On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 12:12 PM, <m.roth at 5-cent.us> wrote: > No, you should pay us, says Larry, I need to keep my yacht and fighter jet > taken care of.... Once again, the problem seems to be hatred of Ellison more than anything else. Red Hat and CentOS based on it are #1, it´s only natural that smaller players want a piece of the pie. This is different from Novell trying to lure RHEL users exactly how? http://news.techworld.com/operating-systems/106971/novell-looks-to-lure-red-hat-users/ What Oracle is saying is "if you want free, you can use ours instead of CentOS and get a more recent kernel" centos 6.3 -2.6.32-279.1.1.el6 uek http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/latest/i386/kernel-uek-2.6.32-300.29.2.el6uek.i686.rpm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Linux#RHEL_compatibility --- Oracle distributes Oracle Linux with two kernels: Red Hat Compatible Kernel - identical to the kernel shipped in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel - based on a later Linux 2.6-series kernel, with Oracle's own enhancements for OLTP, InfiniBand, and SSD disk access, NUMA-optimizations, Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS), async I/O, OCFS2, and networking.[8][9] --- https://oss.oracle.com/ol6/docs/RELEASE-NOTES-UEK2-en.html --- New Btrfs features/functionality An updated version of btrfsfsck, a tool to check and repair a Btrfs file system, is now included in the btrfs-progs package. This new btrfsck now supports a --repair option that allows fixing errors in the extent allocation tree and block group accounting. btrfsck also provides the option --init-csum-tree which replaces the check-sum root with an empty one. This will clear out the CRCs but allows the file-system to be mounted with the mount option nodatasum. Automatic defragmentation: Brtfs now provides an online defragmentation facility that reorganizes data into contiguous chunks wherever possible to create larger sections of available disk space and improve read and write performance. (snip) Xen domU improvements Several bug fixes and improvements have been incorporated to make the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel scale and cooperate better as a guest (domU) in Oracle VM and Xen. Xen block backend from Linux 3.3 kernel. This provides the fully featured Xen blkback along with extra features, such as passing through a flush (a lighter version of barrier), discard (also known as TRIM or SCSI UNMAP) and various bug-fixes and enhancments. Xen PCI backend from Linux 3.3 kernel, this includes the option to specify how the PCI structure shows up in the PV guest - either as in host or virtualized; Fixes to make it work with SR-IOV VF cards; and numerous mutex fixes. Memory self-ballooning - allows the guest to automatically balloon depending on the workload. Transcendent memory support for HVM and PV guests Tracing API support for Xen MMU operations. Syncing the wall-clock time from the initial domain Numerous code cleanups and bug fixes (e.g. in the following areas: memory balloning, blkfront, P2M, E820, IRQ, MMU, Gntalloc driver) Other improvements dm-nfs: device-mapper target that allows you to treat an NFS file as a block device. It provides loopback-style emulation of a block device using a regular file as backing storage. The backing file resides on a remote system and is accessed via the NFS protocol. Driver Updates The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel supports a vast range of hardware and devices. In close cooperation with hardware and storage vendors, several device drivers have been updated by Oracle. The list below only indicates the updated drivers that deviate from the versions included in mainline Linux 3.0.16. Storage drivers Broadcom bnx2i 2.7.0.3 Broadcom bnx2fc 1.0.4 Brocade bfa 3.0.2.2 Emulex be2iscsi 4.1.239.0 Emulex lpfc 8.3.5.58.2p LSI mpt2sas 12.100.00.00 LSI megaraid_sas 5.40-rc1 QLogic qla2xxx 8.03.07.12.39.0-k QLogic qla4xxx 5.02.00.00.06.02-uek2 Network drivers Broadcom bnx2 2.1.11 Broadcom bnx2x 1.70.00-0 Broadcom cnic 2.5.7 Brocade bna 3.0.2.2 Cisco enic 2.1.1.24 Emulex be2net 4.1.297o Intel e1000e 1.4.4-k Intel ixgbevf 2.1.0-k Intel igbvf 2.0.0-k Intel ixgbe 3.4.8-k Mellanox mlx4_en 1.5.4.2 QLogic netxen_nic 4.0.77 QLogic qlcnic 5.0.25.1 --- Sounds like value-added to me, for those that need that functionality. For those that do not, CentOS is just fine. The OP got the negative reactions he came seeking, I bet... So can we please move along?. This bickering and gnashing of teeth does nobody any good. FC