Oracle Linux Reviews

I primarily use the solution for running personal and business applications. 

The performance is good and the solution has been stable. 

The interface is user-friendly.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. 

The solution could be less costly.

I've been using the solution for quite some time. It's been a few years at this point. 

The solution has been stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. The performance is good and it's a reliable product.

We have roughly less than 50 people using the solution in our organization.

I've used technical support in the past. There's not much to say. The support has been fine. 

We did not use a different solution. We've been using the product for many years at this point. 

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It's not overly complex or difficult. 

I was able to handle the implementation process on my own. I did not need outside assistance. 

We would prefer it if the licensing costs were lowered. 

We pay a yearly licensing fee.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. The product has been very reliable for me over the years. It has good capabilities. 

Would recommend the solution to other users and organizations.

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.

I use this solution for developing applications and APIs for our platform.

There needs to be overall better integration.

I have been using this solution for approximately 20 years.

I have found the solution to be stable.

The solution is scalable.

We have approximately 25 users using this solution in my organization.

We use vendor support and it is good.

I use Windows systems as well as this soltuion.

The installation is straightforward.

We used integrators to help us implement the solution into our systems. 

We have six engineers that do the maintenance of this solution.

The licensing cost is expensive. It should be reduced by at least half.

I recommend this solution to others.

I rate Oracle Linux an eight out of ten.

I am using the solution for a project that I am trying to migrate it to the cloud. My experience with the cloud is at the beginners level. I haven't tested the solution very much yet but according to the published documentation, opinions etc., I see that Oracle Linux is the closest to my needs for future migration to the cloud.

Once installed, the product is good, I like it. The core of the software is really good.

The installation documentation needs to be improved, especially the current installation guide. For example it states that it is needed to format and to store the installation ISO on a DVD, but this is not possible to do in 8.0+ versions, as the ISO files are 7-9GB - greater than 4GB and the regular DVDs do not support it. The actual 8.3 version ISO cannot be put on USB either, as a file  as the setup requires the 9GB ISO also as a file, but this imposes the use of exFAT instead of FAT32, which is not supported by the system boot. Therefore I installed 8.1 from USB, which went just fine and upgraded to 8.3 afterwards with YUM.

My network card is supported by 5.3 kernel (UEK), but not supported by the 4.x RedHat kernel used too, which I had to realize by chance. My video and network cards are not completely supported in the 8.1-8.3 versions, better compatibility with up-to-date hardware is needed. When looking for compatible drivers, there was no clear statement which drivers are supported. Better directions are needed regarding hardware drivers and how to obtain them.

From my experience with Oracle, I completely rely on its documentation and its presence, completeness and reliability was one of the reasons to choose Oracle Linux. The documentation I see worked for 8.1 or 8.2 setups, but not for 8.3. It needs update - Oracle Linux  8.3 changed the installation procedure and doesn't match the documentation. My experience with Oracle is that what is written in the documentation just works. This time it did not help.

The ability to update the look-and-feel of the Desktop UI would be beneficial - the current one is pale to my taste, it is black, grey and white.

They could provide more repositories of tested software, or at least refer to them and comment on their use.

I have been using the solution for less than two weeks.

The solution is stable.

I used CentOS for an year and a half. Now I had the chance to choose my OS considering my plans for cloud development and also the resent concerns about the future support of CentOS, I chose Oracle Linux 8.3

In the 8.1 version, the setup works fine but it is when trying to install from an USB instead of DVD as it is written in the documentation. There were issues with the 8.3 installation - see above.

The installation of version 8.1, however, was good and worked fine. Some my attempts to install compatible drivers for my hardware failed and I had to reinstall the whole OS. The third time doing the install, it only took me one hour, it was easy. I achieved some compromise between up to date video (nouveau instead of Nvidia) and wifi (iwlwifi of Intel) drives and the system now works really fine.

I decided based on my experience with CentOS, Ubuntu, Kali Linux.

I rate Oracle Linux an eight out of ten.

I am not an Oracle expert, I'm a database expert. From my standpoint, Oracle Linux is more compatible with the latest open-source software than other operating systems like Ubuntu Linux and CentOS Linux. I have faced a lot of challenges with different operating systems but it turns out that other database packages are not very compatible with different operating systems. They are not very compatible with Arch and Ubuntu Linux; however, Oracle Linux is highly compatible with all of the open-source projects.

I wouldn't say that we had many major challenges with Oracle Linux. I can't say it's the most advanced operating system, but I can definitely say that they patch regularly. We didn't have major challenges with Oracle Linux, to be honest.

I have been using Oracle Linux for more than five years.

I don't think that we had any kind of stability issues. Most of the time, if I remember correctly, we worked with Oracle Linux when it was a part of the private cloud. By private cloud, I mean it was in VM. Being in VM with limited resources, sometimes the software packages would crash, but I don't recall the operating system ever crashing. The issues we experienced were due to the software and filter packages, not the operating system.

Oracle tech support is pretty well organized. They have a long history of offering support for their Oracle packages. It doesn't matter if it's an Oracle database, an Oracle operating system; they give support 24/7, covering every time zone. They have multiple experts available for every issue you could experience. They can always be reached no matter what. They are very well organized with their support.

Oracle Linux is very easy to set up.

Oracle Linux is very much compatible with other platforms. Installing VMs is very easy. If you are installing on a hard metal server, it's still very easy. I installed Oracle Linux myself, I didn't have major challenges with it.

Nowadays, Oracle is very open toward price negotiation; they negotiate well with their clients. 

If you're interested in Oracle Linux, make sure you know the infrastructure of where it's going inside and out. You have to have a clear idea of where exactly your organization is heading in the future, whether private cloud or public cloud. These decisions are not made in seconds, minutes, or even days or weeks. But you have to have a clear idea. For example, if a company wants to use Oracle Linux and they think after two or three years they might be in a hybrid cloud, or maybe a public cloud, they had to make sure they aren't too dependent on the operating system. Whatever software packages they are using should be very compatible with the existing infrastructure like a hybrid or a public cloud.

Picture two containers that are very much independent: you can implement Containerization in Oracle Linux and the same containers can and will work well in both a private cloud or a public cloud infrastructure.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Oracle Linux a rating of eight.

Because nothing is perfect, I wouldn't give any operating system or any other software packages a rating of 10. They have bugs sometimes. For some extra points, they should keep aligned with the ope-source community. Oracle is very loyal to their own customers. If a client is experiencing an issue, they will work with them until it is fully resolved. But what about the open-source community? I think they should also pay more attention to the open-source community. 

I value Oracle's commercial vetting of enterprise-grade Linux. I value the enterprise grade repo which has all the functionalities of what Red Hat offers -- but Red Hat wants to charge a fortune for self-sufficient end users like me who do not require support and who are qualified and capable of supporting themselves. Oracle does not do this and they value that I have an interest in their products and do not charge me an arm and a leg to build my professional knowledge of any of their products. 

This serves to benefit Oracle in that they are growing the knowledge base. Indeed, it is an ever expanding knowledge base, and with a larger knowledge base comes a larger customer base for them. They understand the needs of engineers who want to grow their skillset around Oracle product offerings as they know and understand, that it is people like me, who are down in the trenches of doing the actual work, that Oracle uses as a reference base for making inroads into a solid customer base.

Another thing that I value is that Oracle has a repo pre-installer entry that is explicitly for Oracle Database, and when installing the database on Oracle Linux, I'm able to simply install the 11g or 12c pre-install settings, and this provides the optimal Oracle Linux configuration to run an Oracle Database server. I really love this enhancement from Oracle in their Linux, on behalf of 11g and 12c database servers.

I have a beef with the installer (Anaconda / Kickstart) on occasion, especially between versions. What I find sometimes is that it has bugs and doesn't work. I have to burn up a lot of time in trying to craft workarounds and getting it to work. It doesn't happen all of the time, but the last couple of versions (7.0, 7.1, 7.2) had some nasty issues where the installer would just simply crash and burn. It's fine as long as the buggy version isn't your only version of choice, in which case, you would be up the creek without a paddle. Oracle need to make sure that their bare-metal installers work, as I don't want to have to debug their code for them.

We could, at some point, benefit from an enterprise-grade Linux solution without paying huge support fees to Red Hat. Besides, Oracle would already have a ready-made investment in people like me for getting Oracle Linux into their existing enterprise customer base. Simply by making it painless for people like me to learn how their stuff work as opposed to Microsoft and RedHat. They want to charge a fortune for the 'privilege' to be taught by them. They don't do this because they already know what I am doing and they are not going to force me to cough up thousands of dollars to learn how their stuff works. They have demonstrated that they are quite confident in their OTN users abilities to learn about their products simply by reading what Oracle has documented and what they have shared about their products. They have given us credit that we are all professionals and that we 'should' all know how to read, write and count to 10.

Now what I don't want to hear from Oracle is "oh, that's what we got from the master source tree from Fedora (or whoever they rely on)." So, I don't care if bugs fell in their lap - don't send those bugs out into the field. I really couldn't care less whose fault it is I just want them to fix it! And if they can't fix it, don't upset the customer by sending out software that they know good and well has issues in it and hope that no one notice. I notice and it only serves to upset us. Oracle needs to keep in mind that although I am an OTN user on their network I am also working with one of their largest customers in their customer base. Oracle doesn't need to forget this fact or take it for granted that I don't work for anyone important so, they need to simply handle all of their OTN users as if each one of us works for a very important customer of theirs.

I am using Oracle Linux for databases.

Oracle Linux's most valuable feature is flexibility.

Oracle Linux could improve by having better compatibility with other solutions. Some aspects of the configuration are difficult. I was using Oracle Linux on a Mac computer and it was very difficult to set up.

I have been using Oracle Linux for approximately five years.

I have found Oracle Linux to be stable. I'm not receiving any issues when I use it, when I connect it to the other parts with the setup, it has been stable.

Oracle Linux has good scalability.

The technical support is good. Whenever I'm having an issue that cannot be resolved, I get in contact with Oracle and then they resolve it fast.

The price of Oracle Linux could be less expensive for those who are running a small freelance company, such as I do. We use the solution fully but the income that you're receiving is slow.

I would advise others that are interested in implementing this solution to try it out. However, they need to know what they are doing first because if you don't know the solution well, you will not be able to implement it properly, and that will not yield correct results.

I rate Oracle Linux an eight out of ten.

The most valuable feature is the binary compatibility i.e. that Oracle Linux is 100% compatible with Red Hat Linux. In addition, Oracle Linux uses fewer resources than Red Hat, so the maximum resources are available to applications.

In the next release, I would like for Autonomous Linux to be available to all users so that the OS administration can be automated.

I've been using this solution for over twelve years.

Previously I worked with Red Hat Linux.

I would give this product a rating of ten out of ten.