

Performance-wise, I've found it to be quite snappy (to be fair, I've just tested the basics). The install script ( here) from the vagrant project was quite helpful in installing and configuring the DB. I used keyboard to navigate the OL8 installer, and selected the "server" installation mode with headless packages. From what I've read, hardware acceleration doesn't work either, so my recommendation is to stay away from the UI as much as you can. Mouse didn't work for me, so the GUI is pretty much useless. The setup, configuration and installation is completely manual and will take a significant chunk of time, but the outcome is pretty satisfactory. I've had success running Oracle Linux 8 (x86_64) with UTM, and then installing Oracle DB 21c EE in the VM.

In any case, what Apple has achieved without a lot of company experience in the chip space is super impressive, even if it doesn't beat until in every single benchmark.I've been struggling to find a solution to this for the past couple of days, and finally have a halfway-decent solution. I think one would be right to be upset if one generation of Intel to the next wasn't better for your task, but moving laterally to a chip built on a different architecture and that's clearly optimized for multi-thread workloads and running a single thread one that might be somewhat better in some aspects, and the same or slightly worse in others is not really grounds for disappointment in my book.

My point that newer is not a guarantee a better across the board still stands though, especially given that you're moving laterally in architectures. Certainly, their chip is much more efficient then the Intel one they were using previously and MacBook Pros are known for thermal throttling so there is space for improvement there even if the Intel chip may theoretically have beaten them if it were water cooled or whatever. It makes sense that it might be better for some aspects depending on what Apple chose to optimize and was beneficial to their target market of creatives (so what would be utilized by the Adobe suite, video editing, etc.).
