[GLLUG] Which distribution for Oracle server?

[Matt Graham]

On Thursday 28 August 2003 15:11, after a long battle with technology, 
imetis at imetis.com wrote:
> These servers(we will have 3: dev, production, web) will be
> dedicated to hosting Oracle 9i. The hardware will be Compaq ProLiant
> DL360 servers, with data being stored to an IBM Tivoli SAN.

HPaq?  Ick.  Nonstandard expensive parts, but I guess you didn't have 
any choice in the matter.

>  Oracle certifies and supports Red Hat Enterprise, and UnitedLinux
> (Conectiva, SCO, SuSE, TurboLinux).

SCO/Caldera is no longer relevant to Linux.  Check /. for entertaining 
(if biased) accounts of why.

> I've not been thrilled with Red
> Hat, and have not personally used any of the UnitedLinux versions.
> From the things I've read so far, I'm leaning towards SuSE.
> What are your experiences with these distros?

SuSE started to suck around version 8.0 IMHO, mostly because they tried 
to emulate Redhat too much (uber-convoluted boot scripts, normal 
configuration files in weird places, mess in /etc/sysconfig *in 
addition* to the mess in /etc/rc.conf , etcetera.)  It was a reasonably 
nice distro so long as you didn't mind updating things only via YaST2, 
not editing certain things manually, and dealing with RPM Dependency 
Hell.

I installed Oracle 8i on a SuSE machine a long time ago and was 
thoroughly appalled at the quality of Oracle's installer--I had to use 
strace to figure out what the @#$%ing error the thing was dying on 
actually was, and the after-install Java-based "configuration 
assistant" segfaulted at the drop of a hat.  It was quicker and easier 
to read the Oracle docs and edit the config files with vim than to use 
that "assistant".  Maybe this has improved.

-- 
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