Theo Cabrerizo Diem wrote: > I have to install an Oracle (and Progress) databases here ... but a > question remains in my mind ;o) ... In Oracle's website they say that > Oracle is supported only in a few rpm based distros ... > > I know that Oracle <and Progress> run on Debian/Linux ... but what kind > of problem I can expect doing this ? And what kind of solution (other > than installing RedHat) can I try ?
I don't know anything about Oracle and will leave Alex's excellent response answer that. But I have been dealing with the D. vs R. debate at work for a while and will say that for commercial applications you will always be defending your choice of Debian if you choose to make that choice. Fighting the political battles might be your biggest cost. I think it is the right choice. But you need to go into the battle with your eyes open. Most businesses really don't know what to make of free software. Therefore they try to make it fit into their traditional model of commercially purchased non-free software. The concept of buying software fits the traditional purchase model. Red Hat has made a business model of selling free software. It seems to be working for them. Most businesses (non-technical management) equate GNU/Linux with Red Hat. (At least in the US. In Europe it would probably be SuSE.) Therefore you *will* spend time justifying your Debian decision to other people since it is not Red Hat even though Debian is a better technical choice. The larger politics also should not be dismissed. I don't relish the idea that businesses are creating another OS monopoly by specifying a particular version of a particular distribution instead of supporting standards such as the LSB but at least in the EDA/CAD industry this seems to be what the vendors are working toward. That is a bad trend and I don't see any reversal of that trend of thought any time soon. I have yet to find any commercial application that does not run on Debian. One application (rational) needs /usr/tmp symlink to /var/tmp so I know it is an old code base. Another (synopsys) needs an updated termcap-compat library bound to libc6 instead of libc5. Gosh, neither of those are rocket science. Java and icc/ecc are probably the most difficult two things I have found yet to install because their packaging is so bad to begin with. If they were LSB compliant it would be trivial to install those. Sigh. Bob
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