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 -- ======================================================================== Robert P. J. Day Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA Linux Consulting, Training and Kernel Pedantry. Web page: http://crashcourse.ca Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday ========================================================================