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Why do servers and supercomputers primarily run on Linux and not on some Microsoft/Apple/Google/Amazon OS? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/linux@lemmy.world
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Most servers around the world run Linux. The same goes for almost all supercomputers. That's astonishing in a capitalist world where absolutely everything is commodified. Why can't these big tech companies manage to sell their own software to server operators or supercomputers? Why is an open, free project that is free for users so superior here?

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[–] 2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

Nobody runs AWS in their data center, but lots of people have a humongous and ancient oracle database or two running. Oracle Linux was forked from RHEL in the mid 2000s for this use-case.

I never had any interest in it because it didn't make sense to run Oracle Linux for the DB and some other distro on everything else, so we went with a more mainstream enterprise distro we could use for everything.

After they acquired Ksplice and ruined it for everyone else they have a better value proposition for it, since now they're the only ones who can patch kernel vulnerabilities without rebooting.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    Nobody runs AWS in their data center,

    Well, that's exactly what the AWS Outpost product does. Oracle has the same type of product for OCI called Cloud@Customer. This is on-prem equipment that runs the cloud vendor's hypervisor along with integration into CSP.

    Oracle Linux was forked from RHEL in the mid 2000s for this use-case.

    While you're right about its origins, and options for bare metal use, in addition to that Oracle has evolved it to be their "free but supported" enterprise grade Linux for VMs running in OCI, just as AWS does with Amazon Linux.

    I never had any interest in it because it didn’t make sense to run Oracle Linux for the DB and some other distro on everything else, so we went with a more mainstream enterprise distro we could use for everything.

    I completely agree with your approach for on-prem deployments. However, for OCI VMs its a compelling case to use Oracle Linux when there's no licensing costs compared to RHEL or SLES while still being an Enterprise supported OS.

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