Oracle Solaris vs Rocky Linux comparison

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Oracle Solaris

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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: July 2025).

Oracle Solaris vs. Rocky Linux

July 2025

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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

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Rocky Linux

Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

5.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of Oracle Solaris is 2.0%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rocky Linux is 15.3%, up from 10.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

Featured Reviews

Peter Karlsson

System specialist at Savecore

Advanced security and predictive features improve IT management capabilities

There can always be enhancements. The usability can be enhanced, and they need to enhance the web management. In Linux, you have the Cockpit that is fairly useful. The Oracle Solaris similar features are more cumbersome to use because they are designed for more advanced users, so the ease of use for novice system administrators might be something that should be improved. There are things with ZFS I would to see improved when it comes to device removal, the ability to shrink a Z-pool, and to be able to remove devices and restructure a Z-pool without having to rebuild it from scratch. There are other technical and feature functions that are a couple of layers deeper than what most people are looking for.

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Jetsada Malaisirirat

System Engineer at clusterkit

Enhancements in package management elevate user experience

I have been using Rocky Linux for three or four years. It is used for HPC, online assessments, and Ceph storage The solution is free and open source. The OS choice in my project is quite specific. It is based on customer requirements, as they might want to use Rocky Linux or Ubuntu, depending on…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"It works well. It is very stable and very good. It is also very safe. It cannot be easily infected by viruses or attacks."

"It is a scalable solution. I recommend it for bigger companies."

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

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

"We are able to deploy new environments very quickly and securely. Using the virtualization features, we can migrate the environments very flexibly between our servers."

"Its networking has helped me combine the power of a neural network with the benefits of virtualization to improve the AI's performance."

"Oracle Solaris has a graphical interface that is user-friendly, especially with its use of dark colors."

More Oracle Solaris pros

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

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

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

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

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its stability."

"The solution is free and open source."

Cons

"The Solaris code is open, and the documentation is accessible to all, not only to registered users. Also, the documentation does not support some solutions, and there are no other options."

"The scalability of the solution can be improved."

"It would be helpful if the solution offered backend management. In the 11.4 version, Oracle added a management console. It would be great if we maybe had a user management tool to go with it."

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

"Patching without downtime would be nice."

"I believe before Oracle was using Oracle Linux, they were using Oracle Solaris for their customers who are using Oracle databases. This was because it was more optimized for the hardware built for it. It has good performance for the database only. However, if you take it out of the Oracle applications, it will not do well compared to other operating systems, such as Linux or even Windows can have better performance."

"Solaris' package management could be improved, especially in comparison to Linux."

"This product is not as flexible as other similar solutions on the market today."

More Oracle Solaris cons

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"We don't use an authorized license."

"There are no licensing fees but you can opt to pay for support."

"The solution is free to use."

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

"This solution needs a license to use it."

"The annual license cost is fair and reasonable."

"It is a very expensive product."

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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

University

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

11%

University

11%

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 37% of the time

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs Oracle Solaris

Compared 20% of the time

SUSE Linux Enterprise vs Oracle Solaris

Compared 12% of the time

Ubuntu Linux vs Oracle Solaris

Compared 12% of the time

CentOS vs Oracle Solaris

Compared 5% of the time

More Oracle Solaris Competitors

Fedora Linux vs Rocky Linux

Compared 25% of the time

Ubuntu Linux vs Rocky Linux

Compared 23% of the time

Debian vs Rocky Linux

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Linux vs Rocky Linux

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs Rocky Linux

Compared 8% of the time

More Rocky Linux Competitors

Product Reports

Download Oracle Solaris product report

Oracle Solaris

August 2025

Download Rocky Linux product report

August 2025

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