[CentOS] any significant differences between centos and OEL?

Robert P. J. Day rpjday at crashcourse.ca
Sun Jan 24 09:05:09 UTC 2010


On Sat, 23 Jan 2010, Jim Perrin wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 7:47 AM, Robert P. J. Day <rpjday at crashcourse.ca> wrote:
> >
> >  someone just pointed out to me that there is a distro called
> > "oracle enterprise linux" which is effectively a re-branded RHEL,
> > so i'm curious -- has anyone here used both centos and OEL and
> > would there be any differences that would be worth caring about?
> >
> >  the only thing i can think of that might be worthwhile is that
> > OEL might change some of the default kernel parms thru
> > /etc/sysctl.conf that make that distro more appropriate for
> > running large oracle databases.  beyond that, i have no idea.
> >
> >  thoughts?
>
> CentOS is essentially a doggedly faithful rebuild of RHEL. OEL adds
> some tweaks, php-oracle, and various other mods they feel are
> appropriate. Last I looked, it was available for free, but the
> updates and support came with a price tag attached. This may have
> changed, and I make no claims as to its stance.

  ok, that's useful to know.  my original question was meant to
address only the *technical* differences, but knowing about mandatory
support and/or licensing is also useful.

> There's also a moral implication. RH's staff has vocally supported
> CentOS, and we contribute back to the RH community though bug
> reporting, bug fixes, suggestions, patches, etc. We don't charge for
> CentOS support, so we don't impact RH's business. Oracle on the
> other hand DOES offer paid support, which impacts RH's business, and
> I don't see any substantive attempts by oracle to give anything back
> to the community at large.

  again, not really a technical issue but good to know, thanks.

rday
--

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Robert P. J. Day                               Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

            Linux Consulting, Training and Kernel Pedantry.

Web page:                                          http://crashcourse.ca
Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
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