
Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS" - wdaher
http://linux.oracle.com/switch/centos/
======
SwellJoe
I'm pleased to see that evil deeds have consequences, though I'd like to see
Oracle suffer a little (OK, a lot) more before getting over the hump. People
don't use Oracle Linux because the Open Source community doesn't trust Oracle
(and they shouldn't; that mistrust has been well-earned over a couple of
decades).

There's a lot of reasons not to use Oracle Linux, most of them non-technical.
Oracle is simply not an ethical member of the Open Source community, and if
you trust them, they will screw you, some day, some way. Red Hat may have
their flaws, but they've never sued over patents and they've never attempted
to destroy competing projects or companies through legal threats and bullying.
CentOS may be slow to jump on updates sometimes and to get out new releases,
but at least it's a good Open Source citizen.

As an aside, if you want a faster moving RHEL rebuild that has paid developers
working on it, you might try Scientific Linux. It is built by CERN and
Fermilab, and tends to be very solid and fast to update and invisible (i.e., I
don't think about it, at all, and it Just Works). We switched from CentOS to
SL back when CentOS 6 was so late being released; couldn't be happier with it.
We added support in Virtualmin for SL for just that reason...so many of our
customers wanted 6, it was worth the effort to add a new OS.

So, yeah, Oracle is gonna have to have a "come to Jesus" moment if they want
to participate in the Open Source community. They've got a lot of repenting to
do.

~~~
ominous_prime
Unfortunately, I don't think SL holds up in a in all cases. CentOS (and
Oracle) strive for binary compatibility. I've had cases where I needed to run
vendor supplied binaries which were sometimes buggy on a non-centos EL system.
Yeah, it sucks that the vendor only supplies binaries, and only tests against
specific RHEL release points, but that's life sometimes.

Don't get me wrong, Scientific Linux is great, but it's not for everyone.

~~~
SwellJoe
Yes, the priorities of SL are different from CentOS, and binary compatibility
isn't _quite_ as high on the list, from what I can tell.

But, so many people are only using Open Source software, and just want a
really popular, really stable, really long lifecycle Linux distro for their
servers. That's the boat I'm in. I don't currently run anything that I can't
get in source form on our servers, so I don't have any concerns about binary
compatibility.

That said, both of our products that specifically support SL and have binary
packages in their repos (Virtualmin and Cloudmin) use the same yum repository
of binaries across RHEL, CentOS, and Scientific Linux. We've never had any bug
reports caused by that sharing of binaries. So, binary compatibility is pretty
good in our admittedly limited experience (we only provide a handful of
binaries).

------
cagenut
I've run 200+ server environments on centos4, a 40+ server cluster on centos5,
and now run a 50+ server cluster on rhel6. I'm pretty much dead on their
target audience here.

This seems almost mean. Its a billion dollar company calling out a volunteer
group of a couple of guys for being slower than them.

Part of the reason I switched to rhel was exactly this graph, I didn't have a
lot of faith in centos as a going concern given the delays on 6. But also, its
clearly not easy for a reason. There is a lot of work to be done, and the
farther you trace your way up the rhel/epel/fedora tree the more you realize
this is a community providing an insane amount of value and deserves to be
funded.

So if Oracle is going to sell me on using and/or paying for their distro,
being faster than a handful of volunteers isn't gonna do it. Going toe-to-toe
with redhat on funding, contributing, producing and supporting open source
software such that I _want_ to fund you is what'll do it.

~~~
wdaher
(Disclaimer: I had a hand in a lot of this)

That's not quite the intent. Look, here's the deal: I know we all like to
think that corporations are evil and the presence of corporate interests
actually messes stuff up.

But this really is one case where you want the oomph of bilion-dollar company
making sure that you get your security updates in time.

No one else is providing that. Oracle happens to be doing so, and we're making
it available to you for free, so why shouldn't you benefit from that? (And
seriously, I get that you're not paying for CentOS, and I'm not interested in
getting you to pay for Oracle Linux either.)

~~~
jasonlingx
Still no good answer... why is Oracle doing this?

I don't see how this story doesn't end with a whole bunch of people having to
convert back to CentOS when someone at Oracle questions the value in offering
this distribution for free.

~~~
skittles
If you switch to Oracle Linux and if you have some major problem you can't
fix, then the next logical step is to pay for support. It would be a simple
step to take since you're already running the official version.

~~~
ajays
I'm not an Oracle hater (I just dislike them a little). But if this is true,
then they have an economic incentive to _not_ issue free fixes in a timely
manner. Or, (not to sound to tinfoil-hattish) to release _slightly_ broken
things that don't impact an individual installation, but impact clusters.

Again, I'm not saying that they _will_ do the above; just that there is
economic incentive for them to bring users into paying for support, and as
long as they give it away for free, no one will bite.

There's an old wives saying (used in a different context), that says "why
would a guy buy a cow, if he can get the milk for free?"

------
dr_faustus
Oh yeah! Please lock me in to your crappy Red Hat knock-off so you can screw
me royally if Larry changes his mind and wants to extract some money from its
users.

IMHO, Oracle is certainly the LAST company you should use any product from
unless you are absolutlely forced to (like Java, unfortunately, or their
bloated DB if your are in the financial industry). Once you are dependent on
them, no matter if you are a partner or customer, they will definitely find a
way to screw you over. If you want supported Red Hat linux, just buy it from
Red Hat.

[UPDATE]: Also, how nice of the to mention Ksplice in the announcement as a
quick reminder how they like to screw existing user bases of their products.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
I'd be interested in hearing what you are referring to about Ksplice.

~~~
zcvosdfdgj
ksplice was supported in rhel.. when oracle purchased it, they announced they
were going to drop rhel, and then turned it into a 30-day free trial-- after
the 30-days, you must switch to oracle linux to continue using ksplice.

~~~
wdaher
Everyone we sold Ksplice to on RHEL is still running Ksplice on RHEL. So it's
more accurate to say that we closed the door on new subscriptions for anything
other than Oracle Linux, but all existing subscriptions remain unaffected (and
those customers can even add new systems, if they'd like to.)

------
mapleoin
_Why are you doing this?

This is not some gimmick to get you running Oracle Linux so that you buy
support from us. If you're perfectly happy running without a support contract,
so are we. We're delighted that you're running Oracle Linux instead of
something else.

At the end of the day, we're proud of the work we put into Oracle Linux. We
think we have the most compelling Linux offering out there, and we want more
people to experience it._

Hihihihi. Sure you are.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
I think it's more like "you are meaningless to us unless you want to buy a
support contract". They do the exact same thing with MySQL. Download it and
use it, but don't bug us unless you have cash in your hand.

------
swa14
Thanks for the brtfs, but no thanks. I'll only touch your stuff with a GPL
pole and with a non-oracle maintainer.

If you want support for Centos, please consider redhat *

I'm sure there are some good people at Oracle, and maybe this is a genuine
project by some of them, but the hierarchy Oracle is under is just too fickle
(as what happened with OpenSolaris).

*Not redhat affiliated. Not even running redhat or fedora anywhere. But on enough mailinglists to see that RH isn't a respected open-source company for nothing.

------
SoftwareMaven
While Oracle doesn't have the trust of the open source world, the enterprise
IT world does trust it (and Ksplice is pretty awesome, too!). This is likely
to become an important distribution over time.

I've known companies that used CentOS for all the dev boxes and Redhat for
production to save money. That has downsides because you are running different
distros in the end (there can be subtle and not-so-subtle differences) and, if
you have a problem on a non-prod box, your forced to use community support.

Oracle Linux will become a viable alternative here. Run the same distro on all
boxes and only pay for production boxes. Then, if you have a problem on an
unsupported box, you can bump it up to supported without altering the box.

The key here, for Oracle, is whether that support is actually worth paying
for.

------
debacle
Oracle launches Oracle Linux -> People port over from CentOS -> CentOS
community dies -> Oracle stops updating Oracle Linux for people without
support contracts

I'd call anyone claiming this strategy a looney if it weren't for the fact
that the company doing this is Oracle and I'd put nothing below them as far as
a business strategy.

~~~
wdaher
The issue with that strategy is that it's totally untenable. As soon as Step 4
happens, someone else makes a new CentOS that everyone switches to.

Fundamentally, there is a market need for something to fill the niche of
CentOS. I happen to think that free-Oracle-Linux can be a better CentOS than
CentOS, but if they were both to suddenly go away, something new would come to
fill the obvious void.

~~~
rdtsc
> Fundamentally, there is a market need for something to fill the niche of
> CentOS.

You know what fills the niche of CentOS pretty well? CentOS. If CentOS goes
away, you know what will fill its niche? -- Scientific Linux.

> I happen to think that free-Oracle-Linux can be a better CentOS than CentOS

I think Oracle (which is already not having a stellar reputation in the open
source community) just worsened its position. People with money pay Redhat for
support. People who don't want to pay, will use CentOS, and a large proportion
of those don't like Oracle and out of principle will avoid it.

It seems after the litigation debacle, Oracle could have done something to
improve its standing the programming community and maybe donated to CentOS,
for example. That would have been nice. Instead they keep shooting themselves
in foot.

Will this affect Oracle's bottom line. Perhaps not. Maybe in the longer
future. But don't be surprised at the negative reaction from other programmers
on HN or other tech sites.

------
naner
For the uninitiated, RedHat was so unhappy with Oracle repackaging/reselling a
nearly identical system that they started obfuscating their patches:

[http://www.itworld.com/open-source/139165/red-hat-defends-
ke...](http://www.itworld.com/open-source/139165/red-hat-defends-kernel-code-
obfuscation)

[http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Red-Hat-defends-
chang...](http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Red-Hat-defends-changes-to-
kernel-source-distribution-1202733.html)

------
keithpeter
[http://public-
yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/3/base/i38...](http://public-
yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/3/base/i386/)

It took me some moments to realise that Oracle Linux 6.3 as a clone of RHEL
will, of course, include _libreoffice_ as the office package for the desktop
installation as opposed to previous RHEL versions that included
OpenOffice.org.

There is a degree irony in this, but I imagine the number of customers using
Oracle Linux as a desktop OS is small. I gather a number of financial
institutions do use CentOS on desktops and RHEL on servers however.

~~~
pwny
This has to be the funniest thing I've read today.

A permanent reminder to whoever looks into Oracle Linux of how they've treated
the Open Source community.

The sweet, sweet irony.

------
buster
What a bullshit comparison.

They mean to replace RHEL (paid support) but try to win over CentOS customers
(who surely won't pay for support, if they would want to, they would use RHEL
and thus would have even faster security patches then Oracle Linux).

Stay away.. as far as possible.. thanks.

------
iuguy
Readers please note this is the same 'Oracle Unbreakable Linux' they've been
peddling for a while. If you can read that product name without feeling some
sort of incredulation, this may the distro for you.

------
pppp
Oracle is the last company I would trust after opensolaris, etc.

------
qqqqqq
But, if I wanted a better alternative to CentOS, wouldn't I just go and use
Red Hat? Why would I lock myself into a company that has this bad a track
record?

~~~
sciurus
Because with Red Hat you have to pay for access to updates.

~~~
wdaher
Agreed. And I think "lock-in" is an unfair characterization. It's not like you
can't switch back to CentOS or Scientific Linux.

~~~
druiid
How so? You guys are providing a script to switch from CentOS to OL, but I
don't see a comparable script to switch back to CentOS.

Where is the script to easily switch back when Oracle decides to screw
everyone over as many have already brought up?

~~~
wdaher
druiid: If that happens, I will _personally_ help you switch back any systems
you switched over this way :) My email address is in my profile.

As for everyone else, yeah, a '--reverse' was somewhere in our set of desired
features for the script, but ultimately this became about some combination of
"Launch early, launch often" and "MVP", two topics I know we all love here :)

~~~
kseifried
Can we get that in writing and approved by Oracles legal department? Or is
this some kind of personal guarantee, if so can you please spell if out
exactly. Thanks. Also is it for druiid only, or the community as a whole?

~~~
wdaher
That offer is for druiid only :), but --reverse is in the works.

(And seriously, editing the script and hacking together a quick reverse is
pretty easy, but I just want to make sure we take the time to get it right in
all the annoying little edge cases that inevitably crop up.)

------
eleitl
Right, except it's from Oracle.

No, thanks.

~~~
jhull
Funny how they addressed the fact that its from Oracle and there might be some
hidden gimmick. At least they are self-aware. I want to not be skeptical and
believe but I can't.

~~~
huggyface
Just as someone ripping you off will go to lengths to explain that they aren't
ripping you off.

------
sspiff
Oracle tries to do a Linux distro again? Also, that web page easily has the
least appealing and professional looking layout I've seen in a long time.

------
TallGuyShort
If they think they have the most compelling Linux offering out there, why go
to all the trouble of explaining how close you are to Red Hat?

~~~
pgeorgi
Because RHEL compatibility is an important selling point, at least in the US
Linux market.

~~~
nembleton
You got a very good point here. Look like the big names, it's good for image.
Especially when you have a terrible image like oracle starts to have. ( or did
it have it since a few years already? )

~~~
pgeorgi
It goes further than that: There's a certain set of people and corporations
that started out with Red Hat Linux, and prefer to stay in that ecosystem
(known tools, available work force).

By claiming you're RHEL compatible, you "merely" compete against Red Hat, Cent
OS and some other clones that some might not even have heard of (eg.
Scientific Linux).

You automatically exclude Ubuntu, Debian, Suse and so on, but while
reasserting that RHEL compat is somehow important, you push them to the
defenses, not yourself (except from the point of view of Ubuntu, Debian, Suse,
... fans, but you won't convince them anyway, so why bother?).

That might be a reason why Red Hat doesn't bother too much about the clones:
they make the RHEL ecosystem stronger, provides incentives for RHEL
certifications, and RH can still try to upsell Oracle Linux users for the
"original".

------
zeruch
Frankly, given how well they've managed every other FOSS element in their
charge, I have no doubt that this is not only NOT a "better" alternative to
CentOS (disclosure: I have no particular love for CentOS, but you do know what
you are getting with them up front...your releases will be slow, a little far
from bleeding edge, but deliberate and solid) and likely has some kind of
business booby-trap attached.

------
ShoNuff00007
I have Oracle Linux and RHEL servers. The support from Oracle does not meet
our needs, or expectations. When I open a ticket with them, they respond via
e-mail. I cannot respond to the e-mail. I have to go back to their website to
update the ticket. 99% of the time I have resolved the problem myself. Some I
just gave up on after a few weeks of not being able to talk to a human, or
someone who has a clue. I tried to show them some of the older tickets that I
was complaining to them about their service on, but their system had already
deleted them which increased my ire. In fairness, someone once got back to me
at about 2am, after their call center rolled over to Asia. This person
actually knew what he was talking about, (Once I got past the accent).
However, I always get MUUUUUCH better support from RH, and IBM-(AIX). I don't
call often, but when I call, I need an answer, not "Web Ticketing System tag".
If you are going to Oracle for their support, go to RH instead, or you will be
sorry. I sure am.

------
bingbing
Have they improved dtrace since this released abortion:
[http://dtrace.org/blogs/ahl/2011/10/10/oel-this-is-not-
dtrac...](http://dtrace.org/blogs/ahl/2011/10/10/oel-this-is-not-dtrace/)

update: <http://dtrace.org/blogs/ahl/2012/02/23/dtrace-oel-update/>

------
jasonlingx
What's their track record with Java, MySQL etc?

~~~
debacle
Fantastic, actually. They've really embraced the OSS Java community and MySQL
is stronger than it has ever been.

The OpenSolaris community is also thriving, and Oracle's partnership with
Google has helped move Android forward leaps and bounds.

~~~
buster
You should've put a </sarcasm> tag in the end ;)

~~~
keithpeter
Yes, fortunately, I was on my work PC that has a £10 keyboard when I was
reading this.

Seriously: what a palaaver that a huge company has to shove a tiny project
aside.

------
ominous_prime
I'm not in the least a fan of Oracle, but I think this could still be a safe
move for a free EL distribution.

It don't see a major drawback here:

\- You get faster and more reliable updates, _especially_ important for
security updates.

\- The release schedule will be more predictable (I know a lot of people moved
to ScientificLinux while waiting for the CentOS6 release)

\- It's binary compatible with RHEL (and therefor CentOS). Meaning, that you
can drop the Oracle repos and move back if you don't like the behavior you're
seeing upstream.

~~~
wdaher
I think that's an accurate summary. And I think the point that you can always
switch back to CentOS or Scientific Linux is an important one. Ultimately,
this is a topic where a lot of people have religious devotion, so for me it's
really a question of whether pragmatism outweighs zealotry.

~~~
phaylon
I don't think labeling people who distrust Oracle as religious fanatics will
turn the discussion into a constructive direction.

~~~
wdaher
Yes, you're absolutely right, and that wasn't my intent. (If I could edit it,
I'd tone it down a little.)

My goal is just to have people consider the case on its merits.

If you've thought about it and concluded "OK, I see what you're offering, but
I'm distrustful of Oracle based on past behavior, and that outweighs your
benefits", awesome. I might not agree, but at least we had a reasonable
discussion about it.

As opposed to, e.g. "Oracle bad. Google good. Microsoft bad." (Which I'm
totally guilty of myself, so I get where people are coming from.)

~~~
phaylon
Well, in people's minds it's not only "past" behavior, but also the quite
current Android/Oracle/Java argument. These things (just like the Microsoft
UEFI topic) are discussions about very fundamental issues that could have
impact on the freedoms and livelihoods of people here.

I'm not sure how much success you'll have getting people to separate their
issues with the larger entity from considering your project. After all, when
it comes to business decisions it is understandable that people would want to
take these issues into account.

What I could imagine to happen is your project building its own separate (and
good) track record from Oracle. I think some people asking for a reverse-to-
original option/script might have come off as insincere, but I think it would
be a crucial part. If you can say "try it, use it, and if you don't like it or
_anything_ happens, there's an up-to-date and tested way of returning to the
original", it could alleviate peoples fears for lock-ins.

But it'll be hard to work against things like peoples fears that one of the
reasons is an attack on RedHat. The only way to deal with that will be time
and good behavior (not doubting that you'll do that, but you came out of a
perceived lions cage. So the gazelles will watch you for a while to make sure
you aren't a lion after all).

------
sagarun
I "heard" oracle folks got help from "centos" folks to rebuild "all" packages
from redhat. Some packages just wouldn't build on koji. centos folks
reportedly helped them.

This is pure "evil"

------
sciurus
The advantage of Oracle Linux that I see is the newer supported kernel
version, On both Oracle Linux 5 and 6 you get 3.0, compared to 2.6.18 for
RHEL5 and 2.6.32 for RHEL6.

~~~
mmmooo
Are you sure about this? the public repo seems to show 2.6.18/2.6.32.. This
would actually be a dis-advantage in many cases, as a number of vendor utils
(I'm looking at you HP) don't play nice w/ 3.x kernels.

~~~
sciurus
They have the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK), as well as a RHEL-
compatible kernel. I'm not sure which is the default in new installs.

[https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/entry/oracle_unbreakable_ente...](https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/entry/oracle_unbreakable_enterprise_kernel_release)

~~~
wdaher
From the release notes: "By default, both the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel
and the Red Hat Compatible Kernel are installed on the x86_64 (64 bit)
platform, and the system boots the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel by default.
If needed, /etc/grub.conf can be modifed to make the system boot with the Red
Hat Compatible Kernel by default."

<https://oss.oracle.com/el6/docs/RELEASE-NOTES-GA-en.html>

~~~
keithpeter
So for the avoidance of doubt, the CentOS upgrade script will preserve the
RHEL/CentOS 2.6.32.x kernel, but a fresh install from the netboot or dvd will
install the UEK 3.0 install?

~~~
wdaher
Correct.

------
bsphil
Why all the vitriol towards Oracle?

Not that I care either way, I don't have any stake in the matter. I just don't
have much experience with them outside of limited usage of Java.

~~~
debacle
1\. Their database software is overpriced and bloated.

2\. They participate in strong lobbying to get governments all over the world
to purchase their overpriced products.

3\. And support.

4\. They recently sued Google over seven lines of code for billions of
dollars.

5\. They've let some technologies purchased from Sun languish, and have
contributed to the fracturing of the OSS communities around these
technologies.

6\. Larry Ellison bribed his way out of a billion dollar insider trading deal.

In short, Oracle is the poster child for why OSS users need to be vigilant and
why government contracting needs serious reform.

------
noonespecial
This sprang instantly to mind.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog>

------
tlogan
I know that 'hackers news' folks (Google employees?) don't like Oracle, the
enterprise IT world does trust Oracle. They trust Oracle much more than they
trusts Google (not hard).

From outside, neutral point of view, all these corporations Oracle, Google,
Facebook, Apple, etc. are equally "evil" - especially from point of view of
Open Source community. Am I wrong here?

~~~
buster
Exactly, you are not, that's why i'd rather trust RedHat with my OS then
Oracle.

BUT, strange enough, i'd say Sun had a pretty good reputation as software
company, great engineers and minds. In the past, i'd rather agree to use Sun
Solaris rather then some Oracle Linux. (Now, that Solaris is from Oracle, i
wouldn't do that anymore)

------
hluska
I don't know what to say....

On one hand, good for Oracle, this actually sounds like a good initiative. On
the other hand, Oracle consistently gives us reasons to distrust them.
Consequently, while I think this is a good effort, I certainly wouldn't
install it. In fact, I somewhat suspect that I'd find a way to make A/UX work
before I install Oracle Linux.....

------
mattbeck
haha, yeah switching to an Oracle-backed version of CentOS is going to be
'better'.

Better like Solaris? Needlessly different for it's own sake!

Hah, no thanks.

------
justin66
Regarding trust issues, I went from trusting the CentOS team (and defending
them against some criticisms that turned out to be quite valid) to being kind
of disgusted with them during the CentOS 6 fiasco. There are different kinds
of trust and I really don't see either CentOS or Oracle Linux as a good risk.

------
alokm
Is there any way to find out the statistics about number of "Oracle Linux"
installations as compared to CentOS?

------
rdl
Ksplice and a few other technical features could make this a technically
better choice than RHEL (although I'd focus on adding security features beyond
RHEL, which breaks some compatibility).

------
Nux
LOL! So they took it against RHEL and failed, not they're picking on CentOS
(and they will fail). This is just hilarious! Can Oracle get any more pathetic
than this?

------
dimecyborg
Pure corporate term "Oracle Linux is the best Linux distribution on the market
today"

------
suyash
Well done Oracle!

