Oracle Linux

Oracle Linux (abbreviated OL, formerly known as Oracle Enterprise Linux or OEL) is a Linux distribution packaged and freely distributed by Oracle, available partially under the GNU General Public License since late 2006. It is compiled from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) source code, replacing Red Hat branding with Oracle's. It is also used by Oracle Cloud and Oracle Engineered Systems such as Oracle Exadata and others.

Potential users can freely download Oracle Linux through Oracle's server, or from a variety of mirror sites, and can deploy and distribute it without cost. The company's Oracle Linux Support program aims to provide commercial technical support, covering Oracle Linux and existing RHEL or CentOS installations but without any certification from the former (i.e. without re-installation or re-boot). Oracle Linux had over 15,000 customers subscribed to the support program.

RHEL compatibility
Oracle Corporation distributes Oracle Linux with two Linux kernels options.


 * Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK) – identical to the kernel shipped in RHEL
 * Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK ) – based on newer mainline Linux kernel versions, with Oracle's own enhancements for OLTP, InfiniBand, SSD disk access, NUMA-optimizations, Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS), async I/O, OCFS2, Btrfs and networking.

Oracle Linux is application binary compatible with RHEL. Oracle claims that existing applications run unchanged because all application interfaces are identical to RHEL.

In August 2023, CIQ, Oracle, and SUSE founded Open Enterprise Linux Association (OpenELA) to collaborate on Enterprise Linux as an open source project to provide open and free Enterprise Linux source code. In November 2023, OpenELA publicly released Enterprise Linux source code and achieved important technical and governance milestones.

Hardware and software compatibility
Oracle Linux is certified on servers including from Cisco. Dell, HPE, IBM, and Lenovo. In July 2023, HPE and Supermicro announced Oracle Linux support on their Arm-based servers.

Third-party software that ISVs have certified to run on Oracle Linux and Oracle VM can be found in this catalog Oracle/Sun servers with x86-64 processors can be configured to ship with Oracle Linux.

Oracle Linux is available on Amazon EC2 as an Amazon Machine Image, and on Microsoft Windows Azure as a VM Image.

Oracle Linux is also available as a Windows app through the Microsoft Store and with the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). 

Virtualization support
The Oracle Linux distribution includes KVM hypervisor and an oVirt-based management tool. Other supported server virtualization solutions are VMware and Xen-based Oracle VM.

Oracle Cloud Native Environment has added KubeVirt support for unified container and virtual machine management beginning with the 1.7 release. https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/post/oracle-cloud-native-environment-17-kubevirt-rook

Container and orchestration support
Linux Containers (LXC) are supported in Oracle Linux 7.

Oracle Container Runtime for Docker is available on Oracle Linux 6 and 7. It’s not provided in Oracle Linux 8 or 9. https://docs.oracle.com/en/operating-systems/oracle-linux/docker/

Podman is a drop-in replacement for Oracle Container Runtime for Docker in Oracle Linux 8 and Oracle Linux 9. Podman, Buildah, and Skopeo are a set of tools that you can use to create, run, and manage applications across Oracle Linux systems by using Open Container Initiative (OCI) compatible containers.

Oracle Cloud Native Environment has integrated container runtimes to create and provision Open Container Initiative (OCI)-compliant containers using CRI-O, an implementation of the Kubernetes CRI (Container Runtime Interface) to enable using Open Container Initiative compatible runtimes.

Oracle Linux Container images are available via Oracle Container Registry, GitHub Container Registry and Docker Hub.

Deployment inside Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation uses Oracle Linux extensively within Oracle Public Cloud, internally to lower IT costs. Oracle Linux is deployed on more than 42,000 servers by Oracle Global IT; the SaaS Oracle On Demand service, Oracle University, and Oracle's technology demo systems also run Oracle Linux.

Software developers at Oracle develop Oracle Database, Fusion Middleware, E-Business Suite and other components of Oracle Applications on Oracle Linux.

Related products
Oracle Linux is used as the underlying operating system for the following appliances.
 * Oracle Exadata
 * Oracle Private Cloud Appliance
 * Oracle Big Data Appliance
 * Oracle Exalytics
 * Oracle Database Appliance

Specific additions

 * Oracle Linux Automation Manager Is based on open source AWX project, is a task engine and web interface for scheduling and running Ansible playbooks
 * Oracle Cloud Native Environment, a CNCF certified Kubernetes distribution, is a fully integrated suite for the development and deployment of cloud native applications.
 * Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager Is an oVirt-based management tool to configure, monitor, and manage an Oracle Linux KVM-based environment.
 * Ksplice – Oracle acquired Ksplice Inc in 2011, and offers Oracle Linux users Ksplice to enable hot kernel patching
 * DTrace – As of October 2011, Oracle has begun porting DTrace from Solaris as a Linux kernel module
 * Oracle Linux Manager manages the Oracle Linux software lifecycle.
 * OS Management Hub Is a managed service that manages and monitors the updates and patches for Oracle Linux systems through a centralized management console hosted on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Sun Fire systems
In March 2012, Oracle submitted a TPC-C benchmark result using an x86 Sun Fire server running Oracle Linux and Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. With 8 Intel Xeon processors running Oracle DB 11 R2, the system was benchmarked at handling over 5.06 million tpmC (New-Order transactions per minute while fulfilling TPC-C ). The server was rated at the time as the third-fastest TPC-C non-clustered system and the fastest x86-64 non-clustered system.

Oracle also submitted a SPECjEnterprise2010 benchmark record using Oracle Linux and Oracle WebLogic Server, and achieved both a single node and an x86 world record result of 27,150 EjOPS (SPECjEnterprise Operation/second).

Cisco UCS systems
Cisco submitted 2 TPC-C benchmark results that run Oracle Linux with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R2 on UCS systems. The UCS systems rank fourth and eighth on the top TPC-C non-clustered list.

SPARC version
In December 2010, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, in response to a question on Oracle's Linux strategy, said that at some point in the future Oracle Linux would run on Oracle's SPARC platforms. At Oracle OpenWorld 2014 John Fowler, Oracle's Executive Vice President for Systems, also said that Linux will be able to run on SPARC at some point.

In October 2015, Oracle released a Linux reference platform for SPARC systems based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

In September 2016, Oracle released information about an upcoming product, Oracle Exadata SL6-2, a database server using SPARC processors running Linux.

On 31 March 2017, Oracle posted the first public release of Oracle Linux for SPARC, installable on SPARC T4, T5, M5, and M7 processors. The release notes state that the release is being made available "for the benefit of developers and partners", but is only supported on Exadata SL6 hardware.

Software updates and version history
In March 2012, Oracle announced free software updates and errata for Oracle Linux on Oracle's public yum repositories. In September 2013, Oracle announced that each month its free public yum servers handle 80 TB of data, and the switch to the Akamai content delivery network to handle the traffic growth.

Release history

 * Oracle Linux 9, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3
 * Oracle Linux 8, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5, 8.6, 8.7, 8.8 8.9
 * Oracle Linux 7, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, 7.6, 7.7, 7.8, 7.9
 * Oracle Linux 6, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, 6.6, 6.7, 6.8, 6.9, 6.10
 * Oracle Linux 5, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 5.7, 5.8, 5.9, 5.10, 5.11
 * Oracle Enterprise Linux 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8, 4.9

Oracle Linux uses a version-naming convention identical to that of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (e.g. the first version, Oracle Linux 4.5, is based on RHEL 4.5). They have slightly different support lifecycles.

Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux
Oracle announced on 24 September 2014 Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux. In October 2020, Oracle deprecated support for and ceased releasing OpenStack software.