“The positioning that has allowed Linux to become accepted by
the corporate computing world has largely been that of the
single-function server.”
“So it is entirely in character for Red Hat to deliver a new
version of Linux specifically optimised for a particular purpose,
and entirely understandable in commercial terms that it should
chose Oracle8i. Oracle8i has a very high penetration in the
Linux environment (as well as most other environments) and the
specific demands that a dbms makes on the operating environment
mean that this is where there is most to gain. It is unclear,
though, how specific the enhancements are to the Oracle
product.”
“Now that we have a lightweight operating system that is capable
of delivering the performance and functionality of proprietary Unix
implementations we should seriously consider the viability of a
shrink-wrapped database appliance. … Perhaps one of the other
large dbms vendors could be cheeky enough to take Oracle’s idea and
deliver an appliance kit that can be implemented on a number of
platforms?”