Oracle Linux (abbreviated OL, formerly known as Oracle Enterprise Linux or OEL) is a

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

packaged and freely distributed by

Oracle An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Descript ...

, available partially under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

since late 2006. It is, in part, compiled from

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a commercial Linux distribution developed by Red Hat. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-64, Power ISA, ARM64, and IBM Z and a desktop version for x86-64. Fedora Linux and ...

(RHEL)

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

, replacing Red Hat branding with Oracle's. It is also used by

Oracle Cloud Oracle Cloud is a cloud computing service offered by Oracle Corporation providing servers, storage, network, applications and services through a global network of Oracle Corporation managed data centers. The company allows th ...

and Oracle Engineered Systems such as Oracle Exadata and others. 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. The company's ''Oracle Linux Support program'' aims to provide commercial technical support, covering Oracle Linux and existing RHEL or

CentOS CentOS (, from Community Enterprise Operating System; also known as CentOS Linux) is a discontinued Linux distribution that provided a free and open-source community-supported computing platform, functionally compatible with its upstream (softw ...

installations but without any certification from the former (i.e. without re-installation or re-boot). Oracle Linux had over 15,000 customers subscribed to the support program.

RHEL compatibility

Oracle Corporation distributes Oracle Linux with two

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a Free and open-source software, free and open source Unix-like kernel (operating system), kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the k ...

s options. * ''Red Hat Compatible Kernel'' (RHCK) identical to the kernel shipped in RHEL * ''Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel'' (UEK) based on newer mainline Linux kernel versions, with Oracle's own enhancements for OLTP,

InfiniBand InfiniBand (IB) is a computer networking communications standard used in high-performance computing that features very high throughput and very low latency. It is used for data interconnect both among and within computers. InfiniBand is also used ...

SSD A solid-state drive (SSD) is a type of solid-state storage device that uses Integrated circuit, integrated circuits to store data persistence (computer science), persistently. It is sometimes called semiconductor storage device, solid-stat ...

disk access, NUMA-optimizations, Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS), async I/O, OCFS2, Btrfs and networking. Oracle Linux is application binary compatible with RHEL. Oracle claims that existing applications run unchanged because all application interfaces are identical to RHEL. In August 2023, CIQ, Oracle, and SUSE founded Open Enterprise Linux Association
OpenELA
to collaborate on Enterprise Linux as an open source project to provide open and free Enterprise Linux source code. In November 2023, OpenELA publicly release
Enterprise Linux source code
an
achieved important technical and governance milestones

Hardware and software compatibility

Oracle Linux is certified on servers including from

Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, s ...

Dell Dell Inc. is an American technology company that develops, sells, repairs, and supports personal computers (PCs), Server (computing), servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals including printers and webcam ...

, HPE,

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

, and Lenovo. In July 2023, HPE and Supermicro announced Oracle Linux support on their Arm-based servers. Third-party software that ISVs have certified to run on Oracle Linux and Oracle VM can be found in thi
catalog
Oracle/Sun servers with

x86-64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set architecture, instruction set. It was announced in 1999 and first available in the AMD Opteron family in 2003. It introduces two new ope ...

processors can be configured to ship with Oracle Linux. Oracle Linux is available on Amazon EC2 as an Amazon Machine Image, and on Microsoft Windows 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).

Virtualization support

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 adde
KubeVirt
support for unified container and virtual machine management beginning with the 1.7 release.

Container and orchestration support

Linux Containers (LXC) are supported in Oracle Linux 7. Oracle Container Runtime for Docker is available on Oracle Linux 6 and 7. It’s not provided in Oracle Linux 8 or 9. Podman is a drop-in replacement for Oracle Container Runtime for Docker in Oracle Linux 8 and Oracle Linux 9. Podman, Buildah, and Skopeo are a set of tools that you can use to create, run, and manage applications across Oracle Linux systems by using Open Container Initiative (OCI) compatible containers. Oracle Cloud Native Environment has integrated container runtimes to create and provision Open Container Initiative (OCI)-compliant containers using CRI-O, an implementation of the Kubernetes CRI (Container Runtime Interface) to enable using Open Container Initiative compatible runtimes. Oracle Linux Container images are available via Oracle Container Registry, GitHub Container Registry and Docker Hub.

Deployment inside Oracle Corporation

Oracle Corporation uses Oracle Linux extensively within Oracle Public Cloud, internally to lower IT costs. Oracle Linux is deployed on more than 42,000 servers by Oracle Global IT; the SaaS ''Oracle On Demand'' service, Oracle University, and Oracle's technology demo systems also run Oracle Linux. Software developers at Oracle develop

Oracle Database Oracle Database (commonly referred to as Oracle DBMS, Oracle Autonomous Database, or simply as Oracle) is a proprietary multi-model database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation. It is a database commonly used for ru ...

, Fusion Middleware, E-Business Suite and other components of Oracle Applications on Oracle Linux.

Related products

Oracle Linux is used as the underlying operating system for the following appliances. * Oracle Exadata * Oracle Private Cloud Appliance * Oracle Big Data Appliance * Oracle Exalytics * Oracle Database Appliance

Specific additions

Oracle Linux Automation Manager
Is based on open source AWX project, is a task engine and web interface for scheduling and running Ansible playbooks
Oracle Cloud Native Environment
a CNCF certified Kubernetes distribution, is a fully integrated suite for the development and deployment of cloud native applications.
Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager
Is an oVirt-based management tool to configure, monitor, and manage an Oracle Linux KVM-based environment. * Ksplice – Oracle acquired ''Ksplice Inc'' in 2011, and offers Oracle Linux users Ksplice to enable hot kernel patching *

DTrace DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework originally created by Sun Microsystems for troubleshooting kernel and application problems on production systems in real time. Originally developed for Solaris, it has since been released un ...

– As of October 2011, Oracle has begun porting DTrace from Solaris as a Linux kernel module
Oracle Linux Manager
manages the Oracle Linux software lifecycle.

Is a managed service that manages and monitors the updates and patches for Oracle Linux systems through a centralized management console hosted on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Benchmark submissions

Sun Fire systems

In March 2012, Oracle submitted a TPC-C benchmark result using an x86 Sun Fire server running Oracle Linux and Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. With 8

Intel Xeon Xeon (; ) is a brand of x86 microprocessors designed, manufactured, and marketed by Intel, targeted at the non-consumer workstation, server, and embedded markets. It was introduced in June 1998. Xeon processors are based on the same archite ...

processors running Oracle DB 11 R2, the system was benchmarked at handling over 5.06 million tpmC (New-Order transactions per minute while fulfilling TPC-C). The server was rated at the time as the third-fastest TPC-C non-clustered system and the fastest x86-64 non-clustered system. Oracle also submitted a SPECjEnterprise2010 benchmark record using Oracle Linux and

Oracle WebLogic Server Oracle Fusion Middleware (FMW, also known as Fusion Middleware) consists of several software products from Oracle Corporation. FMW spans multiple services, including Java EE and developer tools, integration services, business intelligence, co ...

, and achieved both a single node and an x86 world record result of 27,150 EjOPS (SPECjEnterprise Operation/second).

Cisco UCS systems

Cisco submitted 2 TPC-C benchmark results that run Oracle Linux with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R2 on UCS systems. The UCS systems rank fourth and eighth on the top TPC-C non-clustered list.

SPARC version

In December 2010, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, in response to a question on Oracle's Linux strategy, said that at some point in the future Oracle Linux would run on Oracle's SPARC platforms. At Oracle OpenWorld 2014 John Fowler, Oracle's Executive Vice President for Systems, also said that Linux will be able to run on SPARC at some point. In October 2015, Oracle released a Linux reference platform for SPARC systems based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. In September 2016, Oracle released information about an upcoming product, Oracle Exadata SL6-2, a database server using SPARC processors running Linux. On 31 March 2017, Oracle posted the first public release of Oracle Linux for SPARC, installable on SPARC T4, T5, M5, and M7 processors. The release notes state that the release is being made available "for the benefit of developers and partners", but is only supported on Exadata SL6 hardware.

Software updates and version history

In March 2012, Oracle announced free software updates and errata for Oracle Linux on Oracle's public yum repositories. In September 2013, Oracle announced that each month its free public yum servers handle 80 TB of data, and the switch to the Akamai

content delivery network A content delivery network (CDN) or content distribution network is a geographically distributed network of proxy servers and their data centers. The goal is to provide high availability and performance ("speed") by distributing the service spat ...

to handle the traffic growth.

Release history

* Oracle Linux 10 Developer Preview * Oracle Linux 9, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4, 9.5, 9.6 * Oracle Linux 8, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5, 8.6, 8.7, 8.8, 8.9 * Oracle Linux 7, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, 7.6, 7.7, 7.8, 7.9 * Oracle Linux 6, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, 6.6, 6.7, 6.8, 6.9, 6.10 * Oracle Linux 5, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 5.7, 5.8, 5.9, 5.10, 5.11 * Oracle Enterprise Linux 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8, 4.9 Oracle Linux uses a version-naming convention identical to that of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (e.g. the first version, Oracle Linux 4.5, is based on RHEL 4.5). They have slightly different support lifecycles.

Support period

Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux

Oracle announced on 24 September 2014 Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux. In October 2020, Oracle deprecated support for and ceased releasing OpenStack software.

References

External links

* * {{Use dmy dates, date=February 2020 Enterprise Linux distributions Oracle software RPM-based Linux distributions X86-64 Linux distributions Linux distributions