Oracle Linux

The Best Linux for your Enterprise

Oracle Linux brings the latest Linux innovations to market, delivering extreme performance, advanced scalability, and reliability for enterprise applications and systems, along with worldwide, enterprise-class, low-cost support.

Special Offers

Free 30-Day Trial: Ksplice Zero-Downtime Updates for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Customers

Migrating from IBM DB2/AIX to ORacle Linux and 11g

IDC White Paper: Oracle Takes its place in Linux Market and Progressive Case Study

As one of the most widely deployed operating systems today, Linux is increasingly being adopted for cloud-based solutions. Oracle Linux is the most complete and integrated solution available—and delivers higher performance and better reliability at up to 7 times lower cost than Red Hat. Below, explore the top ten reasons why Oracle Linux provides more value than Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Reason	Oracle Linux	Red Hat Enterprise Linux	Resources
Lower Cost	Oracle Linux is free to download and distribute Support subscription for Oracle Linux is simple and extremely affordable Support costs can be up to 7 times lower than Red Hat	Red Hat Enterprise Linux cannot be downloaded unless you buy a support subscription Very high-cost subscriptions and add-ons Complex licensing	Oracle Linux Pricing Download Oracle Linux today
Management Tools Included	Oracle Linux Support customers get access to free Oracle Linux server lifecycle management tools that are the equivalent of Red Hat Satellite Server and associated modules The same Oracle Enterprise Manager tool can also be licensed to manage the entire solution from application to disk.	Users have to license Red Hat Satellite Server and associated modules for each server; the extra cost can quickly add up	Linux Management
High Availability (HA) Included	Oracle Linux includes OCFS2 and Oracle Linux Basic and Premier Support subscribers have free access to Oracle Clusterware	Red Hat charges separately for add-ons that include clustering software for HA	FAQ: Oracle Clusterware for Oracle Unbreakable Linux Oracle Cluster File System 2 (OCFS2)
Free Download of Binaries and Source	Oracle Linux installation media (DVD) are free to download, use and distribute All source code for Oracle Linux, including source code for patches and errata are freely, publicly available	Red Hat Enterprise Linux cannot be downloaded unless you buy a support subscription	Download Oracle Linux
Enterprise-Quality Support with Premier Backporting	Same level of 24/7 enterprise-class support as Oracle Database Backport bug fixes are available between update releases without forcing customers to upgrade to the entire update release Zero downtime updates with Ksplice	Various levels of support include business hours only Red Hat forces customers to upgrade to the latest update release in order to apply only a few bug fixes Need to re-boot for software updates and patches	White paper: Oracle Linux Support (PDF) Data sheet: Ksplice (PDF)
Higher Performance	Oracle's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel closely tracks the mainline kernel and offers customers access to the latest Linux innovations The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel is fast, modern, and reliable New record-breaking TPC-C and SPECjEnterprise2010 benchmark results	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5) is using a four-year-old kernel, so customers using RHEL5 did not benefit from Linux innovations	Oracle Linux Online Forum Leveraging Linux Innovations for Extreme Performance with Oracle Exadata New Innovations in Oracle Linux Oracle Achieves Record TPC-C Benchmark Result on 2 Processor System Oracle Delivers World Record x86 Performance on Industry Standard Java Middleware and Transactional Database Benchmarks
Ease of Deployment	To enable faster time to market for customers, Oracle provides documented best practices with Oracle Validated Configurations for Linux, which include recommendations on deploying pretested stacks of server, storage, drivers, networking components, Oracle Linux, and Oracle software in a physical and virtual environment Oracle VM Templates offer pre-installed and pre-configured images of enterprise software running on Linux, eliminating the need to install and configure from scratch	Red Hat does not offer such a program Red Hat does not adequately test with Oracle software	Webcast: Accelerate Your Linux Deployments with Oracle Validated Configurations Webcast: Linux Configuration and Diagnostic Tips and Tricks FAQ: Oracle Validated Configurations Program (PDF)
Integrated with Systems	Oracle's Sun x86 servers come preinstalled with Oracle VM and Oracle Linux; support for Oracle Linux is already included with the Oracle Premier Support for Systems	Red Hat needs to partner with other hardware and software companies to offer full stack	Data sheet: Oracle Linux and Oracle VM-Ready x86 Sun Servers (PDF) Data sheet: Oracle Premier Support for Systems (PDF) Executive brief: Reduce TCO with x86 Systems and Oracle Linux (PDF)
Fully Tested and Ready for Data Center Deployments	Oracle makes significant investment in testing Linux internally, both in the development farm and Global IT More than 80,000 hours of QA is run on Oracle Linux servers each day in our development farm More than 42,000 servers run Oracle Linux supporting Oracle's Global IT	Red Hat does not test with Oracle Database and Oracle Applications	Podcast: Next-generation Data Centers: An Interview with Oracle Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President Mark Sunday
Complete Solution with a Single Point of Contact for Support	Only Oracle offers a complete and integrated, applications-to-disk Linux solution (servers, operating system, database, and applications), including a single point of support—eliminating finger pointing among various vendors	Need to deal with numerous vendors for the solution and for support	Check out the Oracle Linux Home Page