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Amazon Linux vs Oracle Solaris comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
4.7
Amazon Linux saves costs and boosts efficiency with free use, AWS integration, predictable updates, and faster instance launches.
Sentiment score
4.6
Oracle Solaris offers high ROI with stability, integration, reduced downtime, performance boosts, and cost benefits, enhancing operational efficiency.
With Amazon Linux, selecting and launching instances on a public cloud provider means the machine spins up in fewer than ten seconds, making it efficient.
Cloud Solution Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
One great feature is LTS, which is long-term support provided by Amazon itself.
Senior AWS Consultant at Quantum Integrators
We saved 30% in terms of the cloud infrastructure.
Level 2 Software Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
In terms of ROI, there have been performance improvements because Oracle Solaris is lighter.
CIO at Clarinox Technologies
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.3
Amazon Linux support is praised for expertise, 24/7 availability, clear guidance, though some suggest improvements in response times.
Sentiment score
4.6
Oracle Solaris support is 24/7, efficient yet sometimes slow, with helpful tools and mixed user ratings on effectiveness.
Amazon has the best expertise and they are available 24/7.
Senior AWS Consultant at Quantum Integrators
Timely and helpful responses for performance, updates, or AWS integration issues.
QA Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
It offers specific advantages and constraints depending on the use case.
Cloud Architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
The technical support by Oracle is good.
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.6
Amazon Linux ensures efficient scalability with AWS infrastructure, offering quick boot times and reliable performance for managing workload demands.
Sentiment score
6.1
Oracle Solaris excels in scalable performance, efficiently handling extensive workloads with robust file systems and virtualization, despite hardware dependencies.
The beauty here is that we can scale it immediately, which also saves cost.
Senior AWS Consultant at Quantum Integrators
The scalability of Amazon Linux is very good; we run it on top of scalable EC2 instances, and we do not find any issues there.
Senior Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Amazon Linux is highly scalable because it allows for EC2 instances to scale up and down based on what you want.
Enterprise Cloud Operations Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Regarding vertical scalability, Oracle Solaris is probably one of the most scalable operating systems in the industry.
System specialist at Savecore
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Amazon Linux is praised for stability, reliable performance, and smooth updates, ensuring secure, dependable operations with minimal downtime.
Sentiment score
8.2
Oracle Solaris is highly stable and secure, with rare crashes and minimal disruptions, making it ideal for reliable operations.
Combined with AWS managed infrastructure, it provides enterprise-grade reliability suitable for production workloads.
Software Engineer at Bounteous
My applications had a high availability (HA) environment, so even when one availability zone was down, traffic moved to a different availability zone without any issues.
Senior AWS Consultant at Quantum Integrators
We evaluated Amazon Linux, and it is very stable.
Senior Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon Linux users desire improved integration, support, resources, compatibility, packaging, documentation, flexibility, security, and customization options beyond AWS usage.
Oracle Solaris needs improvements in hardware support, GUI, training, cost reduction, integration, package management, and open-source tool support.
Documentation explaining the differences between Ubuntu and Amazon Linux would be valuable.
full stack developer at 71Lbs
Since we are working in a real-time manner and need to scale things immediately, the time it takes to boot an instance and then deploy things is preventing me from giving it a perfect rating.
Level 2 Software Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
My advice for others looking into using Amazon Linux is to make sure the command line is easy and that Amazon Linux has more performance than other Linux environments and is more secure than other Linux environments as well.
DevOps Engineer at Wissen infotech
The firewall must be more capable because security is the main concern of every organization and every user.
Head Of IT at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oracle Solaris needs to improve its compatibility with office tools like Excel.
CIO at Clarinox Technologies
Oracle is going to discontinue it, so I do not think any improvement is possible in Oracle Solaris.
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
 

Setup Cost

Amazon Linux provides cost-effective, license-free pricing with scalable instances and Graviton support, simplifying cloud expense management.
Enterprise users find Oracle Solaris pricing complex; it's beneficial for performance but costly compared to Linux, with desired pricing improvements.
With Amazon Linux itself, there is no cost associated with using it, so I would say it is very good from a pricing perspective.
Enterprise Cloud Operations Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
If I am a new AWS customer, the AWS Free Tier typically includes, for the first six months, micro instances such as t2.micro or t3.micro for free.
Software Engineer at Bounteous
I am paying around $300 to $400 per month because I use many services.
Software Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
I find the pricing of Oracle Solaris to be affordable compared to competitors like Windows.
CIO at Clarinox Technologies
 

Valuable Features

Amazon Linux excels in AWS integration, security, performance, and efficiency, making it ideal for reliable cloud-native infrastructure.
Oracle Solaris offers superior virtualization, security, performance, ZFS features, and seamless Oracle integration, praised for stability and reliability.
Amazon Linux handles this automatically. It is optimized for EC2, AWS hardware and software, mostly secure and stable, and there is no additional cost.
Senior AWS Consultant at Quantum Integrators
In terms of service security, there are many constraint security protocols and policies that help me create our own networks, security groups, and inline policies.
Software Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Amazon Linux's security updates have been helpful in general because I have had to be more specific in using the Identity Access Management (IAM) service so that we can have role-based permissions in preference to just keeping it open.
Independent Contractor at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The operating system is lightweight, which makes it easier to use on an average computer compared to systems like Windows.
CIO at Clarinox Technologies
Additionally, regarding security, you do not have to implement any antivirus software.
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
Oracle introduced a GUI environment with Solaris 11.5.
Head Of IT at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Linux
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Oracle Solaris
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
15th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of Amazon Linux is 0.6%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Solaris is 2.0%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon Linux0.6%
Oracle Solaris2.0%
Other97.4%
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

SAURAB K GANGURDE - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior AWS Consultant at Quantum Integrators
“Amazon Linux delivers automated security updates— including live kernel patching in AL2023—ensuring protected workloads with minimal manual effort and zero-downtime patching.”
One improvement for Amazon Linux would be stronger support for running it outside AWS. Although Amazon provides local VM images for VirtualBox and VMware, they are intended mainly for development and testing. Unlike Ubuntu, Debian, or Red Hat, Amazon Linux is not designed or fully supported as a production OS in on-prem or hybrid environments. Expanding official support outside AWS would offer more flexibility for teams that maintain mixed infrastructure. Another area for improvement is the community ecosystem. Compared to Ubuntu or Red Hat, Amazon Linux has a smaller community and fewer third-party resources or tutorials. A larger ecosystem would make troubleshooting and adoption easier. Finally, improving backward compatibility between Amazon Linux 2 and Amazon Linux 2023—especially around package management (DNF vs yum) and updated toolchains—would simplify upgrades for teams managing large fleets.
Shafiq Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of IT at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Long-term server platform has supported secure banking operations and simplified virtualization
Oracle Solaris is a very good operating system. Most of the time, we do not need to change or replace any configuration. If at any point in time we need to change something, it is really simple and a user-friendly environment. Although it is a CLI, Oracle introduced a GUI environment with Solaris 11.5. Currently, 11.5 has the operating system GUI as well as the CLI. The technical persons working on the operating system most of the time prefer to work on the CLI. It is actually really good and easy to use. As it is a server-level operating system, most of the time you do not need any extra features in the operating system because you are not using the operating system on home machines, desktops, or laptop machines. The extra features are not needed if we are talking about the enterprise level or an official operating system.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise32
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon Linux?
Amazon Linux could be improved by including libraries for supervisor. On Ubuntu, supervisor runs Django services in the background, while Amazon Linux does not have this built-in and requires a dif...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Linux?
My main use case for Amazon Linux is deploying Django websites, apps, and APIs with Next.js. I handle deployment using Nginx and manage the complete setup for deploying full projects. A specific ex...
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon Linux?
My advice to others looking into using Amazon Linux would be to be conscious about the differences between Amazon Linux and Ubuntu, as they look similar and have similar properties, but they need t...
How does Oracle Linux compare with Solaris?
When comparing Oracle Linux and Solaris, I believe that Linux is more secure and more flexible. It is also very suitable for enterprises that are already Oracle solution users. I found Linux to be ...
What do you like most about Oracle Solaris?
We use the solution as an internal operating system.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Solaris?
I find the pricing of Oracle Solaris to be affordable compared to competitors like Windows.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Solaris 11, Solaris
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Siemens, IVV
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Linux vs. Oracle Solaris and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.