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AlmaLinux vs Oracle Solaris comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 4, 2026

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

AlmaLinux
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
17th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
4.3
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Oracle Solaris
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
12th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Reliable long-term hosting has reduced server migrations and lets me focus on projects
One area for improvement with AlmaLinux is the use of SELinux to secure and harden my server, which I find to be a complicated beast. Better documentation on that part could be useful, although there is a lot of material out there. I choose a nine because nothing is ever perfect. For example, coming from Ubuntu, I found their firewall software easy to use, while with AlmaLinux's entire ecosystem, I always have to look up how to use firewall-cmd. These are just little preferences. I cannot think of anything else AlmaLinux could improve; it serves me well, and I have not been missing anything.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Positively, I can say that AlmaLinux has brought a sense of stability, and besides the security patches, we also noticed better virtualization for our use cases."
"AlmaLinux provides free updates and security, unlike Red Hat, where support must be purchased separately."
"The long-term support provided by AlmaLinux helps my business by ensuring that we do not have to renew our servers every four to five years."
"The most valuable feature I find in AlmaLinux is the binary compatibility with RHEL and the long-term stability, which makes it a predictable, rock-solid system behavior, while also having small and safe packaging for subsystems or systems that run twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week."
"Oracle Solaris's operating system is good."
"Solaris's best features are high availability, robustness, and database hosting."
"We like that the virtualization is built in, so you don't have to spend extra money on buying licenses for a hypervisor."
"Solaris is scalable because they have their own file system, like CFS."
"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."
"One of the main features of this solution is the ease of use."
"This product handles databases well; they run on top of the operating system."
 

Cons

"If AlmaLinux could provide ten to twenty years of fixes, that would be an improvement because I do not want to update the system all the time, as it becomes more challenging for me as a system administrator to track all the patches and everything I should patch on the system."
"After six months of migration, we ended up using more resources for the same websites, and that's not acceptable."
"One area for improvement with AlmaLinux is the use of SELinux to secure and harden my server, which I find to be a complicated beast."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux is more secure and better documented. So Oracle could learn from them when it comes to security and documentation."
"The primary drawback with this product is the lack of version updates."
"They could also enable Oracle OEM for x86 architecture as well."
"If it could support other file systems, it would be better."
"This product is not as flexible as other similar solutions on the market today."
"Patching without downtime would be nice."
"Oracle Solaris needs to improve its compatibility with office tools like Excel."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"We don't use an authorized license."
"The solution is free to use."
"This solution needs a license to use it."
"The price of Oracle Solaris could be less expensive."
"It is a very expensive product."
"Solaris is highly priced compared to other solutions, but since it's a niche product, this is to be expected."
"There are no licensing fees but you can opt to pay for support."
"It is more expensive, but very complete and worth enacting."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise32
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AlmaLinux?
AlmaLinux is free of charge, which is why I chose this distribution. It offers an alternative to Red Hat, which is free only without support and updates. AlmaLinux provides free updates and securit...
What needs improvement with AlmaLinux?
It is hard to say what needs improvement because I am on the operations side and focus on installing servers and running our software.
What is your primary use case for AlmaLinux?
I use AlmaLinux as the base operating system for all of our Linux servers. Our environment includes use cases that range from a load balancer on the NGINX platform to our monitoring software, Check...
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

AlmaLinux OS 8 (x86_64), AlmaLinux OS 10 (x86_64)
Solaris 11, Solaris
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Siemens, IVV
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