Re: Why doesn't Oracle care about Linux as IBM does?

From: Charles J. Fisher <cfisher_at_rhadmin.org>
Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 21:02:10 GMT
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0108211545490.29526-100000@galt.rhadmin.org>

On Sat, 11 Aug 2001, Dino Hsu wrote:

> Furthermore, many people here (senior DBA's) don't think of Linux as a
> 'Unix'. To them, Unix means IBM AIX, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, etc.. This
> may be due to Linux's growing up from PC-based machines, although
> later ported to many different H/W platforms.

Why doesn't Oracle care much for Linux? Let us count the ways:

Lousy filesystem with max file size of 2 Gig and no LVM - although this has only recently been improved with the 2.4 kernel and 9i on SUSE.
Mainstream Linux is really only 32-bit x86 - Oracle doesn't support the 64-bit versions of Linux (yet). Linux and NT are the low-end bottom feeders of the supported Oracle platforms.
Lousy SMP scalability (4-8 processor max, compared to 64-128 for Alpha, Sparc, Power.
No high-end partitioning (and no, VmWare doesn't count). All the big players support this except AIX (I think).
Anybody trying to get scalability improvements into the kernel ends up pulling their hair out, Oracle included.
Spat with RedHat which resulted in the rebranded RedHat Database Edition packaged around PostgreSQL (which is dead in the water until a major ISV supports it - boneheaded move, RedHat!).

When you look at it, SCO UnixWare is probably more scalable than Linux - but do you see Oracle rushing to support it? Be glad that Oracle does what they do with Linux; I would understand them dropping it completely.

Larry occasionally has bad things to say about Linux - last I heard, he was admonishing Apps consultants not to even THINK about Linux. But then again, he is hawking that Linux-based network terminal, too.

I do understand DB2's fixation on Linux - with it's "shared nothing" architecture, it is probably a better fit.

  |   Boo, Forever                                                            |
  |                                                                           |
  |   Spinning like a ghost on the bottom of a top,                           |
  |   I'm haunted by all the space that I will live                           |
  |     without you.                                                          |
  |                                                                           |
  |      -Richard Brautigan.                                                  |
  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

/ Charles J. Fisher | cfisher@rhadmin.org | http://rhadmin.org /

Received on Tue Aug 21 2001 - 16:02:10 CDT