Oracle: Oracle Express is crippleware. Only 1 DB. Std and Ent versions need a lot of baby-sitting. Run only on RHEL and SLES. Use it at work
Sybase: Good candidate. Express Edition is free for 1 proc and 2GB RAM and 5GB of data. Run only on RHEL and SLES. Used it in past.
DB2: Express Edition free for 2 procs (can be dual-core), 4GB RAM and unlimited data, unlimited database instances. RHEL, SLES & UBUNTU (& DEBIAN). Never used this.
Firebird: Extremly good DB. But has no breakthrough improvement for this year. Used it's cousin(guess).
PostGRESQL: These guys have a RHEL fixation and release the latest RPMs for RedHat only. The reason they are unpopular is probably because theyr PR is patheric. Why keep releasing for RHEL, when people will use RHEL to run Oracle or Sybase or DB2? Need to aggresively offer packages for various platforms like mySQL.
mySQL: With rel 5 they probably deserve my vote. Packages released for RPM, non-RPM, Windows and solaris x86. GPL and non-GPL versions. Good docs. Lots of books. Lots of help on web. never used it.


VOTE goes to:.............................................DB2.

Not quite true. Certified on those two, but it can be installed and run
on Slack, Debian, ... (admittedly non-trivial)


Eh? The preferred method is tar-balls for Posix platforms, the
fact that there are contributed packages for some distros has
nothing to do with the postgres team as such (even though Tom
Lane, one of the most active PG developers, happens to be a full-
time employee of RedHat they don't favour RH at all).
MySQL doesn't offer packages for Slackware, just to name one,
Pat rolls it, same with Debian to the best of my knowledge.



Cheers,
Tink

Benchmarks with Sqlite, Posgtresql, Mysql and Firebird.
Draw your own conclusions
http://www.sqlite.org/cvstrac/wiki?p=SpeedComparison

I would like to point out that MS SQL Server and Sybase were essentially the SAME product up until version 4.21 or so. So anyone looking to migrate T-SQL (Transact-SQL) specific functions/procedures from Windows to Linux would find that the easiest way to go. Of couse, sticking with ANSI standard SQL would be even better.

[begin rant]
So why didn't I chose Sybase. Well, for the same reason I'm abandoning MS SQL Server: they both abandonded SQL. Sybase now pushes J-SQL, which is essentially a bastardization of SQL and Java. Micorsoft, not to be out done in the bastadrization department, has done the same with dot-net and SQL. I want pure SQL. Last thing I need is more spaghetti code writting in Java and mono. Keep that cr@p on the web servers where it belongs.

And object oriented database designs, like LDAP uses unfortunately, might be great for lazy OOP programmers but they're just plain stupid when it comes to manipulating data in any meaningful manner.
[end rant]

I feel better now.

http://www.mail-archive.com/sqlite-u.../msg12945.html

And why on earth would I want to compare how a database
handles 1000 consecutive transactions from one client rather
than concurrency? For all I care that test has only proven that
its author has no back-ground in databases what so ever.


Cheers,
Tink

Firebird. It does a great job with stored procedures, and this is very handy.

It beats the competition on the function vs price curve :-)

Realy? Last time I checked, you MUST pay for commercial license ;-)
See previous page of this discussion.

I just did a Sybase ASE 15 install; it was my first experience with Sybase, for a client who was familiar with prior versions.

The free version of ASE for Linux is limited to only 5GB disk and 2GB ram, or something like that, which is too bad. But it's fast and pretty simple, and the online docs are incredible, and they have cool gui admin tools that I can run in ssh X-forwarding. There's a lot to like.

But mostly I only use MySQL, I have to admit, and at my last job we loved PostgreSQL. How can you pick? They all fill their niches nicely.

So does PostgreSQL ;}


Cheers,
Tink

Huh?

PostgreSQL, Firebird .. both are free, too, and beat MySQL
hands down in features and SQL standard compliance.
But I suppose if you divide 0 by 5 or by 50, you'll still get
the same result, eh? ;}


Cheers,
Tink

Where is Kexi??
edit:

most of the systems we use at work are MySQL based, however for personal use Kexi is hard to beat for small light weight file based DBs.

It have benefited to me and my company so much!!

support mysql

MySQL! v5!