On Sat, 9 Nov 2013, Avi Miller <avi.miller@gmail.com> wrote:
Oracle has a much simpler support structure: our binaries, updates and errata are all free to download and distribute. We provide a public yum service at http://public-yum.oracle.com (which is delivered via Akamai). This makes Oracle Linux the only Enterprise distribution that can be distributed by an ISV/IHV at no cost, which makes it excellent for appliances. We also don't have limitations on virtual guests. If you have a support subscription for the physical machine (and you only need one), you can run as many guests as you can cram onto the hardware. :)
We also provide a bunch of additional tools at no cost: Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control is free to download and use to provision, patch, manage, monitor and alert on your Oracle Linux fleet, Oracle Clusterware support is included, Oracle OCFS2 clustered filesystem is included, XFS support is included with Premier support subscriptions (but the software is included regardless). So, all the bits you need to pay Red Hat or SUSE extra for, we include at no cost.
This is all really good, but it would be nice if it wasn't such a major PITA to get to the download. https://login.oracle.com/mysso/signon.jsp From that public-yum address you gave I get to the above page which wants me to register or sign up. Early this month (before I started this thread on luv-main) I tried to do that. I tried to create a new account which was a horrible process, the Javascript was really slow making my Q8400 system running Chromium too slow to keep up with my normal typing speed. Then when I got to the end it told me that my account was already registered - presumably from years ago. I went through the password reset process but got no email, maybe SpamAssassin didn't like it or maybe it didn't re-send afer grey-listing. CentOS and Debian are much easier, you just download and start work. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/