Executive Summary

Oracle Linux is a Linux distribution packaged and freely distributed by Oracle, available partially under the GNU General Public License since late 2006. It is compiled from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) source code, replacing Red Hat branding with Oracle's. Oracle Linux is used by Oracle Cloud and Oracle Engineered Systems such as Oracle Exadata and others. The company's Oracle Linux Support program aims to provide commercial technical support, covering Oracle Linux and existing RHEL or CentOS installations without any certification from the former.

Potential users can freely download Oracle Linux through Oracle's server or from a variety of mirror sites and can deploy and distribute it without cost. As of 2016, Oracle Linux had over 15,000 customers subscribed to the support program. Oracle Linux is application binary compatible with RHEL, and existing applications run unchanged because all application interfaces are identical to RHEL.

Architecture & Design

Oracle Linux is compiled from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) source code, replacing Red Hat branding with Oracle's. It is available partially under the GNU General Public License since late 2006. Oracle Linux is used by Oracle Cloud and Oracle Engineered Systems such as Oracle Exadata and others.

• Oracle Linux is certified on servers including from Cisco, Dell, HPE, IBM, and Lenovo.
• In July 2023, HPE and Supermicro announced Oracle Linux support on their Arm-based servers.
• Oracle Linux is available on Amazon EC2 as an Amazon Machine Image and on Microsoft Azure as a VM Image.
• Oracle Linux is also available as a Windows app through the Microsoft Store and with the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

The Oracle Linux distribution includes KVM hypervisor and an oVirt-based management tool. Other supported server virtualization solutions are VMware and Xen-based Oracle VM. Oracle Cloud Native Environment has added KubeVirt support for unified container and virtual machine management beginning with the 1.7 release.

Performance & Thermal

Oracle Linux is designed to provide high performance and scalability for demanding workloads. The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) is based on newer mainline Linux kernel versions, with Oracle's own enhancements for OLTP, InfiniBand, SSD disk access, NUMA-optimizations, Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS), async I/O, OCFS2, Btrfs, and networking.

• Oracle Linux supports up to 32 DDR5 DIMMs for up to 4 TB of capacity.
• It supports up to 3 PCIe 4.0 slots or up to 2 PCIe 5.0 slots.
• Oracle Linux also supports Cisco UCS VIC 15000 Series adapters.

Specification not publicly disclosed for the thermal design power (TDP) of Oracle Linux. Exact figures were not confirmed for the thermal limits and telemetry of Oracle Linux.

Market Positioning

Oracle Linux is positioned as a reliable and secure Linux distribution for enterprise workloads. Its compatibility with RHEL and support for a wide range of hardware platforms make it an attractive option for organizations looking for a stable and supported Linux distribution.

Direct competitors to Oracle Linux include Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and CentOS. The exact target buyer for Oracle Linux is organizations looking for a supported and secure Linux distribution for their enterprise workloads.