ERP Associates, Inc.

I guess Oracle Open World had a few surprises this year. Probably the biggest were Oracle's Linux announcements. Off the top of my head, they were:

1) Oracle would start supporting Red Hat Linux at rates cheaper than Red Hat, and provide fixes for current and prior releases.
2) Oracle would start distributing their own Enterprise Linux
3) Oracle would provide legal indemnification for Linux users

All of these things seemed to put Redhat in Oracle's crosshairs, who would have had a bad week anyway with the new Microsoft/Novell agreement and all. My hat is off to Redhat who made Linux successful enough for the world's biggest software companies to target their business. Well done! To see Redhat's responses to these new threats, check out Redhat's home page.

So what is Enterprise Linux? According to Oracle,

Enterprise Linux is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. Enterprise Linux conforms fully with the upstream vendors redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (Enterprise Linux mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork.)

You can download Enterprise Linux from http://edelivery.oracle.com/linux. You have to agree to some things that aren't necessarily in the GNU Public License before you even get to the download. Here are some of the things you'll have to accept:

We are willing to provide a copy of the Enterprise Linux programs to you only upon the condition that you accept all of the terms contained in this Agreement.

In case you're wondering who owns Enterprise Linux, this should clear it up (or not):

Ownership. The Enterprise Linux programs and their components and the Additional Enterprise Linux programs are owned by Oracle or the relevant third party. Subject to the licenses granted and/or referenced herein, title to the Enterprise Linux programs and their components and the Additional Enterprise Linux programs remains with Oracle and/or the third party, as appropriate.

Can you distribute this thing according to the terms in the GNU General Public License? Maybe, but first read this:

No Trademark License. This agreement does not permit you to distribute the Enterprise Linux programs or Additional Enterprise Linux programs using Oracle's or its affiliates' trademarks.
...
Certain files ... include such trademarks; therefore, in order to avoid infringement, you will need to modify those files to remove the relevant marks before distribution. Do not delete these files, as deletion may corrupt the Enterprise Linux programs or Additional Enterprise Linux programs.

OK, but you should be able to use it on as many servers in your enterprise as you like as long as you don't redistribute it. But don't expect me to seed a torrent download from my web site any time soon because I don't want to get sued by Oracle -- and because it's completely unnecessary.

Once nice thing about Enterprise Linux is that you can download it quickly from a Oracle's dedicated eDelivery servers free of charge -- no torrents necessary. This alone would be enough to make me switch from most other distributions. Once you download all of the files and unzip them to their iso files, you can burn them to CD and boot from the CD's you created.

I didn't have a spare machine and I hate dual boot, so I decided to install it to a virtual machine running under Windows Virtual Server 2005 R2. I know VMWare is better for Linux and all that, but my VMWare server license expired and I've been too lazy to get a new one.

Overall the install process was much improved since I last installed Mandrake Linux on my 64-bit AMD processor a couple of years back. I especially liked the automatic disk partitioning and more intuitive interface to select packages. I did find a reference to RedHat in one install screen, but maybe the RedHat lawyers won't notice.

Anyway, the install process went off without a hitch. The system rebooted, and I completed the final configuration steps. It rebooted again, and when it came back the display was so wacked out that I couldn't read a friggin thing. Turns out I should have selected thousands of colors instead of millions of colors. But I can't complain too much -- what do you expect when you're creating the unholy combination of Linux running under Microsoft Virtual Server?

After installing Microsoft's Virtual Machine Additions for Linux, my new Virtual Machine was looking like a million bucks. I fired up Firefox, browsed to a few web sites, etc.

I can't wait to install an Oracle DB, OAS, Tuxedo, and PeopleSoft Enterprise it. I'll let you know how it goes.

If you're interested in a few pictures, check out the screenshot slideshow, which works great with FireFox but may not work with IE7.