Oracle Linux

Oracle Linux is freely downloadable and RHEL-compatible like Rocky or AlmaLinux, but with a difference: it's backed by a large commercial vendor (Oracle) that also sells paid support contracts and ships an alternative 'Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel' (UEK) alongside the standard RHEL-compatible kernel, tuned for Oracle's own database and cloud workloads. It's the reference platform for running Oracle Database and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure images, and Oracle offers a genuinely free support tier for the base OS itself (unlike Red Hat's model), monetizing instead through premium support and its wider software stack. Choosing it over Rocky/AlmaLinux usually comes down to running Oracle's own software or wanting a single-vendor commercial support option.