about Oracle Linux is that it's free, as long as you don't want support. If you want the support you have to pay for it.

They don't provide updates.

It could be more secure. They should increase security.

Also, the scalability should be improved.

In the next release, I would like to see it more secure and more usable to adapt to the new technologies that are coming up.

I have been using this solution for two years.

We are using the latest version. We are always updating.

It's a very stable product.

It's a scalable solution. It's basic Linux clustering and high availability. We have approximately 20 users in our organization.

Their support is quite good.

We are satisfied with technical support. There is no need to be improved. There is no need to be faster, more knowledgeable, or customer friendly.

We also use SUSE Linux, Ubuntu Linux, CentOS, and Red Hat Linux.

The installation is quite straightforward.

It takes about an hour to install.

We need a team of two people who concentrate on Oracle Linux.

I am able to complete the installation myself.

Oracle Linux is free, you only pay for support.

If you don't want support you can fully pay for the enterprise solution.

It's cheaper than RedHat. Oracle support is a bit cheaper than Red Hat's support.

Oracle Linux is very cheap at this time. 

I would recommend this solution to others.

I would rate Oracle Linux and eight out of ten.

Fujitsu's Oracle/Intel platform has been specifically designed with Oracle in mind using Oracle VM, Oracle Linux, for our customers wanting to use Oracle product, applications, databases. We've designed it in a way that we get the best possible performance from the applications and databases on our engineered system.

What it's allowed us to do, initially, it allowed us to develop an Intel platform specifically for Oracle. What's most important for us, where it comes across is the licensing. It's very difficult - sometimes you can build a platform that is optimal, but when you apply Oracle licenses across that platform, it isn't the most economical. All of our Intel platform for this has been optimized towards which Oracle solutions are going to be running on it, to get both the best performance but also that will be economical for our customers.

Because it's specifically built for Oracle, with Oracle applications and solutions in mind, we have standard pricing, a standard way of working, a standard cost for each organization. That allows us to save time, on both bid and, once new requirements come along for each organization, we know exactly what it takes to add to that solution, to add to that platform. The saving for us is, we can feed back quickly to grow, respond to new requirements.

With Oracle Linux Ksplice specifically, we have organizations looking for minimum downtime. We're able to apply hot-patching at any time; once we've proven they're tested, ready to go, we don't need to take downtime to apply them.

We have a shared services platform with multiple organizations set on it. So planning downtime across all those organizations becomes more and more difficult. The more organizations we get onto the platform, the less "white space" is available. Ksplice allows us to do hot-patching without the downtime. That, for us, is quite key.

Also, the virtualization, Oracle VM, allows us to get the best performance for our Oracle applications and database solutions. We know it's proven to be more performant with Oracle applications, so we get the best performance out of it on our platform.

What we found in moving from Oracle Linux 6 to Oracle Linux 7 was the whole interfacing with the application and the fact that operating had all changed, all the commands had changed. You need to be aware that there is some kind of training, some kind of handover required for your technical guys, understanding different ways of interacting with it. Bear that in mind.

What we experienced is, the stability is key. What we can't take into account with customers is how they're going to want to use the platform, once we've installed it, once we've got different solutions running on that platform.

We have a use case of a shared platform where we have one large organization set on our Intel platform. The virtualization then allows us to grow out for when we get more and more organizations on.

We've just added another huge organization, DHL, they are now set on that shared platform along with another organization. That hasn't impacted it in the least. We are able to scale out and scale with that organization. That organization itself, that specific program, could grow and grow. So it allows us that flexibility to grow that whichever way. If that organization's business case grows and becomes bigger and bigger, the platform can scale out to that.

It also allows us to add in more organizations on the same platform with one overview of managing. For us, as an organization we can manage it from a single point with multiple organizations using it, with no impact on each other.

We don't have any problems with Oracle technical support. Our guys can normally resolve most of the issues themselves, but where we do require further help, we have direct contact with Oracle, and the turnaround is what we'd expect.

There is a gap for the type of Intel platform we're now providing, from an Oracle perspective. For a lot of the platforms we have our own cloud at Fujitsu, our K5, which is not geared towards Oracle specifically, because of the licensing implications. So we knew there was a requirement for a quick, economical, engineered system, so that the customers can either sit in their own datacenters or we'll place it in our datacenters and manage the service that way.

With Oracle VM and Oracle Linux, it then allows us to scale up, scale out as and when the customers want, their requirements grow, their enterprises grow. Or the requirements change over time; it could be an easy path for them to move from on-premise to cloud, or they may want to bring the cloud, themselves, on-premise.

It's the perfect step for them, if they're not quite ready to move to the cloud - they might never want to go to the cloud, but they want to control security, data, data integrity. All the features they're after as an organization - they may want to go one way, they may not want to go the other way. This fits that platform at that point.

For us to work with any vendor, it's the support and ongoing roadmap with that vendor. We need to understand where it's going, where it's going to end up in the next one to two years, as well as then three to four years. We also need to be able to work closely with them to almost guide that roadmap from our experience, and be able to have input into it as well. That is key with any partner and vendor.

The key for us with our engineered systems is specifically how quick and easy it is to "plug in and play," with a solution. We got the platform in place within a couple of weeks and then another week or so to get everything up and running with the virtualizations, and then the Oracle Linux with all the solutions and applications on top of that.

End-to-end it will take us three to five weeks, depending on the install.

We use our in house expertise at Fujitsu.

As per above, pay attention to how Oracle license their products and make sure you are clear as to the implications of choosing products which can have a significant impact on license cost and supportability. 

We were driven to some part by how the cost of licensing of Oracle databases and needed to ensure the most cost effective way to do this, so really OVM was the only option for us .

I am the Oracle practice CTO. I work for Fujitsu. We cover all the aspects of IT, for enterprise, for infrastructure, through to applications and managed services. I work for the Business Applications Services, we cover anything around enterprise solutions, enterprise architecture, anything that will aid them in their business process. In my role at Fujitsu I oversee all of the Oracle architects, so any solution owners from infrastructure to applications, and all the bits in between. All architects and solution owners report to me.

In the context of, if you're wanting to use the Oracle workloads, absolutely, this is the way you need to go. For non-Oracle workloads, again, no problems with that at all. From Fujitsu's point of view, and where it sits on our Intel platform, this is a no-brainer. We specifically built it with Oracle in mind. Therefore, using Oracle VM and Oracle Linux was the way forward.

If that's the way you're going, if you're looking to use Oracle applications, Oracle Databases, I would definitely recommend using the OVM and Oracle Linux.

It performs perfectly for what we require it to do. There are, obviously, certain issues that have been highlighted in the next version. That's not the product itself, that's just the usability of it. We would rate the Oracle OVM, the Oracle Linux, eight to nine out of 10.

As a DBA, I prefer Oracle Linux as it is fine tuned to run Oracle databases. I can easily install pre-requisite packages using pre-install rpms. ASMLib is pre-installed with Oracle Linux.

Most of the patches are publicly available and free via public repositories. Any application that is certified in Red Hat Enterprise Linux is certified in Oracle Linux by default, as they both share the same source code.

Desktop environments should be designed better. Red Hat Enterprise Linux's desktop environments are much better.

I have been using Oracle Linux for 3.5 years.

We have never had stability issues.

We have not had scalability issues.

Technical support gets 3.5/5.

I was using AIX, Solaris, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The main reason for switching was that Oracle Linux is much cheaper compared to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Setup was straightforward.

Oracle Linux itself is free. But, if you need support, you need to purchase a support license. Following is the price range:

• US$500 for a 2-socket server.
• US$1600 for unlimited number of CPUs in a machine.

I have worked on AIX, Solaris, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The UEK kernel is optimized for Oracle databases, Oracle applications, and Oracle engineered systems. So, go for it.

Currently, I see that everyone is looking into Linux. People are migrating to Linux from different proprietary hardware systems, which are often more expensive than x86 systems. This is the reason for moving to Linux. 

When it comes to Linux, if I have Exadata and all Oracle Linux operating systems, these are what I deal with. Nutanix, with hardware offering software-defined storage, also helps me. For clients with unlimited licenses, the advantage of HXIT6 hardware is that the license is not a constraint, prompting them to switch.

Oracle consistently performs better, like with Oracle Solaris. Linux systems are similar, however, Oracle Linux offers an unbreakable system. Oracle has just started this from version eight, which is distinct.

Addressing room for improvement in Oracle Linux, some applications supported by other operating systems are not supported, which is a pain.

I've been working with Oracle Linux and Linux Red Hat since version five.

DP is present in all infrastructure sectors because it's open-source. Testing determines stability, as continuous Linux use and installations reveal more bugs. Unlike stable products like Solaris, open-source products are not fully tested, which is common.

It is easy to scale.

I find that Oracle is always good in customer service, but it depends on the backend. The initial support request handling is crucial. Not all support engineers at Oracle are the same, so sometimes I experience good support that resolves issues quickly, while other times, it loops. This is common. That said, overall, Oracle support is good.

When comparing Red Hat and Oracle Linux, people often focus on popularity, and both are almost the same. Mainly, I notice that the popularity varies.  The difference lies in their marketing and presentation.

One person is enough to deploy everything from infrastructure to the operating system.

Ultimately, Oracle Linux as a product rates nine out of ten. It's very easy to use. For Linux, it's nothing too complicated. Taking care of the necessary tech accounts, subscriptions align similarly. The focus is on what is used on top of Linux with the move towards database 23, which incorporates AI, testing and migration are ongoing. 

When comparing operating systems like Solaris, support for new versions is diminishing, forcing migrations to Linux, such as Oracle Linux or Red Hat, both being popular. Depending on preferences, some support Oracle Linux, while others favor Red Hat, which is more popular initially.

Oracle DB is used in one of the use cases that you have worked on, specifically for the database aspect. It is likely that all of the solutions that have been deployed and are currently running use the Oracle database.

Oracle is well-known for its strong security measures. I have a great deal of confidence in the security of the Oracle DB, including its ability to monitor changes made to the database.

The interface is good.

Pricing could be improved.

I have been working with Oracle Linux for four years.

We are not working with the latest version.

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.

Oracle is highly scalable.

In our company, we don't use it ourselves, but some of our clients have deployed it for their own use.

They have fifty users

The number of users increases as our clients open more branches in their network. As the number of branches grows, so does the number of clients and users utilizing the system.

What makes technical support easier for us is that the Oracle DB is used for the CVS that is used. Therefore, the same person who provides support for Oracle is also able to provide support for CVS, which simplifies the process for us.

At present, we are not as closely associated with Process Maker as we are with Microsoft and IBM. This is because many of our clients also use SharePoint and Office 365.

I am currently in the process of learning more about SharePoint myself. While I have some experience with the design aspect, I am trying to improve my skills and knowledge in this area through training and practice.

In the past, we used Microsoft technology, but we made the switch to Oracle due to its superior security and robustness.

The initial setup process can be challenging and not particularly straightforward, but with effort and careful reading, it can be successfully achieved.

The deployment was a team effort since it was a project being deployed for a client.

During the deployment, we had a project manager on-site who provided guidance on the steps involved in the process, particularly with regard to migrating from an Oracle environment.

The most significant challenge we encountered during the deployment was data migration from the old platform, which was an SQL version. Data cleanup was also a time-consuming issue that we faced. However, once the data had been cleaned and set up properly, the rest of the process became much easier.

We pay an annual subscription.

When it comes to budgeting, it is easier to plan for a new subscription because you can allocate a specific budget for it.

I would highly recommend this solution.

I would rate Oracle Linux a nine out of ten.