Oracle Linux Reviews

We use Oracle Linux for Virtualization Platform, DNS Servers, Database Servers and IT infrastructure observability tools

Orlacle Linux has provided a redhat compatible open source OS for diverse needs. We smoothly run on Oracle OS; KVM virtualization environment, Postgesql databases, Zabbix, Grafana, Fluentd and other observability tools. We have seen a remarkable improvement as DNS queries are fast and the platforms can be easily secured with no worries of security issues arising due to unpatched systems.

There is full compatibility with RedHat-based operating systems, in particular Centos, which we widely deployed before Oracle Linux (OL).

For usability, the GUI options during the initial setup could be included with advanced OS tuning and optimization, currently as with most Linux systems that can be done via  CLI.

We have been using Oracle Linux for more than three years

Very stable

Very scalable, especially with available support options

Haven't used the customer service and support

Positive

Centos, migrated after Centos switches to Centos Stream

Straightforward setup, used the free option

Implemented in-house

100%

It's an open source OS freerly available. Support subscription is paid

Yes, Rocky Linux, Alma Linux and OpenSuse

A pretty stable and secure operating system that perfectly serve as an alternative to Centos OS.

The tool’s password policies help us to create users and groups. We can also plan on the access that will be given to them. I use it for identity management during the installment and configuration process. We use it to start or stop processes and services. Another use case of the solution is post-opening.

The tool’s user interface needs to improve.

I have been using the solution for around seven to six years.

The tool’s stability depends on the system. The operating system’s stability is good. 

We have around 800 server systems. Our company has about 400 users of Linux. We plan to increase the usage.

The tool’s setup is straightforward. The installation is not complex, we can do it on our own. My team installed the product through the Command Line and GNU. The installation takes around two hours to complete. We completed two sets of operating systems. The tool’s installation depends on the target components. The access management part takes around one week to complete. We have around eight technical staff for the product.

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use this solution to create some scripts, and push, start, and stop our product.

It is a good solution, and the performance is good.

It has a very good operating system, and if anyone wants a secure one, Oracle Linux is a good choice.

Features related to use, feel, and user experience could be improved. It could also have a more user-friendly interface.

We have been using this solution for the past 15 years and are using the latest version.

The stability is very good.

It is a scalable solution.

The technical support is good, and we use the support sometimes. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward. We did not need an integrator for deployment and completed it ourselves. I rate the setup an eight out of ten.

I rate this solution a nine out of ten, and I would recommend this solution to others.

Oracle Linux is basically Red Hat. It's the same. Oracle took the CentOS project, which is Red Hat, and made its own enhancements. They added something they call 3DBear, which is their proprietary technology. They call it the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK).

Oracle took Red Hat, stripped a lot of the software that was not needed for Oracle, which made Red Hat much smaller. They optimized the UEK for their Oracle database applications.

A customer who is planning to have an Oracle database and is looking to see whether to choose to go with Oracle Linux or SUSE Linux or Red Hat, the best option for them would be to go with Oracle Linux because it's the same vendor.

Oracle Linux for Oracle databases is the top. There's no doubt whatsoever. However, if you are going to use it for anything else it's going to be a mess, because many packages will not be supported by Oracle.

For example, I was helping an organization back up various Oracle Linux servers using various kernel versions and various distribution versions. The software that I used for backup requires some packages to be pre-installed into the Oracle Linux machine from the distribution itself, but one of the packages was not available from the Oracle repositories. Because it's a Linux machine, I can manually download this package and install it myself. But the problem with that is that Oracle will void the whole warranty if I install a package from a third-party repository.

If you are going to use Oracle Linux for anything other than running Oracle databases, you will most definitely run into a bottleneck situation in which some packages that are needed, you will not be able to download. And, if you download and install them, you will void your contract, which nullifies the point of you getting Oracle Linux in the first place.

Oracle Linux has a particular use case, not like SUSE, or like Red Hat. 

With SUSE, and Red Hat, you can use them for almost any use case, and you can even install Oracle inside both of them, but you can't do the same with Oracle Linux. 

Oracle Linux is built for Oracle databases. It doesn't make sense for me to get Oracle Linux and install the MySQL database. Even though MySQL is an Oracle product, it doesn't make sense. If I am not going to using Oracle databases then I shouldn't go with Oracle Linux.

Oracle Linux needs to support more packages. I understand that they stripped down CentOS and Red Hat, but Oracle is an organization that will be paying the price of Red Hat making CentOS, CentOS-3 as well.

I understand the idea of making the Linux distribution just optimized for their Oracle database, but I'm not going to get Oracle Linux because it works well only with Oracle products. 

I will most likely have a diverse infrastructure. So instead of going with Oracle Linux, I will go with SUSE Linux or Red Hat. Why? Because Red Hat, for example, has support for many, many packages. Instead of me going to get Oracle Linux for the Oracle database and Red Hat for the remaining workloads, why not get Red Hat from the beginning.

I have been using Oracle Linux for two years. It is still pretty new to me.

I have used Oracle Linux versions 6, 7, and 8.

Oracle Linux is a stable solution. 

When you take Red Hat and strip several applications off of it and optimize it to work with Oracle databases, Oracle Linux is the most stable Linux.

Technical support was great. I didn't deal with them directly. When I had an issue, I was interacting with a team who was administering the Oracle Linux environment, and when we ran into hiccups and we needed support from Oracle, they would initiate a ticket, and Oracle would respond and would provide support.

The installation is comparable to Red Hat, and CentOS. It's not difficult.

In terms of the configuration, it won't take more than 30 minutes to install. 

However, because it's an Oracle Linux, there are Oracle databases involved, which means there are steering committees. There will be complications in the implementation that are not related to the actual installation of the product itself. This will delay it by several days.

In general, I would not recommend this solution, but if you are going to be running Oracle databases, then yes, I would recommend Oracle Linux.

If you are going to be running Oracle-based solutions, or if your data center mainly is controlled by the Oracle Corporation then yes Oracle Linux would be the best choice.

You shouldn't go with Oracle Linux if you're not going to be using Oracle products.

As I am not particularly interested in Oracle, I would rate Oracle Linux a seven out of ten. If however, I was, then I would rate it a ten out of ten.

We are using it as a DNS server.

We also have Oracle Vault and Oracle Fire installed on it. We are planning to use it as a model system, for learning.

The most valuable feature is its stability. I adore the stability.

It is easy to use. The patching, connectivity, and storage are all good.

The iSCSI support is helpful.

This product is very secure by default. You should be able to use everything that you want to use. If you need to employ any service then you should enable the security for it.

The user interface is comfortable and easy to use.

The GUI could be made more attractive.

I have been using Oracle Linux for three years.

it is very stable.

Oracle Linux is not really scalable.

We have two or three direct users, on top of 1,050 who use it indirectly.

We do not use any technical support.

We have also used Red Hat Linux, although we stopped using it about three years ago.

The initial setup is straightforward. It takes maybe two days to complete. the first day is for installation and preparation, and another day is required for patching. It takes a long time to complete patching and updates.

I deployed it myself. Only one administrator is required for deployment and maintenance.

This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge.

There are many different flavors of Linux but I haven't gone deep enough in them to compare them all.

Oracle Linux is a product that I recommend.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The operating system is tweaked to work well with Oracle DB and other Oracle applications. Some kernel parameters have already been adjusted to suit Oracle products.

Ksplice is a cool feature with Oracle Linux that allows you to patch your systems without reboot.

The DTrace tool is available for debugging issues. If you’re a Solaris professional, you might be used to it and it’s always handy.

The Oracle Cluster File System (OCFS2) works well with OVM and other cluster scenarios.

All these features come with the Oracle Linux UEK kernel, however a Red Hat supported kernel is also available. It always feels good to have a choice.

I think it’s fair to compare this product to Red Hat Linux and although both OSs almost have same features, Oracle Linux is cost effective.

You can expect it to work well with Oracle products like OVM and Oracle OpenStack. I have been using it on physical boxes, VMware vSphere and Oracle Virtualization for x86.

As someone who has also worked with service based companies, I would say the choice of using Oracle Linux will depend on the environment.

Oracle environment: If you plan to run mostly Oracle products in your environment, then Oracle Linux is a good choice since you don’t have to run behind multiple vendors for troubleshooting. It also gives you a chance to convince Oracle to throw in some discounts.

Cost: If cost is a big factor in your environment, you could save some money by going for Oracle Linux support.

Availability: Linux has seen increases in security patches and most of these kernel patches require reboot. The Ksplice feature comes in handy if your environment can’t afford any downtime.

Despite these cool features, the choice would depend on over all IT goals and is mostly driven by two factors: how your environment is setup and how you plan to support your IT infrastructure.

The product is not very different from the market leader Red Hat Linux Operating System.

However, it has some issues when run in a virtualized environment. These NTP and other bugs get worse with the kind of support Oracle provides for Oracle Linux. Oracle support drags out issues and they like to play ping-pong between various teams.

I faced few issues with time sync on Oracle Linux when running on OVM & I had a tough time resolving it with Oracle support.
They could not provide any proper solution & dragged out the issue for a very long time.

I have been using Oracle Linux for over three years.

The operating system is fairly stable.

We have not had any scalability issues.

I rate them at 2.5/5. This is a big area of improvement for this product. Even the knowledge base isn’t as good as Red Hat’s.

I have used both OL5 and OL6. The choice depends on the application running on the OS.

Setup is not different from other OSs in the market.

You can certainly save money on support.

I have worked with other Linux distributions like Ubuntu and CentOS. I have also worked with Oracle Solaris, HPUX, and AIX.

Make sure you have good Linux support staff.

It is nice that it's ready made for deployment in OVM (Oracle VM for x86) with templates.

But, there's only some/limited vendor support when running on Oracle-branded hardware. There's no other reason I can think of to use Oracle Linux over any other Linux. If it were completely up to me, I'd be running the latest LTS version of Ubuntu Server.

We're able to deploy easily with the read-made templates for OVM.

From a product perspective, there needs to be more rapid upstreaming of security fixes released by Red Hat or Fedora.

Free vendor support? There's not much really. And Oracle Linux is feature-poor compared to other Linux distributions, and they're much slower than Red Hat, CentOS, or Amazon to release security patches and bug fixes

I've used it for five years or longer. I've also worked extensively with Solaris, OEL (5 and 6) and OVM for X86 and OVM for SPARC (LDOMs). I'd still recommend Solaris, but not OEL. I haven't used OEL for 9 months since leaving my previous job. Where I work now we use exclusively Debian Linux 7.x Stable, with a view to migrating our cloud platforms to Debian Jessie Stable.

There were vulnerabilities during deployment due to extended lead-time releasing security fixes (e.g. shellshock).

We have had no issues with the stability.

We have had no issues scaling it for our needs.

The technical support was average, and support for other Oracle products (e.g. Solaris) deteriorated substantially after Oracle bought Sun Microsystems. I do not like Oracle's support model one bit, and I loathe having to use WebMethods, which looks and feels and behaves like something from the 1990's.

If I had to use an RPM-based distribution, I'd rather use CentOS or Amazon Linux.

The initial setup with the ready-made templates was nice.

We performed the deployment with our in-house team only. The only assistance from Oracle has been with Oracle hardware issues in OVM for x86, and installation of Oracle applications on OEL.

I'd only use it if I was forced to use Oracle x86 hardware. I'd opt for something else given the freedom to do so. OEL seems confining, restricted, and primitive.

Just don't do it, unless you're locked in by your vendor, or hardware, or project manager.

I use it for security on our servers.

Security is the most valuable feature.

The configuration with Oracle database and Oracle Center databases is easy.

The documentation has room for improvement. We have difficulty searching through it for specific information. 

The scalability has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for one year.

I give the stability an eight out of ten. Some of the setups are not supported by Oracle Linux.

The solution is not very scalable. There is not a lot of documentation around scaling.

The initial setup is complex compared to Windows. We have to install Oracle Linux on our on-prem server.

I give the solution a seven out of ten.

There were around four people using the solution.

I would not recommend Oracle Linux.