Re: Free Linux to run Oracle

On Sun, 05 Nov 2006 06:10:16 +0000, Mladen Gogala wrote:

> I've had enormous problems with FC5 and I've just tried with FC6. Oracle
> 10.2, I'm sorry to say, doesn't work on that distribution. In retrospect,
> I approve of Oracle's recent move into Linux arena. If red Hat did not
> have enough sense to make Oracle working on their distros, Oracle did the
> right thing, by taking care of the problem themselves. This commendable
> move, however, will not have much impact on Fedora which will have to be
> abandoned as an Oracle platform.
>
> As a person still running FC4 on my home computer, I started looking for
> the new candidates. So far, OpenSuse and Ubuntu seem like good
> alternatives. I planned on switching to FC6 over the Thanksgiving, but
> Oracle 10.2.0.1 did not work and, to add insult to the injury, FC6
> overwrote my grub installation, which was extremely annoying. Therefore,
> I'm soliciting opinions about OpenSuse and Ubuntu. Did anybody try these
> things? I know that Oracle 10 works on OpenSuse 10.1. What is a general
> opinion of that distribution?

Fedora is notable for wanting to provide innovation on a 6 month cycle (their own words - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Objectives - but that means the user (you) have the opportunity to do integration testing on stuff not supplied with the project, such as Oracle products. In many ways the Fedora, OpenSuSE and Ubuntu distributions are public betas of the 'operating systems'. Would you use Vista in production right now?

There is a reason Oracle recommends certain distros ... in addition to vendor support, the user has the advantage of stability for about an 18 month period. (Stability, that is, at the kernel and libraries level.) In other words, RedHat Enterprise Linux, SuSE Enterprise Linux, or the AsianLinux ... or their clones. (That stability does not eliminate the availability of patches.)

People who insist on a dynamic environment may have forgotten the basic intent of a server ... to provide service. Getting the latest on that environment is totally contrary to the needs of the user community, even though it is fun.

For evaluation and hobbyist work, I find the SuSE (Novell) series is well supported by the community. That community creates and maintains an 'orarun' package for each release (including OpenSuSE) to configure the environment properly, which I think speaks well of the Oracle-SuSE relationship ... in spite of Oracle's lack of visible support.

I've used SuSE for years and have decided that it and OpenSuSE are my primary platforms. OpenSuSE for everything in beta, for the stuff for which the 'integrated' platform is good enough, for evaluation, and finally for preparing for the future. SLES and SLED for the serious environments such as the company desktop and the Oracle. You can get SLED/SLES both for free and simply not get support or patches.

No personal experience with Ubuntu, although my son is very pleased with it so far - for a non-Oracle environment. Again, for Oracle purposes the Debian-based distros require you do things yourself.

If you really like the Fedora-based distros, but need free and stable for Oracle, I'd encourage the Red Hat Enterprise Linux clones such as CentOS.

I'd say you need to decide whether you are an 'Oracle on Linux' hobbyist or professional and move on from there.

If you want to stay at the hobby level, the Fedora problems you face are probably resolved by the hints at Ivan's site at http://ivan.kartik.sk/

Note that I have the highest regard for hobbyists and for the term. In many cases, I note hobbyists are more knowledgeable and just plain better than professionals. The difference is in the formality of approach, and for corporate purposes ... ...

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Hans Forbrich   (mailto: Fuzzy.GreyBeard_at_gmail.com)   
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