On X86 systems, using an Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) is recommended over other enterprise distributions as it provides better hardware support, security patches, and testing from the larger Linux community. Key configuration recommendations include enabling maximum CPU performance in BIOS, using memory types validated by Oracle, ensuring proper NUMA and CPU frequency settings, and installing only Oracle-validated packages to avoid issues. Monitoring tools like top, iostat, sar and ksar help identify any CPU, memory, disk or I/O bottlenecks.