Hey Oracle, Why Not Ubuntu?

OSS_ilation writes "While much has been said about Novell or Red Hat as potential targets for Oracle this week, there are some in the Linux community who believe a different distro might deserve the attention of Larry Ellison. That distribution is Ubuntu, and analysts like Burton Group's Richard Monson-Haefel believed that it would be a better fit for Oracle, which is looking only for an OS and not for any of the baggage associated with Novell, like Netware. Ubuntu, with its huge community base and version 6.06 on the way, could be the perfect fit, he said."

Comments

Oh, god, please no

[gclef]

Oracle's security record is abyssmal, their products have major usability issues (yes, including their database...god that thing's arcane), and the company itself is arrogant as hell. Please, don't let that beast absorb a sensible distro.

Re:Oh, god, please no

[moro_666]

in some ways i agree, there's no point of giving oracle the most quickly evolving distro. larry would mess it up.

but in some other ways, let's face it, ubuntu is already quite bloated so the damage couldn't be very large :p

all-in-all, if oracle wanted to buy a distro for it's servers, i'd rather have seen them forking their own gentoo fork with prebuilt packages or taking over arch-linux. oracle knows that the market is tight, they want to roll out bigtime with this, so it's either a choice of good performance (gentoo/arch/you-name-your-good-optimized-distro-h ere) or a massive package of bloatware mixed with oracle style stuff that never quite does what you'd expect it to.

suse will do for the stuff that they chose. maybe they already felt that ubuntu could be a bit too big fish to catch, besides i don't think it was 'on sale'. whereas outside germany suse was heading down (at least in the linux communities that i move around, nobody really suses anymore), and it was therefor easier to pick up. and also, getting the novell along with it is like buying a meal and getting a free sauce with it, why the hell not ?

i remember installing oracle 8i database on linux ... that was a living hell in the first attempts.

i'm running ubuntu right now on my laptop here, and i'd doubt seriously if i'd still use it if this poor thing would be overloaded with oracle mess.

oh who cares anyway, i will switch to freebsd 6.1 as soon as it comes out ...

I don't think the people understand

[saleenS281]

Anyone in the ubuntu community doesn't quite understand what will happen if oracle were to buy out Ubuntu. Ubuntu in my experience is targeted at making it easy for n00bs to use linux. Oracle will definitely NOT be focusing on this area. They'll be focusing on tweaking whatever OS they do use to make oracle easier to use and setup. They don't care about the latest video codec, your new soundcard, or that great new 3D rendered desktop.

The goals of oracle and ubuntu are so far off from each other it troubles me to hear anyone even make the suggestion.

Ubuntu & Oracle -- two different universes

[stefanlasiewski]

Oracle and Ubuntu are two completely different universes. Oracle products are designed for high-availability enterprise applications. The Database and the Database price tag is overkill for most smaller applications.

Ubuntu is a cutting edge Linux distro with a cute, fun desktop with great installer/maintenance applications. Ubuntu can install MySQL in a few minutes. Not sure I would trust it for any sort of high- availability application. Debian Stable, RedHat Enterprise, Suse Enterprise & Solaris would be a wiser choice.

Oracle:

• Installation require a DBA
• Installs in 8 hours, after 4 tries.
• Oracle Installer crashes several times because you forgot to change kernel.foo_bar_strings from '0' to '100000' in /etc/sysctl.conf . You now need to uninstall all of the files by hand and start from scratch.
• It crashes a second time because you forgot to install GCC_2.9.6_legacy_library , and didn't do 'cat "RedHat Enterprise AS" > /etc/sysconfig/kernel/version'. You now need to uninstall all of the files by hand and start from scratch
• Once installed, Oracle can handle 10,000 customers a second on a 40-million row table

Ubuntu:

• Even your grandparents can install it
• Installs in 10 minutes.
  
• Recognized my video card & sound card out of the box.
  
• MySQL & PostgreSQL are installed and running, out of the box.
  
• The host freezes up after the first 5000 queries ;)
  

Re:Ubuntu & Oracle -- two different universes

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I've said it before and I'll be happy to repeat it. Oracle RDBMS is currently the most complex piece of software sold publically and it requires knowledge about the product to manage it.

Ask yourself. Why?

People scoff at Access, yet, when you come right down to it, what separates the logic of creating a database in Access verse creating one in Oracle. It's all just rows and columns, with some primary keys, indexes and hey presto, there's your database.

Please explain why exactly Oracle needs a DBA, yet an Access database can be created by an accountancy intern? Yes the Access database will be dog slow and unoptimised, but where's the software that optimises on the fly? Where's the software to make setting up an oracle database as painless as seting up one in Access?

Answer. It doesn't exist. It will never exist. The "power" of Oracle lies entirely in the hands of the DBA who regularly grooms it. Oracle can and will grind to a halt without constant lubrication and maintainance.

Oracle is complex because without being so, it could not be hand tuned to be efficient. If MySQL allowed the kind of low level control and optmiisation Oracle has the two would probably be able to go toe to toe quite easily.

Re:Ubuntu & Oracle -- two different universes

[jwocky]

installing oracle on debian/ubuntu is about the easiest thing ever:

add following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list file:
deb http://oss.oracle.com/debian/ unstable main non-free
deb-src http://oss.oracle.com/debian/ unstable main

#apt-get update

# apt-get install oracle-xe-universal

# /etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure

it runs like a dream on my ubuntu box.

It's the Apps, not the O/S

[OYAHHH]

Richard Monson-Haefel,

Says "Oracle, which is looking only for an OS".

Well he is wrong. Oracle is pretty much O/S neutral. And they have good reasons for being so. I'll let you figure that one out on your own.

If all Oracle wanted was a Linux O/S distribution then what would stop them from simply going to a particular distribution's website and downloading it?

What is really happening is that one of their major Linux partners, Redhat, has been moving into the applications business recently. So much so that they have begun to compete with Oracle on quite a few fronts.

Thus, Oracle is looking at the situation and saying what money making venture, not charitable situation, is the best fit in a changing competitive landscape. Apparently the answer is Novell, i.e., fits better than any other, it's more mature, etc.

"Baggage" no only negative things...

[luvirini]

Novell does have some other things in itself besides Linux.

One of the things is a fairly large userbase for Netware.. and a working structure of a company.

So, yes if you are looking for just a linux distro, they are not the thing to aquire, but if you are looking to expand you market share in general.. (like Oracle tries to) Novell does have (atleast potentially) other benefits too.

Only one problem

[Philodoxx]

Mark Shuttleworth has no incentive to sell Canonical/Ubuntu to Oracle. If he were in it for the money, Ubuntu wouldn't mail me CDs once every six months.

Re:Only one problem

[Philodoxx]

I disagree, there are plenty of ways to build up a successful distro without going to the lengths that Ubuntu has to build up its community. If Shuttleworth wanted to make a distro, but wanted to do it frugally he wouldn't host the ISOs on Ubuntu's servers, and he most certainly wouldn't get discs factory pressed and shipped to anybody anywhere in the world.

Ultimately I have no idea what Mr. Shuttleworth's plans are, but I get the impression that he's made his millions and is content with what he has. I'm sure that if the opportunity presented itself to make Ubuntu profitable he would take it, but flat out selling the company to Oracle would be a very abrupt turn around from his post Ubuntu behaviour.

Ummm....

[Otter]

"Oracle just wants to add the OS, so Ubuntu Linux would make a lot more sense than Novell," said Richard Monson-Haefel, a senior analyst with Burton Group.

Far be it from me to question the wisdom of Richard Monson-Haefel, but I assume people at Oracle are capable of grasping the difference between adding a Linux distribution and buying a company the size of Novell.

Channels

[WindBourne]

Oracle is not looking to buy a linux. They are looking to buy a channel. If they were looking for a distro, they would simply roll their own. Getting into businesses is the hard part esp. with companies such as MS blocking their way (illegally, but overlooked these days) and IBM (not illegal, but DB is a real database).

Why not Ubuntu

[Elektroschock]

When we speak of Novell we mean SuSe Linux. Suse is a KDE centric distribution which has a respectable market share on Linux desktops in Europe. Currently some Novell desktop strategist try to achieve the same with Gnome centric solutions, with limited success.

(K)Ubuntu has no market as the product is not sold.

Companies can justify to buy another company and lose a lot of money for the strategic advantage. They cannot justify to donate large portions of money, even when the effect would be the same.

The other issue is control. When Oracle buys Novell they can control corporate policy but they will have no say over Ubuntu. And I do not believe they will buy canonical.

As Oracle I would rather buy Mandriva.

Fork!

[moochfish]

Yeah. If Oracle tried to take Ubuntu, the very next day you'd see news about a fork. The goals of Oracle are simply too different from the developers of Ubuntu for any simbiotic relationship to develop. Oracle wants a stable, no frills server for a massively scaleable database. Ubunto aims for the desktop crowd.

Duh...

[big.ears]

Ellison's announcement was not about acquiring Novell--it was an announcement meant to punish Red Hat for acquiring JBoss out from under Oracle's nose. If Ellison can't have JBoss, he's threatening to compete directly against the firm that has it. The stock market has taken back all the gains RHAT had since they announced the JBoss deal; down 5-6% yesterday. So forget about Ubuntu, this is just PR.

It's the Debian, Stupid

[bill_mcgonigle]

Ubuntu is based on Debian. SuSE is based on, well, SuSE.

Oracle can't own Debian. It think that pretty much covers it.

Stupid ass question

[tacocat]

Why Unbuntu?

Because they can't be recognized as an Enterprise Capable product with a company to back them up with resources, SLA's, and contractual gaurantees. That's why.

This is kind of a dumb question. Sure, Oracle could run on Debian or anything else, but none of these products are making any significant inroads into the corporate american businesses who would purchase Oracle in the first place. It would make as much sense as buying out Amiga.