Oracle Linux? 250
eldavojohn writes "There have been rumors floating around of Oracle working on their own distribution of Linux. If this is true, it is widely believed that this enterprise edition of Linux would be in direct competition with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. What is spurring the rumors? Well, Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison said, 'I'd like to have a complete stack. We're missing an operating system. You could argue that it makes a lot of sense for us to look at distributing and supporting Linux.' I know that Oracle has been doing a lot more than databases recently, will they go the extra mile and create their own stripped down Linux kernel? If they do, will companies switch to database solutions that are running Oracle only software for the benefits of support and (hopefully) stability?"
OpenSolaris? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to say that 2.6 doesn't have bunches of enterprisey (<-technical term again) features, but Solaris is still a leader in that space.
Red Hat has no worries with this (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm posting anonymously because I'm an Oracle DBA ('nuff said). Oracle does a make a nice database, but it is hugely bloated for most purposes. And everything else they write is just pure unadulterated crap.
If you look at what it takes to implement their ERP or Pharmaceutical Suite you will realize that they will only ever be a niche player with their own Distro. They write software to require the maximum amount of administration and consulting possible. Their consulting division make a ton of money and they willl never release anything that might endanger that. Also, they have a lot of "faithful" DBA's (like me) that make a really good living keeping the giant house of cards that they call an "application stack" running and recoverable.
Companies with deep pockets will buy it because it's Oracle and pay high salaries to people like me to maintain it all. I'm not complaining, because it's a pretty nice gig, and I might recommend "Oracle Linux" for my company because all the extra crap equals even more job security for the (somewhat scarce) senior level DBA's that have a lot of Linux experience.
Oracle Appliance (Score:4, Interesting)
Why GNU/Linux? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Definitely has uses but.. (Score:2, Interesting)
A number of years ago, Oracle came out with "Raw Iron", which was a configuration where Oracle ran on an intel box without any operating system. They found that much of their customer support was helping sys admins configure the operating system so that Oracle would run well. They also found that most customers used a dedicated database server, so the only thing running on that box was Oracle. As a result, they tried to eliminate the O/S and add a layer that interfaced Oracle to the hardware.
I would guess that they would offer a complete package that has Oracle running with Linux pre-configured to run Oracle. The idea would be that nothing else would be run on that box, except perhaps for a few utilities the customer run to monitor, backup, etc.
As far as the customer is concerned, Linux would be transparent to them. They would simply have "Oracle" running on that box. Presumably Oracle would provide necessary support for Linux relative to Oracle. They would probably not support other uses for Linux on that box. If the customer wanted to run additional applications, they would be responsible for any support.
Didn't see this mentioned (could have missed it)- (Score:2, Interesting)
Moo (Score:2, Interesting)
So, even if they made ice cream, or pocket-protector protectors, i'd have to take a look.
In Linux, i use Debian. They also try to do thing correctly, though they have their pitfalls. I'm a bit suprised Oralce didn't choose Debian, but i'd have to guess it'd be similar to it, just not so open to packages.
Re:Try a different approach. (Score:3, Interesting)
Flaming on! (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Lackluster commercial support - Linux tends to have better hardware support, drivers, etc.
2) SMP support on the *BSDs is still young and immature. Linux, in comparison, is quite mature, and does very well on an 8-way system. BSD *might* do it, but much beyond 4-way is a sail into uncharted waters. I'm already running a cluster of 4-way boxen, so 8-way or more is not very far off, given our company's annual 2x growth curve.
3) "It's different". Yeah, it's very similar, but if you're already used to the "Linux" way, having to rediscover how services get initialized (a la
4) Linux is "good enough". It's obvious that whatever metric is needed to be able to be "enterprise ready", Linux has passed it. Granted, nobody agrees on what that standard is, but most people agree that Linux can do it.