Oracle Solaris vs Rocky Linux comparison

Read 10 Rocky Linux reviews

12,000 Views
12,000 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Oracle Solaris

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 7, 2024

Oracle Solaris and Rocky Linux are robust operating systems competing in the enterprise and community-driven markets. Oracle Solaris appears to have an advantage in security and scalability, while Rocky Linux excels in community support and adaptability.

Features: Oracle Solaris offers strong security protocols, advanced file systems, and seamless integration with Oracle hardware. Rocky Linux provides flexibility, compatibility with CentOS, and regular updates driven by community feedback.

Room for Improvement: Oracle Solaris could improve compatibility with non-Oracle environments, develop more intuitive management tools, and address cost concerns. Rocky Linux needs more streamlined updates, better documentation, and improved update management.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Oracle Solaris is praised for robust customer support and structured deployment processes but has complex deployment. Rocky Linux is easier to deploy due to comprehensive guides and active community support, though it lacks formalized customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Oracle Solaris entails higher upfront costs and licensing fees justified by its enterprise-grade features. Rocky Linux, being open-source, offers a cost-effective alternative with potentially higher ROI due to lower initial investment.

To learn more, read our detailed Oracle Solaris vs. Rocky Linux Report (Updated: September 2025).

Oracle Solaris vs. Rocky Linux

Download the complete report

Helped 868,759 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Oracle Solaris

Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business

10th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Rocky Linux

Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business

4th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of Oracle Solaris is 1.9%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rocky Linux is 14.3%, up from 12.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Operating Systems (OS) for Business Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Rocky Linux	14.3%
Oracle Solaris	1.9%
Other	83.8%

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

Featured Reviews

Prabir Kumar Kundu

SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd

Experience robust performance and security for large organizations

For big organizations who look for performance, better security, and better manageability, I usually recommend Oracle Solaris. It is not recommended for smaller organizations because you need a specialized person to manage this operating system. Linux can be managed by anybody. However, maintaining Oracle Solaris, creating clusters, and tuning at the OS level needs a specialized resource. Smaller organizations may not have those resources, or it will be too costly for them to maintain. Everybody is moving towards the cloud. I am not sure how they are going to do that because it is going to be a dead product already compared to its competitors. I would recommend Oracle Linux instead of Oracle Solaris now. On a scale of 1-10, I rate Oracle Solaris a 9.

Read full review

Massimiliano Adamo

Linux architect at European Commission

Has supported seamless migrations and enabled running complex data workloads securely

The best features Rocky Linux offers include clustering and all the packages from Red Hat.Rocky Linux has impacted my organization very positively because we migrated everything from CentOS and Windows servers to Rocky Linux. Everything is clear, with good packaging, and now it's version 9.6, which is very important for us due to security problems since we are in Europe. Rocky Linux is very good for security and other aspects. Since migrating to Rocky Linux, I've seen specific outcomes such as improved security because CentOS stopped the project, and security patches aren't being released. We need to maintain a system similar to Red Hat, which is very stable and has many features such as file system, topology, and containers.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It stands out for its exceptional stability."

"Solaris is scalable because they have their own file system, like CFS."

"One of the main advantages is the rock-solid reliability. It works. The stability is very good. It has a very good track record in the data security database."

"The backup capabilities are quite good."

"Solaris' best feature is its stability."

"The product's most valuable feature is partitioning resources and optimizing hardware utilization effectively."

"If I talk about the Oracle Solaris platform, it is a very robust system; when you run the database, it will run as intended."

"The most valuable feature of Oracle Solaris is the incremental backup that happens in the system."

More Oracle Solaris pros

"It's very simple to work with, easy to learn, and know where things are."

"The solution is free and open source."

"The custom install scripts streamline the setup process, making it straightforward."

"I haven't needed to use customer service or support, which speaks volumes about their product's reliability and ease of use."

"Rocky Linux has impacted my organization very positively because we migrated everything from CentOS and Windows servers to Rocky Linux, everything is clear, with good packaging, and now it's version 9.6, which is very important for us due to security problems since we are in Europe."

"It helps us keep our workstations in sync and ensures consistent settings across most of our machines."

"In my opinion, the best features Rocky Linux offers are stability, compatibility, and community support, all of which I think are extremely necessary and essential for the distribution, and I find that all three pillars are very supported by Rocky Linux."

"Rocky Linux provides us with extended maintenance, security patches, and support lifecycle aligned with RHEL, making it highly reliable for critical systems."

More Rocky Linux pros

Cons

"Oracle Solaris needs to improve its compatibility with office tools like Excel."

"One of the drawbacks is Oracle itself. Oracle has its good and bad they are not putting resources into the development."

"Currently, there are two variants, there's SPARC and there's x86. I would have wanted a scenario where they're all just one product."

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux is more secure and better documented. So Oracle could learn from them when it comes to security and documentation."

"I would love to see improvements in SVM, so file systems could be increased or migrated without downtime to the environment, similar to what ZFS is capable of."

"The solution is pricey and can be improved by lowering the cost."

"I don't want to receive any updates on Oracle"

"More monitoring tools could be included in the product."

More Oracle Solaris cons

"In terms of improvement, Rocky Linux needs to clarify its identity and target audience."

"The package versions can be quite older compared to other distributions such as Ubuntu."

"The solution's audio integration for virtual machines could be improved."

"One of the potential issues is that if you don't pay for support, you may need to manage certain aspects on your own and rely on the community for assistance."

"Improved integration with Windows, particularly Active Directory, would be beneficial for the product. Currently, this aspect requires additional effort."

"I see some performance-related issues, but we are still checking on that, and we don't know if it is related to the OS or the resource; that is something still to be checked from our end."

"Rocky Linux could be improved by having more integration with Kubernetes."

"I have certain problems with the tool's DNS part, making it an area where improvements are required."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The current setup with hardware devices involves a higher cost, but the performance is top-notch."

"The solution is expensive and is based on an annual fee."

"There is no OS licensing cost if you use their hardware and purchase hardware maintenance."

"Solaris is highly priced compared to other solutions, but since it's a niche product, this is to be expected."

"The annual license cost is fair and reasonable."

"If you buy Oracle hardware it's supported free with the hardware. If you're putting it on non-Oracle hardware, that is when you buy the support license, which is also very reasonable. It is $1000 dollars per year, so it's not overly expensive."

"The price of Oracle Solaris could be less expensive."

"The price is not good and needs to improve."

More Oracle Solaris pricing and cost advice

"Compared to the market prices of other tools, the solution has a very competitive pricing."

"The product is expensive. I rate the pricing a three."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Operating Systems (OS) for Business solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

11%

University

11%

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	21
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	31

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Large Enterprise	7

Questions from the Community

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.

What do you like most about Rocky Linux?

It's very simple to work with, easy to learn, and know where things are.

What needs improvement with Rocky Linux?

If I find something which is strong with virtualization with Rocky Linux, it's an alternative that I can study and spend time learning about, trying it, making tests, validating, and perhaps ultima...

What is your primary use case for Rocky Linux?

I am responsible for virtualization and networking, and other services related to the systems including Linux and Windows, but the security part is actually the responsibility of the French team in...

Oracle Linux vs Oracle Solaris

Comparisons

Compared 35% of the time

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs Oracle Solaris

Compared 19% of the time

SUSE Linux Enterprise vs Oracle Solaris

Compared 13% of the time

Ubuntu Linux vs Oracle Solaris

Compared 13% of the time

CentOS vs Oracle Solaris

Compared 6% of the time

More Oracle Solaris Competitors

Fedora Linux vs Rocky Linux

Compared 26% of the time

Debian vs Rocky Linux

Compared 17% of the time

Ubuntu Linux vs Rocky Linux

Compared 17% of the time

Oracle Linux vs Rocky Linux

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs Rocky Linux

Compared 7% of the time

More Rocky Linux Competitors

Product Reports

Oracle Solaris

Download Oracle Solaris product report

Download Rocky Linux product report

Also Known As

Solaris 11, Solaris

No data available

Overview

Oracle Solaris is a trusted business platform that provides consistent compatibility, is simple to use, is always secure, and is designed to help you run your modern and legacy enterprise applications. The solution is the most recommended enterprise operating system for Oracle Database and Java applications and is engineered for large-scale enterprise deployments.

Oracle Solaris Features

Oracle Solaris has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Application binary guarantee
Unified archives
Rich selection of DevOps tools
REST-based configuration and monitoring
Software security assurance
Automated installer
Image packaging system and ZFS boot environments
Simplified system life-cycle, application life-cycle, and cloud capabilities
Constraint packages
Fault diagnosis
Service management facility

Oracle Solaris Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Oracle Solaris. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Portable and scalable
Interoperable and compatible
Simple to use
Infrastructure designed to scale on large systems without code
Supports a wide range of hardware
24 x 7 support from Oracle
Portability across different architectures
Supports tools optimized for Oracle hardware devices
Guarantees binary compatibility for your applications across various Oracle Solaris OS releases
Supports programming languages such as Perl, Ruby, and Python
Mitigates risk and easily proves compliance
Reduces costs
Helps reduce planned and unplanned downtime

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the Oracle Solaris solution.

A CEO at a computer software company says, “The most valuable feature is virtualization. They have attained virtualization and it's quite simple to create the Oracle Solaris zones. The solution is quite powerful. Oracle Solaris is great due to the fact that it actually is meant for high-end servers. The high availability is great. You can clone and you can do quite a number of things with them. There's also the ZFS File system which is very good. Is one of the best file systems that there is.”

Diego A., Oracle ACE - Specialized in Systems Technologies at Telecom Argentina, mentions, “The most valuable features for me are virtualization (Containers, Zones, Security, PDOM's, LDOM's) and Performance, ZFS, Debugging with Dtrace.”

A Service Manager at a tech services company expresses that the solution is “Stable, scalable, and has easy installation.”

PeerSpot user Marcel H., Oracle ACE Director "Solaris," CEO, Enterprise Consultant at JomaSoft, explains, “Solaris includes two virtualization solutions: LDoms for SPARC and Solaris Zones. Both solutions can be combined to create private clouds. Solaris Zones is ideal to separate applications and to migrate from older to current hardware. LDoms is very efficient because it uses the hardware hypervisor of the SPARC servers. Both technologies increase Security, because they separate the applications from each other. Using the Security Compliance Framework we are sure the systems are set up properly.”

Shafiq K., Senior Manager IT Operations at a financial services firm, states, “The reliability of the solution is excellent. The security has been very good overall. We've found the solution to have good availability. The backup capabilities are quite good. The solution has proven to be quite stable so far. The product can scale. The solution is 100% free to use. It doesn't cost a company anything as it's embedded in the hardware.”

Oracle

Rocky Linux is a robust and secure enterprise-grade operating system designed as a drop-in replacement for CentOS. Its primary use case is to provide a stable and reliable platform for organizations to run their critical workloads and applications.

The most valuable functionality of Rocky Linux lies in its compatibility with CentOS, ensuring a seamless transition for organizations already using CentOS. It offers long-term support, regular security updates, and a predictable release cycle, providing stability and reliability for mission-critical systems.

Rocky Linux helps organizations by offering a free and open-source alternative to CentOS, which was discontinued by Red Hat. It allows businesses to continue using their existing CentOS-based infrastructure without the need for costly migrations or vendor lock-in. With its strong community support and active development, Rocky Linux ensures a sustainable and community-driven future for CentOS users.

Moreover, Rocky Linux is built with security in mind, providing robust features like SELinux and secure defaults. This helps organizations protect their data and systems from potential threats and vulnerabilities.

Sample Customers

Siemens, IVV

Information Not Available

Oracle Solaris vs. Rocky Linux