
Ask HN: Is there any advantage in using Oracle Linux? - theyinwhy
My company wants to move to Oracle Linux. As this OS is not used in our company so far and not used much around the world neither, I am very sceptical about this. Do you feel any advantage in using Oracle Linux? What could be benefits or drawbacks?
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robertcope
Oracle Linux is essentially re-badged Red Hat Linux. It's fine, if you don't
mind being in bed with Oracle. For me the choice between Red Hat, Oracle, or
CentOS would come down to what is supported by the applications I am going to
run, licensing, and licensing interactions.

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theyinwhy
But is it really? Oracle packages it's own "unbreakable" kernel and some
additions quite deviate from RHEL. Have you been running Oracle Linux
yourself? If so I am really interested in your experiences.

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foobarbazetc
The kernel is it’s own optional package that’s basically 4.14.

The additional stuff is like, newer php, golang, etc. They also mirror EPEL
and build it themselves.

There are other repos you can get these yourself on CentOS.

The one advantage of OL is that they historically got security updates out
before CentOS. Not sure how that looks these days.

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PaulHoule
I have not heard a whole lot about Oracle Linux, I have heard a little bit
good, but nothing bad.

Here is a specific claim that they make for it:

"Oracle Linux is the only Linux distribution that supports live, non-
disruptive patching, both in the kernel space and in the user space."

My take on Oracle is that they are good at systems programming, the Oracle
database is excellent in its own way, they have kept the Java legacy from Sun
alive (at least on a technical basis, they may have screwed up the politics.)

I would not trust Oracle to do applications programming and I think they've
bought a random stable of second-rate bizapps, but if there is no UI involved
I think they do good.

If your company would rather deal with Oracle for support than with IBM/Red
Hat or somebody else then that is also a positive. Also I would take the claim
seriously that their Linux is well tuned for their database, they have been
barking up that tree since 2000 or so.

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theyinwhy
My issue is I have not encountered anyone with first hand knowledge about
using the OS and its support.

Regarding use cases we will mainly run K8s.

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PaulHoule
One of my mentors in the industry was an Oracle DBA.

She might have been below average at scripting but was a genius at getting
what we paid for out of support. She got great results out of Oracle and Sun,
the central IT organization and all of our vendors and taught me a lot about
doing the same.

If people in your company like Oracle support then you will probably be happy
with it. If you don't have the skills in house to manage them maybe you won't.

As for K8s I think the live patching and Oracle optimization might not matter
so much for you.

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JohnFen
What is your company trying to accomplish by switching to Oracle Linux?

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theyinwhy
It was a management / accounting decision, no people with technical background
have been consulted. We have been a RHEL shop so far and have 100s of servers
that now need to be migrated. Additionally we have multiple K8s instances. We
have just been told today, the deal has been signed and for the moment people
are just panicking.

~~~
al2o3cr
Re: the benefits - ask whoever made the decision in management/accounting to
tell you how great the steak & strippers were.

