Oracle extends Linux support to 10 years
Dangles Ksplice lure for Red Hat customers
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Oracle has reaffirmed that it's in the Linux business to stay by extending the support lifecycle of its own-brand build to ten years, and tempting Red Hat users with a trial offer of its Ksplice patching system.
While the extended lifecycle may provide enough reassurance to win over a few customers, Oracle hopes the 30-day free trial of Ksplice for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (release 5.4 on) and Linux 6 users will prove more of an enticement. Ksplice, which Oracle bought last year, allows Linux kernel patching without the tiresome necessity of a reboot. Oracle Linux Premier Support customers will now get Ksplice as a standard part of their packages, and Fedora and Ubuntu Linux users get it for free.
Ksplice works by acting at the object-code level instead of with the source code, to update legacy binaries (unmodified binaries created without foresight of the update system) based on existing information, such as a source code patch. It's similar to a technique used by the black hat community to control and cloak rootkits.
"With the innovative zero-downtime update capabilities delivered through Ksplice, and the extended support lifecycle for Oracle Linux, Oracle continues to set the industry standard for Linux in the enterprise," said Wim Coekaerts, Oracle vice president of Linux and virtualization engineering, in a canned statement.
This is just the latest sortie in Oracle's on-going feud with Red Hat. Oracle initially claimed that the Linux community had nothing to fear about its entry into the market resulting in a fragmented code base. But since the 2010 decision to run with its own version, the company has made its competition with Red Hat increasingly plain, with all the tact and subtlety of a typical Larry Ellison onslaught. ®
COMMENTS
Re: Re: RHEL6 & Oracle Products
There is no bug and it is Oracle's corporate strategy. Red Hat sent RHEL6 certification report to Oracle in August 2011 (Oracle's certification is done by software supplier with Oracle then verifying the result only). Oracle pushes its OEL5 with kernel 2.6.32 saying that you don't have to change anything and you have new kernel, unlike, ahem, Red Hat.
Oracle will not certify its products on RHEL6, however they support their products on RHEL6 on case by case basis (when customer wants it and is big enough...).
Yes, it is corporate bullying, but that's business.
Re: Oracle vs. Red Hat?
@ShelLuser
"...To me Oracle is the kind of company which knows how to charge big time for average services..."
Many people dont agree with you. The best database in the world is the Oracle DB. It has the highest performance, and best characteristics. Several world records are set by SPARC T4 and Solaris has many unique features that everybody wants to copy or port: ZFS, DTrace, Crossbow, Zones, etc. Oracle has some of the best tech, and highest performing in the world.
Oracle is not like IBM that charges astronomical amounts for low performance. For instance, the IBM Mainframe cpus are slower than a decent x86 cpu, and a Mainframe costs millions. Or, when IBM charged $500.000 for one POWER6 P570, and IBM needed six P6 servers to match one Sun T5440 at $76.000 - in Siebel v8 benchmarks. So if you want medium/low performance for a high price, you go to IBM.
What Oracle does not have, is low prices. You get what you pay for. There is a reason Oracle has recently increased the prices, whereas IBM has lowered prices. Lowering prices is a sign of weakness, if you give something away for free, you are desperate. Increasing prices are sign of strength, you are confident in your products because people will continue to buy.
Oracle extends Linux support to 10 years
But since the 2010 decision to run with its own version, the company has made its competition with Red Hat increasingly plain, with all the tact and subtlety of a typical Larry Ellison onslaught.
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