 Visitor Reviews |
Oracle Linux
|
Reader supplied reviews for Oracle Linux
Average rating
8.0 from 12 review(s)
Version: 9.2
Rating: 10
Date: 2023-10-06
Votes: 26
|
This is a review of Oracle Linux 9.2 with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) used as a desktop operating system.
NB: A BTRFS root file system can be created by using the UEK version.
The UEK Boot ISO image was downloaded and written to a USB for installation.
The Anaconda installer is used (like Fedora, Centos, etc.) and did the job fine.
A BTRFS root file system was chosen to allow a couple of small SSDs to be set-up in a RAID 0 array for a reasonably sized system.
However, the default layout was changed to have and ext4 boot partition and a 2 GB swap partition.
The installation completed without any issues.
The installed Oracle system is operating very well, runs fast and seems extremely stable.
The Gnome desktop environment is provided with minimal applications being added during installation.
I prefer this as it allows me to chose the software applications I want, rather than ones chosen by a distro packager.
Oracle repos, RPMFusion and Flatpaks can be used to obtain additional software applications.
No difficulty has been encountered in finding any of the applications I use. Although, I did find that Oracle's CRB repo was needed in addition to Oracle's EPEL repo to install ffmpeg.
System upgrades to Firefox can lag behind official releases, so I replaced the installed version with the Flathub version.
Also, (being a desktop system) I removed the “rhn-setup” application.
All hardware was detected without any problems.
Software management can be handled by using dnf or Gnome Software. Both methods are working well.
Generally, any documentation needed has been easily found with a quick internet search.
Oracle Linux is performing very well and I suspect I'll be using it as my default desktop operating system for quite a while.
|
Version: 9.1
Rating: 9
Date: 2023-06-24
Votes: 5
|
Okay, Oracle 9.2 is a BIG download, but absolutely worth doing. Distrowatch does not provide selection for 9.2 yet.
Thing is, after install I kept working on Wayland with the Noveau driver for Nvidia. Works perfectly on my desktop.
My advice is to wait a 30 seconds after the boot of Gnome for great performance and speed.
Question of software in the repos, all you need is there, but it is not Fedora. In comparison with Fedora, Oracle is minimalistic, but you can get all what is needed for the desktop.
For software I installed flatpak as if Oracle is Red Hat. Works great.
Why I do not give a 10 is I left for 2 weeks, and by return I expected at least 1 update.
There were no updates.
This is, together with Rocky Linux, the absolute best gnome distro I ever used. Did however not use Debian 12 or OpenSuSE 15.5 yet.
So if you search a great rock stable workhorse and you want it devellopped by a firm, go for Oracle. You prefer Community or other desktop, go for Rocky. Have fun.
I want to make very clear I use Oracle on my home desktop. I am a Linux user since Corel Linux and used almost all major distros including Slackware, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Opensuse...
|
Version: 9.1
Rating: 3
Date: 2023-05-27
Votes: 0
|
Installer sucks bad. Freezes and has other issues.
If you can't get past the installer part reliably why would you trust this to run your server?
Inconsistent release cycles. 6 releases in 12 years? Come on...no thanks.
It just feels like a very unstable and outdated RHEL clone that has nothing special to offer. Whatever this distro can do RHEL does it better. Since this is supposed to be a server distro there is literally zero reason to pick this over RHEL. None whatsoever.
On and their logo looks silly...
No sir, I didn't like it.
|
Version: 9.1
Rating: 10
Date: 2023-01-30
Votes: 14
|
This is an enterprise class distro you may safely rely on. Basically, OL now serves the niche where CentOS used to sit backed up by the tech giant Oracle the same way as CentOS was backed up by Red Hat. It also has nice additions such as UEK and paid Oracle support for those who need it.
While probably unpopular, my opinion is that Oracle behind this RHEL incarnation makes this distro a much more preferable choice in the long run as compared to those distros trying to replace CentOS (Rocky, Alma, etc.). Their credibility and commitment including the ability to sustainably finance their goals are doubtful to me. I don't see any reason why free OL is inferior to those initiatives while I welcome the community efforts. Oracle for many years follows its commitment to provide lifetime free unlimited access to the OL distro and repositories.
Functionally, with OL you get the same RHEL as the RHEL itself, so there is no difference substantially.
|
Version: 9.0
Rating: 9
Date: 2022-07-12
Votes: 9
|
Great! I was testing it on a spare computer tower I had that I thought was pretty much "dead." I thought that Oracle was a reputable company and they do so much for the Unix/Linux world (including contributions to the Linux kernel,) I thought why not give this old computer one last try? I installed it and it worked! I couldn't believe it! It was like a miracle! Some flatpaks don't work, but I think it's because it's an old computer. I seemed to always get an error message using ones that did work but worked ok. VLC worked ok when I tested it. I use to not be so much of a fan of their install prompts ("Fedora style" -- unless they've changed it recently), but I felt this time was easier to use. I thought it was pretty reasonable. Only slightly more difficult than the Linux Mint/Ubuntu type install. Oracle install still helps you if you run into problems. The first time I experimented with a live USB, I thought it was weird when I clicked on "help" at the top of the screen... I couldn't get back out of it to the main install prompts. That was a small problem that I would dismiss.
I gave it 9 because I don't like the Gnome desktop. With install you can have a user or choose not to. It was a bit fiddly to setup and when typing in terminal and having to do some things in root. So you may have to go to settings to fix it up. The ISO was also a bit large, I downloaded the "full install" version and maybe could have downloaded more minimal versions. But maybe I was suppose to download the biggest one to bring back my old computer to life? Uses Wayland which I think it's a step forwards as what computer enthusiast tell me. I played videos, music file fine. I thought I had set the timezone correctly when there was something wrong with "certificates" in the browser. Make sure you choose the right time zone!
On startup, it still shows Linux Mint as a distro that I had previously had trouble running without fiddling with the boot menu each time (on my main computer it works fine – it’s a great distro no doubt.) It has a choice of kernels that are unbreakable and some not. You have 4 seconds to choose and you stop the countdown by pressing up or down with the arrow keys. It seemed to stabalize more on a second reboot, but not everyone will experience this.
Oracle is new to me but I’ll definitely consider using it in the future on my old machine. I heard about what happened to CentOS and all I can say is give Oracle a try! Even if it’s a big corporation!
Only thing I have not tested yet is printing. You’ll have to see other reviews for that. Internet works for wired and wireless no problems.
I found it interesting they use their own packages for software like Firefox. My main concern now is if Flatpaks works well on modern computers with Oracle Linux? More and more companies like Telegram only offer downloads in Flatpaks and Snaps and we know Ubuntu is pushing hard on Snaps.
It’s a very modern, smart distro. At least consider it!
|
Version: 9.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-07-07
Votes: 5
|
excellent easy to install alternative to CentOS and RHEL. It is one of the best enterprise distro,Great CentOS 8 replacement, the UEK "Unbreakable Kernel".Oracle Linux. It is very close to our Red Hat .
Oracle 21c is an innovation release, so it may not be suitable for most production systems.
full update code
yum update -y
upgrade all package
yum upgrade -y
Oracle Linux 9.0, a major update of Oracle's Linux distribution designed for enterprise use. This is the company's first stable release based on the all-new Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9.0
|
Version: 8.6
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-05-23
Votes: 0
|
slightly difficult to install on uek, actually froze several times on a number of laptops. seem to resolve after dnf update.
still not completely sure how to suspend, although i have had similar issues with alma and rocky on these laptops.
however, other than that, excellent distribution. rock-solid, stable, and fast.
gets my personal vote over alma/rocky based on uek being more modern than base rhel.
well-done... hard to believe a product this good can be used for free.
one more thing -- has anyone figured out how to use tlp without getting warnings from selinux?
|
Version: 8.4
Rating: 9
Date: 2021-08-10
Votes: 11
|
Since we don't use CentOS anymore for our testing environments we switched to Oracle Linux. It is very close to our Red Hat prod environment and it does not cost us anything. Easy install.
|
Version: 8.4
Rating: 1
Date: 2021-05-31
Votes: 1
|
The install iso fail to fetch repodata, it don't have the repo url configured, since november 2020 and still no fix, it's reported on Oracle site
|
Version: 8.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-04-04
Votes: 11
|
Great CentOS 8 replacement, the UEK "Unbreakable Kernel" is really nice as well.
|
Version: 8.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-01-12
Votes: 17
|
Not only the best replacement for CentOS but better!
The 5.4 kernel was exactly what I was missing into CentOS. This is by far the best enterprise rpm based distro with long term support of the moment.
As a bonus you get perfect support for the new AMD CPU's. Oracle Linux simply unlocked more power from my Ryzen 9. All benchmarks shows noticeable performance gains.
The only thing that was hard to choke was the Oracle name. But i must admit they did an amassing job!
|
Version: 8.3
Rating: 5
Date: 2021-01-10
Votes: 2
|
So I'm sure that the stability and software availability of this distro is pretty good. But there is one thing that's really bad about this distro, and it's that Oracle removed a bunch of drivers from the ISO. One important one was the driver that was needed to read the virtual drives in my Dell Poweredge. Because of this, I did not install Oracle Linux on any of my servers. Oracle needs to put these essential drivers on the ISO, or else it's going to be losing A LOT of ground to those that do. Come on, Oracle!
|
|
Latest Reviews
Project: Oracle Linux
Version: 9.2
Rating: 10
Date: 2023-10-06
Votes: 26
|
This is a review of Oracle Linux 9.2 with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) used as a desktop operating system.
NB: A BTRFS root file system can be created by using the UEK version.
The UEK Boot ISO image was downloaded and written to a USB for installation.
The Anaconda installer is used (like Fedora, Centos, etc.) and did the job fine.
A BTRFS root file system was chosen to allow a couple of small SSDs to be set-up in a RAID 0 array for a reasonably sized system.
However, the default layout was changed to have and ext4 boot partition and a 2 GB swap partition.
The installation completed without any issues.
The installed Oracle system is operating very well, runs fast and seems extremely stable.
The Gnome desktop environment is provided with minimal applications being added during installation.
I prefer this as it allows me to chose the software applications I want, rather than ones chosen by a distro packager.
Oracle repos, RPMFusion and Flatpaks can be used to obtain additional software applications.
No difficulty has been encountered in finding any of the applications I use. Although, I did find that Oracle's CRB repo was needed in addition to Oracle's EPEL repo to install ffmpeg.
System upgrades to Firefox can lag behind official releases, so I replaced the installed version with the Flathub version.
Also, (being a desktop system) I removed the “rhn-setup” application.
All hardware was detected without any problems.
Software management can be handled by using dnf or Gnome Software. Both methods are working well.
Generally, any documentation needed has been easily found with a quick internet search.
Oracle Linux is performing very well and I suspect I'll be using it as my default desktop operating system for quite a while.
|
Project: Oracle Linux
Version: 9.1
Rating: 9
Date: 2023-06-24
Votes: 5
|
Okay, Oracle 9.2 is a BIG download, but absolutely worth doing. Distrowatch does not provide selection for 9.2 yet.
Thing is, after install I kept working on Wayland with the Noveau driver for Nvidia. Works perfectly on my desktop.
My advice is to wait a 30 seconds after the boot of Gnome for great performance and speed.
Question of software in the repos, all you need is there, but it is not Fedora. In comparison with Fedora, Oracle is minimalistic, but you can get all what is needed for the desktop.
For software I installed flatpak as if Oracle is Red Hat. Works great.
Why I do not give a 10 is I left for 2 weeks, and by return I expected at least 1 update.
There were no updates.
This is, together with Rocky Linux, the absolute best gnome distro I ever used. Did however not use Debian 12 or OpenSuSE 15.5 yet.
So if you search a great rock stable workhorse and you want it devellopped by a firm, go for Oracle. You prefer Community or other desktop, go for Rocky. Have fun.
I want to make very clear I use Oracle on my home desktop. I am a Linux user since Corel Linux and used almost all major distros including Slackware, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Opensuse...
|
Project: Oracle Linux
Version: 9.1
Rating: 3
Date: 2023-05-27
Votes: 0
|
Installer sucks bad. Freezes and has other issues.
If you can't get past the installer part reliably why would you trust this to run your server?
Inconsistent release cycles. 6 releases in 12 years? Come on...no thanks.
It just feels like a very unstable and outdated RHEL clone that has nothing special to offer. Whatever this distro can do RHEL does it better. Since this is supposed to be a server distro there is literally zero reason to pick this over RHEL. None whatsoever.
On and their logo looks silly...
No sir, I didn't like it.
|
Project: Oracle Linux
Version: 9.1
Rating: 10
Date: 2023-01-30
Votes: 14
|
This is an enterprise class distro you may safely rely on. Basically, OL now serves the niche where CentOS used to sit backed up by the tech giant Oracle the same way as CentOS was backed up by Red Hat. It also has nice additions such as UEK and paid Oracle support for those who need it.
While probably unpopular, my opinion is that Oracle behind this RHEL incarnation makes this distro a much more preferable choice in the long run as compared to those distros trying to replace CentOS (Rocky, Alma, etc.). Their credibility and commitment including the ability to sustainably finance their goals are doubtful to me. I don't see any reason why free OL is inferior to those initiatives while I welcome the community efforts. Oracle for many years follows its commitment to provide lifetime free unlimited access to the OL distro and repositories.
Functionally, with OL you get the same RHEL as the RHEL itself, so there is no difference substantially.
|
Project: Oracle Linux
Version: 9.0
Rating: 9
Date: 2022-07-12
Votes: 9
|
Great! I was testing it on a spare computer tower I had that I thought was pretty much "dead." I thought that Oracle was a reputable company and they do so much for the Unix/Linux world (including contributions to the Linux kernel,) I thought why not give this old computer one last try? I installed it and it worked! I couldn't believe it! It was like a miracle! Some flatpaks don't work, but I think it's because it's an old computer. I seemed to always get an error message using ones that did work but worked ok. VLC worked ok when I tested it. I use to not be so much of a fan of their install prompts ("Fedora style" -- unless they've changed it recently), but I felt this time was easier to use. I thought it was pretty reasonable. Only slightly more difficult than the Linux Mint/Ubuntu type install. Oracle install still helps you if you run into problems. The first time I experimented with a live USB, I thought it was weird when I clicked on "help" at the top of the screen... I couldn't get back out of it to the main install prompts. That was a small problem that I would dismiss.
I gave it 9 because I don't like the Gnome desktop. With install you can have a user or choose not to. It was a bit fiddly to setup and when typing in terminal and having to do some things in root. So you may have to go to settings to fix it up. The ISO was also a bit large, I downloaded the "full install" version and maybe could have downloaded more minimal versions. But maybe I was suppose to download the biggest one to bring back my old computer to life? Uses Wayland which I think it's a step forwards as what computer enthusiast tell me. I played videos, music file fine. I thought I had set the timezone correctly when there was something wrong with "certificates" in the browser. Make sure you choose the right time zone!
On startup, it still shows Linux Mint as a distro that I had previously had trouble running without fiddling with the boot menu each time (on my main computer it works fine – it’s a great distro no doubt.) It has a choice of kernels that are unbreakable and some not. You have 4 seconds to choose and you stop the countdown by pressing up or down with the arrow keys. It seemed to stabalize more on a second reboot, but not everyone will experience this.
Oracle is new to me but I’ll definitely consider using it in the future on my old machine. I heard about what happened to CentOS and all I can say is give Oracle a try! Even if it’s a big corporation!
Only thing I have not tested yet is printing. You’ll have to see other reviews for that. Internet works for wired and wireless no problems.
I found it interesting they use their own packages for software like Firefox. My main concern now is if Flatpaks works well on modern computers with Oracle Linux? More and more companies like Telegram only offer downloads in Flatpaks and Snaps and we know Ubuntu is pushing hard on Snaps.
It’s a very modern, smart distro. At least consider it!
|
Project: Oracle Linux
Version: 9.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-07-07
Votes: 5
|
excellent easy to install alternative to CentOS and RHEL. It is one of the best enterprise distro,Great CentOS 8 replacement, the UEK "Unbreakable Kernel".Oracle Linux. It is very close to our Red Hat .
Oracle 21c is an innovation release, so it may not be suitable for most production systems.
full update code
yum update -y
upgrade all package
yum upgrade -y
Oracle Linux 9.0, a major update of Oracle's Linux distribution designed for enterprise use. This is the company's first stable release based on the all-new Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9.0
|
Project: Oracle Linux
Version: 8.6
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-05-23
Votes: 0
|
slightly difficult to install on uek, actually froze several times on a number of laptops. seem to resolve after dnf update.
still not completely sure how to suspend, although i have had similar issues with alma and rocky on these laptops.
however, other than that, excellent distribution. rock-solid, stable, and fast.
gets my personal vote over alma/rocky based on uek being more modern than base rhel.
well-done... hard to believe a product this good can be used for free.
one more thing -- has anyone figured out how to use tlp without getting warnings from selinux?
|
Project: Oracle Linux
Version: 8.4
Rating: 9
Date: 2021-08-10
Votes: 11
|
Since we don't use CentOS anymore for our testing environments we switched to Oracle Linux. It is very close to our Red Hat prod environment and it does not cost us anything. Easy install.
|
Project: Oracle Linux
Version: 8.4
Rating: 1
Date: 2021-05-31
Votes: 1
|
The install iso fail to fetch repodata, it don't have the repo url configured, since november 2020 and still no fix, it's reported on Oracle site
|
Project: Oracle Linux
Version: 8.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-04-04
Votes: 11
|
Great CentOS 8 replacement, the UEK "Unbreakable Kernel" is really nice as well.
|
Project: Oracle Linux
Version: 8.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-01-12
Votes: 17
|
Not only the best replacement for CentOS but better!
The 5.4 kernel was exactly what I was missing into CentOS. This is by far the best enterprise rpm based distro with long term support of the moment.
As a bonus you get perfect support for the new AMD CPU's. Oracle Linux simply unlocked more power from my Ryzen 9. All benchmarks shows noticeable performance gains.
The only thing that was hard to choke was the Oracle name. But i must admit they did an amassing job!
|
Project: Oracle Linux
Version: 8.3
Rating: 5
Date: 2021-01-10
Votes: 2
|
So I'm sure that the stability and software availability of this distro is pretty good. But there is one thing that's really bad about this distro, and it's that Oracle removed a bunch of drivers from the ISO. One important one was the driver that was needed to read the virtual drives in my Dell Poweredge. Because of this, I did not install Oracle Linux on any of my servers. Oracle needs to put these essential drivers on the ISO, or else it's going to be losing A LOT of ground to those that do. Come on, Oracle!
|
|
|
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
|
|
bc1qxes3k2wq3uqzr074tkwwjmwfe63z70gwzfu4lx 
