[CLUE-Talk] Upcoming Oracle presentations question

[Jeff Cann]

On Tuesday 02 March 2004 8:19 pm, Nate Duehr wrote:

>> No I didn't miss that part at all - we're talking about SUPPORT not what
> you can LOAD it on.  If you call Oracle and tell them you're working on a
> problem on Debian servers, they'll try to help, but any really difficult
> problems arise -- they'll tell you to pound sand.

OK, I understand that you're wanting support from Oracle - I must have missed 
it previously.  

But, now I'm confused - since you think support on the net is as good / better 
than Oracle (and I agree), then why do you care if it is not supported on 
Debian?  If you can run it on Debian, then do it.  No one's stopping you.  
Plus, at the outrageous rates Oracle charges for support (which you don't 
need) why worry about it?

> I'm sure "money talks" here... if you had 200 machines with licensed copies
> of their database product on them running Debian, they'd be more likely to
> help you anyway.
>
> You're being an apologist for them when true engineering and logic show
> that those "enterprise class" distros use the exact same kernel code the
> others do.

I'm not an oracle apologist.  I'm just countering some other post saying that 
Oracle *runs* only on Red Hat.  Which is not true (and not what you said - 
but another poster did)...

For all I care, Oracle can drop off the face of the earth and my projects are 
unaffected.  Oracle's software is overpriced and their support is weak and I 
refuse to purchase it - even though it does run on Linux.

> My theory?  The QA manager at Oracle doesn't have enough experience with
> Linux to realize there's no difference.  

If you mean the kernel, then yes there are no real differences (except the 
kernel tweaks required by Oracle to run on Linux).  Unfortunately, Oracle 
executables are linked at installation time.  Since not all Linux 
distributions put the shared object libraries in the same filesystem 
locations, it *is* a matter of differences between the distributions.  

> So like thousands of clueless
> newbies who used to install RH on their home machines because "RedHat =
> Linux", they make the same uneducated decision... and the person that made
> that decision feels justified in it because they "mitigated risk" that
> simply wasn't there in the first place, but their limited experience with
> Linux limited their decision.

Given that Oracle was one of the first database shops to support Linux (4 
years ago), I don't think you're accurately portraying their decisions.  This 
is a company that runs *all* of internal databases on the Linux operating 
system.  

Finally, in that FAQ I posted they stated plainly that they will look to 
support other Linux distributions in the future.  Perhaps more people will 
ask for Debian support from Oracle.

My opinion is that Debian probably won't be supported because there is no 
company backing Debian.  Oracle wants to deal with companies like SuSE and 
Red Hat -- they build partnerships to sell more products.  Who's selling 
Debian?  No one, so why would Oracle support it?

Later,
Jeff
-- 
http://isuma.org/