[CentOS] Is Oracle a real alternative to Centos?

Tue Dec 8 17:54:32 UTC 2020
Frank Cox <theatre at sasktel.net>

Is Oracle a real alternative to Centos?  I'm asking because genuinely don't know; I've never paid any attention to Oracle's Linux offering before now.

But today I've seen a couple of the folks here mention Oracle Linux and I see that Oracle even offers a script to convert Centos 7 to Oracle.  Nothing about Centos 8 in that script, though.

https://linux.oracle.com/switch/centos/

That page seems to say that Oracle Linux is everything that Centos was prior to today's announcement.

But someone else here just said that the first thing Oracle Linux does is to sign you up for an Oracle account.

So, for people who know a lot more about these things than I do, what's the downside of using Oracle Linux versus Centos?  I assume that things like epel/rpmfusion/etc will work just as they do under Centos since it's supposed to be bit-for-bit compatible like Centos was.  What does the "sign up with Oracle" stuff actually do, and can you cancel, avoid, or strip it out if you don't want it?

Based on my extremely limited knowledge around Oracle Linux, it sounds like that might be a go-to solution for Centos refugees.

But is it, really?

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