How about asking Oracle? [LWN.net]

How about asking Oracle?

Posted May 15, 2003 16:34 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722)
Parent article: Where are the Linux laptops?

Linux is now Oracle's suggested platform (Red Hat Advanced Server, in particular). Oracle uses it for the databases they host for other companies, and suggests it to customers who are intending to get a new database server (we had some Oracle sales people visit our company recently). They've gotten Dell to produce server machines certified for Red Hat and Oracle, so that you can just go out and buy Oracle's preferred hardware and software platform. This probably means that, if you're an Oracle user (or your company is, and many big companies are) and you do database development (or demo a product on the road) and want a Linux laptop, you should ask Oracle to get Dell to build a suitable one. You probably can't get exactly the distribution you want, but you should be able to get one where all the hardware is supported.

One of the Oracle sales guys we talked to said that he'd personally demoed the latest Oracle on a Linux laptop to a potential customer. It was running queries on the site's full data set which (on the site's server at the time, a different commercial database) took hours in realtime. Oracle really likes Linux, Oracle sales really likes laptops, and Dell cares a lot what Oracle thinks. So Dell knows what they're doing building laptops for Linux, even if they don't admit it to the general public.

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