Oracle Linux Reviews

• Installing Oracle APEX for testing purposes
• Learning Oracle APEX
• Making some fancy web applications, including forms that load and display images

The main aim of installing Oracle Linux was to test it after years of using CentOS, and  to test Oracle APEX. After one year of testing,  I encountered problems that I was not able to solve: 
I was not able to do rotated backups; upgrading to a newer version of APEX was a nightmare; I could not enter GlassFish admin console; and I could not install SQL Developer. Then I thought that if I bought the cheapest version of Oracle Database I would get the support neccesary to get this know how. Two sales persons contacted me. But they were not interested in solving my doubts. Their only interest was selling me the cloud database, for the fantastic price of (more or less) 1000 euros per year. I explained to them that my alternative was a second hand PC, plus CentOS, plus Postgres, plus Eclipse.  They did not offer me a cheap version of Oracle database. I understoo the message, Oracle, both Linux and database, were not for me.

Ease of development of professional-looking web pages, full of functionality and with secure access.

I decided to purchase Oracle Database. I thought that if I bought the product, I would get support. I asked some easy questions to the sales agent who contacted me. He was more interested in selling me the cloud database than answering my questions. I learned that I am too small for Oracle. I continued with CentOS and Postgres. Google provides me with all the information I need. I could not get all the information I needed from Oracle.

I would say it is more in the "soft" part. Lots of people love Oracle Linux and it gives a lot of stability to our platforms.

It's the skill, I can leverage the skill because it's known by the majority of the people in my organization. It's not a constraint, the fact that I need resources. And it's the stability and the tuning of the system.

I would say better logging of the bugs. Recently we had an issue and it was extremely painful to find out what the issue was on our platform. Only after three weeks of deep analysis did we find out it was a bug in the kernel of Linux. Maybe something that can help to provide better information on the issue itself.

The stability I found is extremely good.

We are pretty good in planning, no issues. Every now and then we face some problem but given the fact that we have really qualified and skilled people we can solve it pretty fast, and the support is good.

It's good when you reach the people, the people with the skill that can support you. Sometimes it's difficult to find the right people and get the right attention. When you have the right people and the right attention, things go smoothly.

I would say straightforward with a little bit of complication. Complication depending, possibly, on the hardware or other stuff related to the platform where it’s running. But overall, straightforward. 

I would suggest start to get some knowledge on your own, know what it is about. Then, when you approach the expert, you know what to ask. Make a dichotomic approach, the right questions.

Basic training is always recommended. I would not go too deep in unnecessary training; do basic training and then start working on it.

I learned Linux on Red Hat, so Oracle Linux was an easy transition. When I first started using Oracle Linux, it wasn't that much different from Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but now, the differences are dramatic. It is much easier to install, configure, and run Oracle Database and Grid Infrastructure on Oracle Linux than Red Hat.

Many of the customers I work with are used to working with Oracle Database on Unix or Windows and are new to Linux. It is much easier to get a customer who is not familiar with Linux running on Oracle Linux than on most other Linux platforms because there are fewer prerequisites. For example, ASMLib is included with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK is the default kernel in Oracle Linux) and the preinstall RPMs take care of almost all of the prerequisite OS requirements.

I had some issues going from versions 5 to 6 to 7 because of the change from SysVinit to Upstart to Systemd.

Also, you wouldn't fully replace another Linux product with Oracle Linux. Although it is a full Linux distribution, Oracle Linux is formulated (especially the kernel) for Oracle software and hardware products.

I've been using it since 2010.

Deployment methods and software used for other Linux variants should have no problem provisioning Oracle Linux. In addition, Oracle Enterprise Manager has a number of features that make it much easier to deploy dozens or hundreds of Oracle Linux installations. I have found that the kernel enhancements make the OS perform better under heavy loads, especially when running Oracle Database and Enterprise Manager.

We've had no issues with stability.

We've had no issues with scalability.

Oracle Linux is free and open source, just like Red Hat, so a support contract is not required. If there are issues with the product requiring support, the answers are almost always the same as those for similar issues in Red Hat or CentOS. If you do have a support contract and access to My Oracle Support, there is a ton of information available on Linux in general and Oracle Linux specifically. I have found My Oracle Support issues involving Oracle Linux are generally resolved quicker and with less back-and-forth than issues involving the database.

I continue to use Oracle Linux, Red Hat, SUSE, Ubuntu, Debian and a number of other distributions. They all have different purposes and complimentary strengths and weaknesses. When it comes to running most Oracle products on Linux, I almost always choose Oracle Linux because of its familiarity and ease-of-use.

Setup is almost exactly the same as Red Hat, so those familiar with that distribution should have no trouble porting their knowledge to Oracle Linux. The most difficult transition I had was going from versions 5 to 6 to 7 because of the change from SysVinit to Upstart to Systemd.

Implementation of all OS's has always been through our in-house team. Once we have a repeatable build, we usually turn it over to an automated deployment tool like Puppet, Ansible, or the native Anaconda kickstart.

This probably isn't something you would replace another product with completely. Although it is a full Linux distribution, it is formulated for Oracle software and hardware products. Try it first for the Oracle database and see if you like it. Make sure to test out support as well. Oracle isn't the only vendor that will support this product, but they do have direct influence when something needs to change or troubleshoot.

Ksplice is a really cool feature. The availability is maximized because it can be patched without downtime. Oracle Linux provides free Ksplice.

Productivity has improved as it is easier to deploy and use. In particular, various open source packages can be more easily installed and managed, and systematically maintained.

Ksplice is a really cool feature. The availability is maximized because it can be patched without downtime. Oracle Linux provides free Ksplice.

I hope you have a built-in package to visualize your performance and analysis tools.

I can install and use the open-source tools, but I hope to use the proven packages.

We have not encountered any stability issues. It was very stable. Safety is at the highest level and there has never been a problem.

We have not encountered any scalability issues; scalability was also very satisfactory.

Customer Service:

Customer service is wonderful.

Technical Support:

Technical support is very skilled and stable. However, in Korea, 24-hour call service is only available in English.

I switched some of my UNIX systems to x86. As a result of the U2L project, I chose the OS as Linux.

The installation was very simple. Installation was quick and easy with a few clicks.

We used to use UNIX. And I'm using some Red Hat and CentOS. I switched some of CentOS to Oracle Linux. We do it directly. We have many engineers with various levels of experience.

• Service continuity through zero downtime and low-cost subscription

Oracle Linux is provided by Oracle subscription and is equivalent or better than other Linux technical support. However, support costs are about half that level.

Before choosing this product, we also considered Red Hat and SUSE. However, we chose Oracle Linux to use the Oracle kernel optimized for Oracle applications.

If you convert UNIX to Linux... and if stability and service downtime are to be minimized, Oracle Linux is the solution.

My company is based out of Virginia. I do a lot of work with the federal government.

I absolutely love how I can go out, get Oracle Linux, develop something with the Identity and Access Management, and be able to deploy, it and test it, and work on it very, very quickly. That's absolutely what I love, how portable it is and how much it relates. 

If the enterprise I work for has licenses for Red Hat, I don't have to go get a license from Red Hat to start working on my Oracle product. But, once it's developed in Oracle Linux, I can easily take it, and adapt it, and move it onto Red Hat, and it works seamlessly. 

Benefits: If you start with Oracle Linux, you can adapt to any of the Oracle products a little bit easier than any other OS. 

The kernel could be expanded, a little bit more maximized to work with Kubernetes and the like. That's probably where they are going to go, a little bit more orchestration, system maintenance management.

The ability to do self-diagnostics. Run one command and it runs top head memory, tell me what's going on. The ability for the OS to regulate itself, to do self-diagnostics, so you could take out the UNIX admins and the UNIX supports. Tell me what's really wrong, right now in the OS, what does it look like right now?

Stability, scalability, like I said, it compares directly with Red Hat. In some things, the packages, the ability to reach out to the Oracle yum packages, and do automatic updates, it gives you the ability to scale. 

Patching, there's quarterly patches. I actually think they may even do bi-weekly patches now for Oracle Linux. 

The scalability, as long as you have someone to manage it, you're good to go and it's right up there in reliability with the Red Hat stuff.

I can't tell you any experience about the Oracle Linux. But Oracle Support in general, I have to put in tickets for Identity Management all the time. They usually come back, depending on the severity of the problem, within a reasonable amount of time, and I always get what I need. 

At an organizational level, I would love to see them going more Oracle Linux, actually adapting that, getting rid of a little bit of the Red Hat, the notion that Red Hat is the best. I want to see Oracle Linux, it's expanding. 

I think all the stuff that they are doing with analytics and all this work with the autonomous database, it's only going to get to the point where you're going to have autonomous OS's and Linux is going to be autonomous. Why not move to Oracle Linux now? It'll be easier than to move off in the future.

If you don't know Linux, then go learn some Linux. But relatively, if you want to set up a virtual box, set up the Oracle Linux stuff, it's pretty much drag, drop, click, click, click.

I wish my enterprise would adapt it, so I give it a 10 out of 10 in my book. But I guess we'll have to give it a seven and eight out of 10 from an enterprise level, just because they haven't bought in yet.

If you're going to go into the Oracle industry, learn Oracle Linux, learn the ins and outs, and it'll help you out. Like I said, with the whole cloud infrastructure, the whole cloud architecture, I think Oracle Linux is the way to go.

We're quite heavy Linux users. We do high performance computing on Linux so we like a Linux which is compatible with several platforms, so we don't have to cross-compile for too many Linux editions.

We like that Oracle Linux is Red Hat compatible, it makes things very easy for us. We can move between platforms very easily. 

Oracle Linux has helped us to use some of the Oracle cloud platforms, it's made that quite easy. Really, access to that is why we use Oracle Linux.

Just keeping up to date with the latest releases, so Red Hat Enterprise having Linux 7 compatibility would be useful. Other than that, the tools that we need are there, we use the GCC compilers and those tool chains.

We've had absolutely no problems at all, we've never had any stability issues with Oracle Linux.

We run, as I said, high performance computing, so we run across several nodes at any one time. We've scaled up to 30 Oracle Linux instances talking to each other, with no problems at all.

Luckily, I haven't had to use it yet. Obviously we use some of the Oracle online documentation, that's always been useful. And any time we've had any contact with Oracle it's been fairly positive. So what little contact we've had has been good.

We didn't feel much of an investment because we use the cloud platforms, then it's an option to us there. The actual investment of just trying Oracle Linux out was very little, it was just one of the choices on the cloud platform, and it turned out to be one of the best.

It was relatively straightforward. Again, the compatibility with other Linux distros makes it quite straightforward, so we've had no issues really. It was very simple.

In terms of important criteria when selecting a vendor: support, and stability of the product as well. Obviously having the packages certified by Oracle, a known stable platform, makes it easy. We don't have to worry about doing an update and then breaking things. That's probably one of the key things for us.

I'd say try it out, it's simple to get running, get it onto a CIN and then just give it a go.

The most valuable features are:

• It’s free.
• Kernel 4.x.
• RPM-based.
• RedHat clone.
• Support for Spacewalk.
• Easy and stable upgrades.

We use Oracle Linux for all Oracle database servers.

Updates are very slow in our part of world (Slovenia). Now, we use Spacewalk for distribution of updates, but replication to Spacewalk is slow.

I have been using Oracle Linux for seven years.

We have not encountered stability issues.

We have not encountered scalability issues.

I have never used support for Oracle Linux.

We are still using RHEL 5.x, 6.x and 7.x, SLES 9,10 and 11 and CentOS 6.x and 7.x.

Setup is straightforward.

I recommend Oracle Linux to everyone who needs the stability of RHEL and the newest kernel.

We did not evaluate alternatives.

Just use it.

The most valuable feature of Oracle Linux is that it's a very stable product. It seems to be based on Red Hat. We waited for a few years before adopting it, but now that we've adopted it, it's been very stable for us. The license and adaptability of it is probably be the biggest selling point for us.

In this day and age, we'd be very cautious in terms of licensing, but with the Oracle Linux it's very clear how you license it, and also it's the flexibility of it. Sometimes we find with the Oracle licensing it's quite vague in some of the products. With this here, it was very, very, clear what we had to pay for it, and what we got, and also what we can get in the future.

Oracle's products are quite expensive. The reason why they're expensive is probably the reason why we purchase them, in terms of the stability, and we know that even though we're paying heavily for the product, we can't afford to be going with other inferior products.

We want to run -- we do run -- a High Availability environment. The documentation in and around Oracle Linux and the hosting of WebLogic on Oracle Linux from a clustering point of view was, at best, average. We had to search for many, many articles and get MyOracle support involved to get to the point where we actually ended up with the High Availability solution that our business needed. Again, when they put these products on the market, their documentation needs to be an awful lot clearer about how you get to the places you want to be.

It's incredibly stable. We've had little to no issues with instability.

Before any major software releases or major changes to our infrastructure, everything is tested to a really, really high level. We would never actually go live with anything without being stable, but it took us longer than it should have to get there.

The reason why we went for Oracle Linux ahead of even Red Hat or, originally HP-UX, was because the product licensing was very, very, clear, whereas it was a little bit vague with the other products. In this day and age, there's very much a focus on cost, keeping the costs down, and spending wisely.

The initial setup was difficult. We wanted High Availability, and it was that part in particular that was giving us severe problems. It uses a repository to holder details between the High Availability instances, and we found that that was quite complicated to set up, and even now it's a little bit buggy.

It would have been difficult. We try to have high availability, and in particular the high availability part of it gave us severe problems. It uses what's known as a repository to hold details between your high availability instances, and we found that they're quite complicated to set up, and even now a little bit buggy.