linuxoracle
According to this site (http://www.dbspecialists.com/oracle11glinux.html), Oracle is only supported on the following Linux distributions:
Is there any technical reason that Oracle would perform poorly on a Debian-based install (Ubuntu)? Or is this more about dealing with Oracle from an enterprise support standpoint?
Just guesswork, but do you select "Upgrade an existing database" early on:
and "advanced install" later on:
The docs do look as if they are referring to the 10g installer.
As your own question answers: "Oracle Applications is an [ERP]." An "Oracle Apps DBA" will be someone who is experienced in working with the particular schema and tooling around this ERP. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of packages, tables, stored procedures, and interfaces that are specifically built for the ERP. It is not a trivial database to admin. You can get a brief glimpse into some of the things in their ERP by looking around - for example, this blog - or by logging into a Metalink account as someone who is a customer of their ERP solution, where you can get ERDs and other documentation.
Best Answer
There is no reason why Oracle would perform badly on Ubuntu (though Oracles OEL kernel has some Oracle-specific optimisations), it's all about enterprise support.
Certification is an expensive and time-consuming task, as is training support workers in each flavour of Linux - that's why the RDBMS is only officially supported on a select number of releases.