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Do you trust Oracle? Enough to use Oracle Linux ? | 211 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Do you trust Oracle? Enough to use Oracle Linux ?
Authored by: greed on Wednesday, July 18 2012 @ 03:02 PM EDT
I am so opposed to Oracle that, when given the choice between shelling out for
another VMware Fusion license and using VirtualBox for free, I paid VMware more
money.

I have issues with the way CentOS handles their distribution: I feel their build
procedure is far too secretive. (I want to be able to build my own version of
the distro, should I so desire.) As a result, I switched to Scientific Linux.

I know the two distros have different goals, with CentOS ensuring full binary
compatibility with RHEL, while Scientific Linux only worries about source
compatibility. But I only run Free software on my Linux servers, so source
compatibility is plenty.

But I'd use Ubuntu before I go near anything from Oracle. (I'm not a Debian
fan. And Ubuntu just triggers "why did you do THAT?!" screams.)

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Do you trust Oracle? Enough to use Oracle Linux ?
Authored by: Tyro on Wednesday, July 18 2012 @ 03:11 PM EDT
No.

Having answered that, I should elaborate that I won't be using Red Hat again
soon either. The last time I installed it in a partition it refused to
recognize my Debian partition at boot time. (Well, that may have been CentOS,
and may have been Fedora. I presume that it applies to the entire family of
products.)

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Oracle Linux ? Yes
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 18 2012 @ 03:58 PM EDT

But only if it doesn't come equiped with non-GPL licensed code you can't easily remove.

And I certainly wouldn't use Oracle Database at home - I don't accept their license terms.

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

You mean the "Unbreakable Linux"?
Authored by: hAckz0r on Wednesday, July 18 2012 @ 04:04 PM EDT
If I had a license to Oracle's Linux on my machine of any flavour, I would first break it and then send them the dust (forensic evidence) left over from all the security exploits I generated. After that I'd send the software patches to the kernel devs, or whoever maintains that particular module of code, and just DBAN and "fdisk -l /dev/sdb" for a fresh GPT partition table. All the way down to the lowest levels of scrubbing the disk drive, kind of like washing your hands after touching something rather vile I think. Come to think about it, I would also throw the install disks in the trash and scrub my hands for an hour. Does that answer the question?

---
The Geeks IP Law: The future health of a Corporation is measured as the inverse of the number of IP lawsuits they have filed in the last 3 years.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Do you trust Oracle? Enough to use Oracle Linux ?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 18 2012 @ 04:23 PM EDT
I s'pose the main reason I would want to use Oracle Linux (and I don't) is for all the other stuff they float on top of it. They do patch regularly. I won't speculate on whether they patch often enough, or if the extent of the patches reveals underlying weakness of their system. Some evidence can be got from Oracle

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

No. Why?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 18 2012 @ 06:07 PM EDT
Since Oracle simply rips off a well known distro, why would you bother?

And since it isn't Slackware, I wouldn't waste my time.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • Amen - Authored by: Wol on Thursday, July 19 2012 @ 09:31 AM EDT
  • Point of order... - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 19 2012 @ 01:11 PM EDT
No
Authored by: Kilz on Wednesday, July 18 2012 @ 06:53 PM EDT
I trust them about as far as I can toss a Dodge Ram pickup.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Why Oracle?
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 19 2012 @ 07:00 AM EDT
If you want to pay for "Red Hat Linux," get Red Hat. If
you're poor, or a home user, get CentOS or Scientific Linux.
What's the supposed advantage of "Oracle" (rebranded Red Hat)
Linux?

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Do you trust Oracle? Enough to use Oracle Linux ?
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 19 2012 @ 01:13 PM EDT
No Chance.

Even though I know Orcale's Linux will be exactly the same as what I use, but
with less grief, I simply don't trust them not to pull a fast one.

So no, their binaries won't be going onto my machines. They can thank messrs
Ellison, Boies, Schiller and Flexner for that.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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