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The Real Truth About Oracle's 'New' Kernel
An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday at OpenWorld, Oracle announced a 'new' Enterprise kernel for its so-called Unbreakable Linux. What's the real truth? The company is simply sticking a 2.6.32-based kernel on top of its re-branded Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone and trying to spin it as a new and innovative development."
This could be glossing over quite a bit of useful work for Oracles customers. "Fine tuning" could be anything from tweaking some compiler settings to actually patching things in the kernel. Its hardly a trivial task given the size and complexity that most Oracle customers bring.
What did you expect, that Oracle will have coded their own kernel from scratch? Every distro uses a version of the same Linux kernel. TFA is a troll.
Caveat Utilitor
But then, they already have Solaris which is much more suited for the markets they are aiming at (high-end enterprise servers), so why waste the time ?
Drivers.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
3. ???
3. Support.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Yeah, imagine that. Nintendo didn't want to give Sony complete control over something that Nintendo had essentially created. Those bastards.
-- Linux user #369862
To innovate means to make something new happen. It doesn't have to be radically new, just something that wasn't available before. In the real world, most innovations are pretty humble, but humble doesn't imply not useful.
Do you ever look at Crapware 7.0 and think they just added some 3D arrows for absolutely no reason? Now look at TFA and the reactions here, this is *precisely* why the marketers demand idiotic features.
If you've actually set up Oracle on a system, you quickly realize that a. it's hugely complicated but b. it's a solved problem so c. why am I going through all this pain when Oracle has done this already? Of course, they have, calling it OEL just makes it easy to explain to the boss.
And for anyone trying to maintain an Oracle system, this is a big deal. It is not an understatement that for the typical business, their Oracle database more or less *is* the business. You want something that's going to work, with no nonsense, and you want to keep it up to date.
Whenever a company starts calling their product unbreakable or indestructible or unhackable or whatever, I start thinking Titanic.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
this kernel is not the same as RedHat's, there are improvements geared toward Oracle's DBMS
oh please, oracle customer complexities are a result from the oracle usage and not the motivation for it.
Oh wow, what a revelation. Using a complex software causes usage complexity. Here, have a banana as a price.
Yeah, usage of Oracle causes usage complexity. Does that mean that fine tuning a Linux distro to ease the pain of configuring a box suitable for Oracle products is something trivial, or non important, or what? What was exactly the point?
It doesn't even have to be for running Oracle database-related problems. When you run a EE container, be it JBoss or WebLogic (now a Oracle product) on a HP-UX, Linux or Solaris box that sits between a HTTP server and a database server, you are still bound to tune it for efficient performance according to the specifics of the system. I cannot think of anyone simply dropping a box with software on it on production without the necessary configuration.
That configuration is repetitive, tedious and specific for any non-trivial product for non-trivial usage. It is hardly an Oracle side effect. Typically sysadmins have to automate those configuration changes (or keep a golden ghost pre-configured image.) No matter what, that is still a burden. Better yet to have a vendor backing a set of configuration items already packaged into a turnkey solution.
oracle is one of those business providing useless solution so they can charge you twice for the consultancy.
Just because you don't like it and like to apply partisan ideologies to engineering, that does not mean that what they do is useless. It might be useless to you, might be useless in some (actually many) business contexts. But that does not mean anything on the general case where having an Oracle solution (not just an oracle database) is a useless solution.
Engineering != rhetorical bile.
RHEL 6 upgrades are free for those paying support, so that's not it.
By replacing the kernel it is no longer (even close to) RHEL 5 so ISV certifications are shot. Making oracle's linux unsupported by any 3rd party software other than what oracle itself has certified.
They want mid-range and high-end servers and support contracts for everything.
Well that's very nice, but aren't they interested in the business of those of us who don't? Large companies are strange beasts. They always seem to forget how they got to be large companies.
you make a very good point... but be aware the guy mentions he is a FORMER employee of novell... it may sound like a tiny difference but it is significant... that means he moved on and he is not paid anymore by novell. generally when people quit it is because they are not satisfied with their former employee..
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
So it uses the NT kernel rather that the open sores Linsux kernel?
He said unbreakable, not unbearable.
False. Sony had a deal that in essence gave them control and Nintendo naturally didn't want that and canceled the deal. They also made a deal with Phillips. It's not like it's poor old Sony here, they're bastards and the way you're trying to portray it is Nintendo just did it for shits and giggles. They didn't-
-- Linux user #369862