Slashdot Mirror
Oracle Linux Explored
M-Saunders writes "Two days ago Slashdot reported on Oracle's move into the enterprise Linux market, and how it may challenge Red Hat. Red Hat's stock has already dropped, and there's a great deal of talk about the implications of this act. Linux Format got hold of the 'Unbreakable' distro to find out what's going on under the hood. Is it a breakthrough for Linux in the corporate market, or just another RHEL respin? See the article for all the info and screenshots — including an 'interesting' choice of GRUB colours."
To quote the web article:
Unusually, Oracle are claiming that they will support your operating system indefinitely as part of the Premier Support package which works out at $1199 and $1999.
These lifetime models get pretty interesting - you don't know if they are financially viable until a few years have gone by.
But I've seen a few health clubs, airlines and government pension plans so on, suffer on the weight of their liabilities such as lifetime memberships, lifetime frequent flyer points, a unfunded retirement pensions.
That is actually a big risk over a 10 year period..
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
I would be more than satisfied if they come with an easy solution for installing Oracle flawlessly on most linux flavors!
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I understand Oracle is an industry juggernaut, but $160,000 for a 4-CPU license (from the Guardian article)? Is Oracle really that superior to Ingres, Sybase, Microsoft SQL Server, and especially PostgreSQL or MySQL?
I'm not trying to troll here. I'm just thinking that for the cost of several Oracle installations and experienced Oracle DBAs you could get a much cheaper (or outright free) database and some really top notch talent.
Since Red Hat bought Cygnus a couple of years back, Linux is no longer everything they do, there's also the gcc business. As far as I know, the gcc business earns money from embedded toolsets, and contracts with microprosessor manufacturers (including big ones like Intel) to improve gcc on their kit, or to port gcc to new CPUs.
So, can anyone in the know comment on how much of Red Hat's business is Linux, as compared to what used to be Cygnus?
Oracle is not claiming their distro is better, they are claiming their support model is better. And, by all indications, they're right. Their support model offers more than RedHat (better support for older versions, plus indemnification, which in practice means very little but executives drool over it), and does so at a much cheaper price. RedHat's "Unfakeable" campaign is clearly a panic strategy and it won't work. They are going to have to come up with something better than that if they want to stay in the game.
By the way, calling Unbreakable Linux a separate distro is not really accurate at this point. Trying to disparage it by calling it "just another Red Hat respin" is really missing the point. Ellison already said it's a Red Hat respin, that's the idea. The idea is to basically piggyback on the one name in Linux that has any real street cred among executives in large companies, that being Red Hat. Oracle is basically trying to take Red Hat's primary revenue stream away from them by offering better service for the same code at a better price. If they are successful, I would imagine the end game here would be for Oracle to either buy Red Hat on the cheap or, more likely, hire Red Hat's best talent away and let the company itself fade into oblivion.