Oracle works better with Windows or Linux? give your answer based on your experience.

Question

In most cases i am used ti work with Windows, some weeks ago i started to work with Oracle, i have experience with other DBMS like SQL and MySql and I have worked with them in Windows. Now i am learning Oracle and i dont know in which OS oracle works better. I have installed it in windows but not in Linux. Also i downloaded the Oracle Enterprise Linux which is an Linux OS for Oracle (similar with RedHat). I want to know if this is the only one Linux OS where Oracle can be installed or we can install Oracle even in RedHat, Ubuntu etc. Also if some one has experience with this issue please let us know in which os Oracle works better. I am confused with this problem and an answer from some profesional DBA will be very help full for me.

Kind regards

Answer 1

At our company, we administer dozens of databases. They are split pretty much 50/50 between Windows servers and *nix (UNIX or Linux). Both of which are running significant applications (health and financial sectors). I suppose it's a matter of personal preference (and licensing fees!). You should be safe going with either. Note that Oracle Enterprise Linux is pretty much a re-packaged version of Red Hat. If you want to try a Red Hat derivative out for cheap free, try CentOS. However, CentOS is not officially supported by Oracle.

Answer 2

You can install Oracle on any flavour of Linux. There's just a version that comes in RPM (RedHat Package Manager) for easy installation. For other variants, the installation is slightly more manual.

The other thing I'll mention is that unless you need the full-blown Oracle, just stick with Oracle XE (Express Edition). You can actually use that one commercially within the limitations (eg I think it only uses one core and up to 4GB of data). But for Windows in particular it comes with an easy installation process and HTML based admin tools (somewhat similar to MySQLAdmin).

For high end platforms, Linux/Unix tends to be preferred over Windows but that's probably not an issue for you. If you're just developing and aren't yet comfortable with Oracle, make it as easy on yourself as possible and stick with Windows and Oracle XE.

My experience has been that we've only ever used Windows as a server platform because we've had to (eg to run SQL Server, Exchange or whatever), not because we've wanted to. This applies equally well to Oracle where every Oracle installation I've ever used has been on Solaris or a Linux variant (primarily Red Hat but also Ubuntu).

The cost of the operating system is only reason to do this.

Answer 3

In my experience, the main issues with Oracle on Windows are a result of Windows file locking. For example, if the database was running and the data files for Oracle were locked by another process (i.e. a file system backup agent), we've had occurrences where the file has become corrupt.

Unix/Linux on the other hand doesn't seem to have those issues (according to our DBA).

In general, I've had no major issues with Oracle on a Windows Platform if steps are taken to ensure files are not locked by other processes. We now use RMAN to perform online backups and exclude all Oracle data files from the file system backup. It has been very stable for over 2 years now.

Answer 4

I my last work, we migrate from windows to OpenSuse 11.

I spend a day in the instalation process (4 hours only to make appear the first screen of the oracle setup) but now the users confirm me that the time of all the querys are now better, so I recomend it.

Answer 5

When I was working in Development + Support for Oracle (albeit over 7 years ago now), everything I was aware of ran on Solaris. I understand that they now run a Solaris/Linux mix.

I would expect that Oracle would chose the most suitable O/S to run their own systems to run on....

Answer 6

So who can tell us which version of Oracle 11 is for linux, since i want to install Oracle on RedHat it will be good if some one let me know what is the Oracle version for Linux (redhat). Also it will be good if i have some link where it shows step by step Oracle installation on redhat. Thanks for your answer. You helped me to make the decision in which os to run Oracle.

Answer 7

Here you can download the Oracle 11 instalation files for linux. 32 and bits are available. RedHat is one of the easiest distros for installing oracle, but there are some differences between the different versions of RedHat (and the different versions of Fedora core too) so search for the right "step by step" document of you don't have any experience in the setup process.

http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/index.html

Good Luck ;)

Answer 8

will you also be the DBA? Or is it a case of developing an app that will hit Oracle and somebody else has to worry of administration duties?

If it is the former, then you'd get up and running faster with Oracle on windows.

If the latter, then go with Oracle on linux. You'll have to get used to the command line but once you do it will be much easier and more powerful to administer your db on linux. The day to day tasks in keeping it running smoothly, archiving data, importing data - all of it is made easier through the command line.

We have over 100 servers to administer on my team, a mix of SQL, Sybase and Oracle on windows and unix variants. Oracle on linux gives us the least amount of problems by far.

Answer 9

here are some good reference on installing oracle on linux.

http://www.oracle-base.com/articles/10g/Articles10g.php#DB10gInstallations

http://www.oracle-base.com/articles/11g/Articles11g.php#db11g_release_1_installations

Answer 10

ORACLE can be installed on linux ....but it does not support rhel 4.....it should be rhel 5

Answer 11

I think as long as the platform is supported by Oracle, there probably won't be much of a difference. However, if you need to scale - like really, really big - nothing is going to compare to Solaris. Not too many companies need that, though.

Answer 12

We run Oracle instance on both Windows and Linux in our shop, and Oracle is definitely more responsive on Linux than Windows. I run Oracle XE locally and I had to move over to Linux because on Windows Oracle crippled my machine.

We've also run into issues with SSL connections with Oracle running on Windows. The network traffic is at least 20x slower with SSL on Windows (frequently resulting in application hangs) than on Linux.

Answer 13

I've experienced Oracle installations on both Windows and Linux, all of them work as expected. Technically, you can install Oracle on almost every version of Linux, but if you want official support, you have to stick to Oracle's list of supported distros.

Answer 14

I've used Oracle on both for several years. I prefer Linux because:

1. Oracle releases patches, new versions, and sometimes security updates for Linux significantly before they are available for Windows - there's usually about a two month lag for Windows.
2. Our Windows servers have crashed or locked up occasionally, and very frequently require reboots for patch installation. Oracle itself stays up very nicely, but Oracle can't keep running on a machine that is down. This hasn't been a problem for me on Linux.
3. Oracle's interaction with Vista's User Access Control is a nightmare. I'm constantly finding that the dedicated Oracle user account, which was used to install Oracle, nonetheless lacks permission to edit or even see Oracle-generated files - like newly generated logfiles. It could be that I'm making some mistake, but permissions shouldn't be confusing; and on Linux, they aren't. (Most servers don't run Vista, but I'm afraid of what this forebodes for future versions of Windows Server.)
4. Thanks to the Windows Registry, cleanly removing an installation of Oracle from Windows is tricky and tedious. The Oracle Installer has gotten better at this since version 10g, though.
5. Better tools. Linux find is infinitely better than any native Windows search tool. Also, Oracle uses and generates plenty of plain-text files, and Linux comes with better tools for handling text files - good text editors (unlike Notepad), shell commands like grep. You can try to catch Windows up by installing Geanie, Cygwin, Google Desktop, etc. on a Windows machine, but it's better not to have to (especially since Cygwin installation is not completely newbie-friendly).

I can only think of one Windows advantage over Linux:

1. In Oracle's command-line tools like sqlplus, rman, etc., you can scroll through and re-run past commands using the up- and down- arrow keys - but only on Windows. You can fix this on Linux by installing rlwrap and always invoking the Oracle tools under rlwrap: "rlwrap sqlplus me/mypassword@myinstance".