The technology industry has seen rapid changes over the years. The pace of development always puts a question mark on the future of products developed today. Only few products are capable of sustaining themselves for long period of time. Last week, Oracle shared several advances for Oracle Linux that highlight Linux’s ongoing momentum and innovations.

Slackware 1.0 was among the first Linux distributions made available as ‘ready for use’. The installation of this 1993 product required 24 floppy disks. This signaled the beginning of a large cycle of enterprise-oriented development, competitions, commercialization, and the eventual software stacks. Linux now powers the applications and systems of businesses and corporation throughout the world.

It is used in traffic control, banks, and even in nuclear submarines, which highlight its importance in a variety of fields. Oracle database has been running on this operating system since 1998, with the launch of the first distribution of Oracle Linux starting in 2006. Oracle Linux has gained position as one of the top three in the market for Linux server OS, and grew over 80% last year alone.

Oracle Linux

Nearly seven years after its launch, Oracle Linux is consistently powering ahead. Almost 11,000 customers now run Oracle Linux on other hardware. Apart from these customers, there is the Engineered Systems from Oracle, including Database Appliance, Exalytics In-Memory Machine, Big Data Appliance, Exalogic Elastic Cloud, and Exadata Database Machine, all operate on Oracle Linux. The Exa-class systems posted their best quarter yet in the recent fiscal. A huge 1,200 engineered systems had been sold during the fourth quarter.

Customers buying the standard Oracle x86 servers can find support included for Oracle Linux. Apart from this, Oracle also deploys many buyers in Oracle Managed Cloud Services and Oracle Cloud. There are different areas that drive the growth of Oracle Linux, including existing customers who increase server numbers in Oracle Linux support when looking for renewal. The company is also converting its RHEL or Red Hat Enterprise Linux users.

Linux Kernel

You can find RHL kernel which is included in RHEL, and also Oracle’s own Unbreakable Linux Kernel (UEK) that uses the latest Linux 2.x kernel. Oracle offers equal support to buyers of both the offers, whether they keep on using the total compatibility of stock kernel, or go for UEK. Many of the engineered systems from Oracle run on UEK. Oracle Linux users now have to chance to run the stuff which Oracle runs on its high performance systems on non-engineered systems hardware as well.

Ksplice

Apart from UEK, Oracle also gives Ksplice updating technology to customers. Ksplice has been integrated into the sustaining and support teams at Oracle. In places where clients have to find the source of a problem that causes downtime in very important systems, Oracle can provide a zero downtime online Ksplice patch, which can be applied, and used to gather data without downtime.

Wherever a patch is available, Oracle automatically applies it to the system and fixes it online. This type of service is unique in the industry and helps Oracle in customer adoption for software.

Oracle Linux 5, 6 and 7

Oracle Linux was initially based on RHEL 5, which has now been updated to version 7, from version 6 in building. Most of the servers are using version 5 while most of the hardware has been updated to version 6. Version 7 is expected to be based on the same model as past products. Newer versions usually take a long time in releasing as they go through rigorous testing process.

Oracle Linux in action

Oracle has continued to work on delivering Linux innovations in a timely fashion to the market, providing users with a scalable, high-performance, and reliable platform for their critical business workloads. A new example of Oracle Linux in operation is SEI, which is a provider of fund processing, investment management, and investment processing business outsourcing solutions. This company uses Oracle Linux, and other products like Oracle Database, Oracle WebLogic Suite, Oracle Coherence, Real Application Clusters, and Enterprise Manager, in the latest SEI Wealth Platform that provides wealth management solutions to financial firms like banks, investment firms, etc.

Saleforce.com is also planning to work on Oracle Linux, announced during its recent partnership with Oracle last month. Oracle also plans to make the operating system available for Windows Azure users according to an agreement with Microsoft; Dell has recently named Oracle as a preferred partner for enterprise infrastructure for the OS through an increased alliance between the corporations. There has been a consistent growth of more than 50% in the third-party applications that can operate on Oracle Linux.