Yesterday Oracle announced the release of their own version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, simply called Enterprise Linux or 'Unbreakable Linux'. In a remarkably similar move to such projects as CentOS, Oracle have decided to remove all Red Hat specific trademarks and brand it as their own (all quite legit, of course).

They will be supplying bugfixes for this new version, and will also be synchronising it with future releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We decided to take a peek at what Oracle had come up with. Read on for a first-look, and the Linux Format team's opinions...

Installation

With no Red Hats or Fedoras present, the Enterprise Linux splash screen appears, along with the uber-corporate Oracle logo. Hit Enter to start the install process and go to the initial text-based screens so commonly found in Fedora/Red Hat distros. Star Trek fans may shiver when they notice that it is simply referred to as Enterprise during the first text-based screens. (Click the following screenshots for full-size versions.)

It would also seem that Oracle are very keen on the penguin, giving him a suit of armour and biceps that Popeye would be proud of. Clicking through the options contained in Anaconda, all is pretty much the same as RHEL, with the obvious exception of the Oracle branding. There is one thing that gives away the roots of Enterprise Linux. When you are prompted about the discs that you need you'll notice that it asks for Disc1AS and Disc2AS, revealing that this distro is based upon Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS.

Once the installation process finishes (it took about 15 minutes to install the Personal Desktop option) the system reboots and you get your first taste of Oracle Linux. It's pink... bright shining pink, which wouldn't look out of place in someone's handbag. Not to worry, as being Unbreakable you probably won't be seeing much of the Grub screen.

Up2date is still being used, this time to connect to the Unbreakable Linux Network rather than RHN. Oracle will charge you $99 a year for access to software and updates regardless of the number of CPUs in your system. This isn't such a bad deal if you are in business, although this does not include any direct support from Oracle.

But more on the support later. Let's have a look at the distro itself. On the face of it there are pretty much no changes to Enterprise Linux to make it different from Red Hat Enterprise Linux, with the obvious exception of the look and feel. All of the system-config tools are there, including system-config-network and the long-hated system-config-packages.

One thing it serves to do is highlight the advances made by Fedora and the wider Linux community. RHEL 4 is 18 months old already, and there have been huge gains in usability, especially through the advancement of Gnome. Frankly, releasing Enterprise Linux at this point in time, when RHEL 5 is just around the corner, is slightly puzzling.

When we first tried to access the internet we were greeted by Mozilla (as if anyone hasn't made the switch to Firefox) and this rather baffling white page:

But when we closed it down and clicked the web icon again, up sprang Firefox with the Firefox/Google homepage.

Also, we didn't seem to have an applications menu, at least one that worked. Every time we opened it we were greeted with a tiny grey block in place of the usual application listings. However, we trudged on and happily used the terminal to launch our programs. Not the best of starts to this Unbreakable Linux then...

Enterprise Linux ships with the same kernel found in RHEL, 2.6.9; specifically, kernel 2.6.9-42.0.0.0.1.EL. Either Oracle are planning to do some major revisions of the kernel for Enterprise Linux or perhaps they got a bit happy with the points.

In short, this could almost be a beta release of Enterprise Linux as it hasn't produced the goods in what is a surprising straight-forward installation.

Benefits?

So what are the benefits of going with Oracle Enterprise Linux? At the moment, considering the weirdness we've had already with the bootloader screen, the applications menu and the Mozilla disappearing act, we'd strongly recommend waiting a few months to let Oracle iron out these bugs.

Having said that, they are strongly pushing the one stop shop solution of Enterprise Linux and Oracle technology. Given that most of Oracle's application stack is certified for use on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, it would make sense for anyone currently deploying Oracle applications and considering a move to Linux to try Oracle's offering.

However, Red Hat have been in the Linux business a long time and are home to some top Linux bods, making their offering rock solid. Also, as Red Hat quite rightly point out there will always be a slight delay for important security fixes to trickle down to Oracle Enterprise Linux as they work to strip out any trademarked items and rebuild each patch.

More importantly though, Oracle are intent on applying bugfixes of their own to Enterprise Linux, something that invalidates any Red Hat support you may have and something that you seriously need to consider.

As mentioned earlier, Oracle provide updates for Enterprise Linux at $99 a year, irrespective of the number of CPUs. If you want access to actual support then the cost goes up to $399 and $999 for two CPUs and unlimited CPUs respectively. Unusually, Oracle are claiming that they will support your operating system indefinitely as part of the Premier Support package which works out at $1199 and $1999. This includes bugfixes for that version as well as support requests and access to software. Not even Red Hat provides this length of support, officially only supporting RHEL for a maximum of seven years.

Our advice? Wait a few months for the dust to settle and then consider a switch to Enterprise Linux.