Readers please note this is the same 'Oracle Unbreakable Linux' they've been peddling for a while. If you can read that product name without feeling some sort of incredulation, this may the distro for you.
Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"
21–30 of 221 posts
Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"
#22I've run 200+ server environments on centos4, a 40+ server cluster on centos5, and now run a 50+ server cluster on rhel6. I'm pretty much dead on their target audience here. This seems almost mean. Its a billion dollar company calling out a volunteer group of a couple of guys for being slower than them. Part of the reason I switched to rhel was exactly this graph, I didn't have a lot of faith in centos as a going con…
CentOS now have sponsorship to pay two developers full time, and had their 6.3 clone out much more quickly. http://centosnow.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/centos-project-relea... That matches Scientific Linux in terms of full time paid packagers/QA &c I'm not sure how much paid development time PUIAS has but there is some as it is the system used at the host institutions. I imagine that the Oracle Linux team has plenty of e…
You can download an ISO from any of these mirrors:
https://wikis.oracle.com/display/oraclelinux/Downloading+Ora...
Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"
#23I've run 200+ server environments on centos4, a 40+ server cluster on centos5, and now run a 50+ server cluster on rhel6. I'm pretty much dead on their target audience here. This seems almost mean. Its a billion dollar company calling out a volunteer group of a couple of guys for being slower than them. Part of the reason I switched to rhel was exactly this graph, I didn't have a lot of faith in centos as a going con…
(Disclaimer: I had a hand in a lot of this) That's not quite the intent. Look, here's the deal: I know we all like to think that corporations are evil and the presence of corporate interests actually messes stuff up. But this really is one case where you want the oomph of bilion-dollar company making sure that you get your security updates in time. No one else is providing that. Oracle happens to be doing so, and we'…
Still no good answer... why is Oracle doing this?
I don't see how this story doesn't end with a whole bunch of people having to convert back to CentOS when someone at Oracle questions the value in offering this distribution for free.
Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"
#24But, if I wanted a better alternative to CentOS, wouldn't I just go and use Red Hat? Why would I lock myself into a company that has this bad a track record?
Because with Red Hat you have to pay for access to updates.
Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
CentOS now have sponsorship to pay two developers full time, and had their 6.3 clone out much more quickly. http://centosnow.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/centos-project-relea... That matches Scientific Linux in terms of full time paid packagers/QA &c I'm not sure how much paid development time PUIAS has but there is some as it is the system used at the host institutions. I imagine that the Oracle Linux team has plenty of e…
You can download an ISO from any of these mirrors: https://wikis.oracle.com/display/oraclelinux/Downloading+Ora...
I stand corrected, but why on earth not add a link to the main page or the landing page linked to in this HN post?
Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"
#26I'm pleased to see that evil deeds have consequences, though I'd like to see Oracle suffer a little (OK, a lot) more before getting over the hump. People don't use Oracle Linux because the Open Source community doesn't trust Oracle (and they shouldn't; that mistrust has been well-earned over a couple of decades).
There's a lot of reasons not to use Oracle Linux, most of them non-technical. Oracle is simply not an ethical member of the Open Source community, and if you trust them, they will screw you, some day, some way. Red Hat may have their flaws, but they've never sued over patents and they've never attempted to destroy competing projects or companies through legal threats and bullying. CentOS may be slow to jump on updates sometimes and to get out new releases, but at least it's a good Open Source citizen.
As an aside, if you want a faster moving RHEL rebuild that has paid developers working on it, you might try Scientific Linux. It is built by CERN and Fermilab, and tends to be very solid and fast to update and invisible (i.e., I don't think about it, at all, and it Just Works). We switched from CentOS to SL back when CentOS 6 was so late being released; couldn't be happier with it. We added support in Virtualmin for SL for just that reason...so many of our customers wanted 6, it was worth the effort to add a new OS.
So, yeah, Oracle is gonna have to have a "come to Jesus" moment if they want to participate in the Open Source community. They've got a lot of repenting to do.
Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"
#27I've run 200+ server environments on centos4, a 40+ server cluster on centos5, and now run a 50+ server cluster on rhel6. I'm pretty much dead on their target audience here. This seems almost mean. Its a billion dollar company calling out a volunteer group of a couple of guys for being slower than them. Part of the reason I switched to rhel was exactly this graph, I didn't have a lot of faith in centos as a going con…
(Disclaimer: I had a hand in a lot of this) That's not quite the intent. Look, here's the deal: I know we all like to think that corporations are evil and the presence of corporate interests actually messes stuff up. But this really is one case where you want the oomph of bilion-dollar company making sure that you get your security updates in time. No one else is providing that. Oracle happens to be doing so, and we'…
> I know we all like to think that corporations are evil and the presence of corporate interests actually messes stuff up.
But Oracle actually is evil.
> But this really is one case where you want the oomph of bilion-dollar company making sure that you get your security updates in time.
Don't be naive, Oracle wouldn't be doing this if they didn't see a substantial business advantage.
> No one else is providing that. Oracle happens to be doing so, and we're making it available to you for free, so why shouldn't you benefit from that?
Awww. Oracle is so altruistic!
Oracle has proven time again that they can't be trusted, and giving Oracle more control can only be bad.
Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can download an ISO from any of these mirrors: https://wikis.oracle.com/display/oraclelinux/Downloading+Ora...
I stand corrected, but why on earth not add a link to the main page or the landing page linked to in this HN post?
An excellent question. Honestly, because the page was intended at people already running CentOS -- I thought people would be much more inclined to switch a system they already have than to reinstall a brand new one. Clearly I was mistaken :)
Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"
#29Thanks for the brtfs, but no thanks. I'll only touch your stuff with a GPL pole and with a non-oracle maintainer.
If you want support for Centos, please consider redhat *
I'm sure there are some good people at Oracle, and maybe this is a genuine project by some of them, but the hierarchy Oracle is under is just too fickle (as what happened with OpenSolaris).
*Not redhat affiliated. Not even running redhat or fedora anywhere. But on enough mailinglists to see that RH isn't a respected open-source company for nothing.
Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"
#30I'm not in the least a fan of Oracle, but I think this could still be a safe move for a free EL distribution.
It don't see a major drawback here:
- You get faster and more reliable updates, especially important for security updates.
- The release schedule will be more predictable (I know a lot of people moved to ScientificLinux while waiting for the CentOS6 release)
- It's binary compatible with RHEL (and therefor CentOS). Meaning, that you can drop the Oracle repos and move back if you don't like the behavior you're seeing upstream.