New SLES-7 patchlevel 2 certification for Oracle 9iR2

Dear SuSE-Oracle users,


SLES-7 porting platform for 9i
------------------------------

SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 7 is already certified for all Oracle 9i 
products automatically since it is still the platform Oracle uses for 
the Linux port.

These certifications are based on the original SLES-7 CDs, i.e. kernel 
2.4.7.


Certification: SLES-7p2 - Oracle 9iR2
=====================================

We have now (tonight, with lots of help from Oracle Ireland) - thanks!) 
successfully completed the certification of the patchlevel 2 for SLES-7, 
  which includes a kernel update to a 2.4.18 based kernel.

Metalink has not been updated yet, this will happen sometime next or the 
following week.

Please note that you can install patches and patchsets without loosing 
certification, only if kernel and/or glibc are updated a 
re-certification is necessary at this point.


Async I/O etc.
--------------

SuSE will support the new Oracle features async I/O and big-pages and 
mapped_base etc. with SLES-8 ("Powered by UnitedLinux").

This is a question of features vs. standards!

It is SuSEs policy to remain 100% compatible to mainstream Linux 
development. The current RHAS kernel that supports those features is not 
100% compatible to current Linux kernel 2.5 development, meaning you 
will not be able to later plugin a 2.6 kernel into RHAS safely! This is 
why SuSE had decided some time ago not to include potentially 
conflicting code into an official SuSE kernel, instead SuSE first made 
sure that the API esp. for async I/O is approved by Linus Torvalds so 
that whatever we include in a SuSE kernel will be compatible with future 
Linux kernel generations. We believe that it is one of the major 
strengths of Linux that you are vendor independent. With an incompatible 
kernel you depend on the company you got it from to maintain it and 
cannot go anywhere else.


UnitedLinux
-----------

SLES-8 will be available for purchase towards the end of this year.

NEW: you will be able to also choose between Connectiva's Linux (esp. 
popular in South America) or Caldera's Linux or TurboLinux' Linux (esp. 
popular in Asia), since all four vendor's Linux's will be 
binary-identical in their core, "Powered by UnitedLinux" 
(www.unitedlinux.org). The project managment for UL and the actual 
production of the binary base is done by SuSE.

For customers this means more choice: You can select the vendor that 
delivers the best service to you, but your OS remain sessentially the 
same, incl. any 3rd party certifications (e.g. Oracle)!

This is what Linux major advantage is, you can keep the same systems and 
technology but you get to choose your partner/vendor. This was supposed 
to happen by making the source code freely available, but in commercial 
computing with "certifications" and exact support requirements based on 
BINARY distributions rather than on source code this promise could not 
be realized.

This is why four Linux vendors founded UnitedLinux (which is open to any 
other Linux vendor who wants to join), to enable this promise in the 
commercial sector as well, so that now customers can really select their 
vendor freely without any restrictions coming from support and 
certification requirements of the application software that would still 
force them to use one particular vendor - open source Linux or not.



Best regards,
Michael Hasenstein
SuSE Inc., Oakland, CA (US)


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