Thirty years ago it was standard practice to mount raw disks for Oracle to use.

~15 years ago, the last time I used Oracle in production, that was still standard practice. I'd be interested to hear from someone who's used it recently.

That or ASM devices. To my knowledge io_submit and io_getevents only really work with raw partitions anyway.

One of my problems with the way technology is used in the classroom (at least in my kid's school) is that they're being trained how to operate applications -- not how to use a computer.

They're randomly generated. You'll be in for the long haul.