Hello,

I want to install Oracle 9i, DB2 and Informix on my laptop. I am running SuSE Linux 8.2 and Windows XP home on this laptop. Unfortunately none of these RDBMSs are certified for these systems. I need the installations only for evaluation and development purpose - not for production use. So far, I managed to get Oracle working under Linux (with some How-Tos from the internet).

My questions:

Windows:
1) What is the difference between XP Home and Prof. ? Will the DBs definitely not work under XP Home (because of technical restrictions) or is it just not supported (e.g. in a legal sense, warranty issues, etc.) ?

Linux:
2) Oracle 9i seems to work with SuSE 8.2 on my laptop. Did anyone experience any crashes, restrictions or drawbacks with this constellation ?

3) What about DB2 and Informix ? So far, I did not manage to get Informix working under SuSE 8.2. What experiences did you make with DB2 or Informix ?

I am using my laptop for many different things and I do not want to install another OS just for installing a db. If possible, I want to keep using Linux for software development tasks because in projects Unix is the commonly used production environment. Obviously the most recent Linux distributions have problems because they upgraded their glibc library and moved to gcc 3.3 from gcc 2.9.95.

I cross-posted this article also to the DB2, Oracle and Informix forum.
I hope nobody will be annoyed :-)

Regards,
Markus Reith

Hi Markus
I will answer the Informix and SuSe 8.2 question.

SuSe made an error in building the 8.2 CDs and you need the following workaround to make Informix run:

Update to the i686 version of glibc available on CD #1:
rpm -U --oldpackage ./suse/i686/glibc-2.3.2-5.i686.rpm

Then the server will run.
I hope this help.
bye
Sandor