We performed a comparison between Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and SUSE Linux Enterprise based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: RHEL excels in setup, integration, security updates, and application support. However, it falls short in terms of documentation, pricing, and customer support. SUSE Linux Enterprise is praised for its simplicity, flexibility, user-friendliness, and customer support. It needs improvement in GUI, pricing competitiveness, and integration.
"The most valuable feature is the Identity Management. You pay almost the same subscription cost for normal RHEL and you get the central Identity Management. You would need to pay much more if you were using other applications or products like Active Directory from Microsoft."
"The most valuable features are stability and supportability... You want to have something that's up and running and stable, something that's not going to crash. But if we do have an issue, we can get somebody for technical support who can help us work through the problems."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux has a good file system type and good kernels."
"The security it provides is one of the most important features, as are the support and the documentation. The latter helps me to do everything."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is how easy it is to use."
"Logical volumes allow us to dynamically expand volumes, which is valuable from an operational perspective."
"Until now, RHEL has been the most stable OS I have ever seen. Nothing seems to break, with frequent updates. I have been running it 24/7 for the past 18 months and it runs flawlessly."
"From a security perspective, the most valuable feature is SELinux. SELinux provides good security. It's doing a good job of protecting my real estate."
"Out-of-the-box SLES supported all of our HBAs and hardware specific components."
"SUSE Linux Enterprise is easy to configure for those who are not hardcore command-line driven."
"SUSE Linux's most valuable feature is the documentation - there is a lot of documentation about how to create custom servers."
"The initial setup is simple and takes five minutes for deployment and if you have automation in place, it will take four minutes."
"The initial setup for most modern Linux distributions is normally straightforward. Most of the common distributions use an ncurses or GUI install."
"The operating system is efficient in terms of security."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the installation part...We don't face any issues related to the operating system or application."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"The solution's modules feature could be better."
"We had issues migrating from the old to the new RHEL version in the virtual environment. It forced us to spin up a new virtual environment to have the new RHEL version."
"Its user interface could be better for people who want to use the GUI. They can provide a better user interface with more features."
"It would be great to have an overview of how various Red Hat products work together. They can show how to tie all those pieces together and how to have the products that we work together for our day-to-day processes."
"From a cloud perspective, I'm looking for more integrations with native cloud services. For example, the ability to use native Azure Key Vault instead of Ansible Key Vault or Red Hat Key Vault."
"It's getting easier for the community to use it free of charge. If you have an account, you get to use it. It would be better if the community could use it on their own for lab projects."
"Upgrading between versions needs to be easier."
"RHEL could be improved in several ways, especially regarding transparency and communication of new features."
"We previously had trouble integrating Autodesk with the SUSE Manager, but the issue was resolved."
"The only stability issues that I can recall encountering with SUSE would be with KDE. However, that is limited to just the desktop environment as I have not had stability issues with most server functions."
"All distributions of Linux could use some improvement."
"The free version sometimes has security holes."
"When working in a Department of Defense environment, Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs) have to be followed. SLES is not really addressed directly here. It did make following security policy difficult."
"In the next release it would be nice to see more integration and better automation of processses."
"Compared with the competition, of late actually, the solution has increased its pricing tremendously."
"SUSE Linux could provide more information about cost and the details of how clustering works."
More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Pricing and Cost Advice →
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is ranked 1st in Operating Systems (OS) for Business with 167 reviews while SUSE Linux Enterprise is ranked 6th in Operating Systems (OS) for Business with 26 reviews. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is rated 8.8, while SUSE Linux Enterprise is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) writes "Highly stable, good knowledge base, and reasonable price". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SUSE Linux Enterprise writes "Stable product compatible with multiple cloud service providers ". Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is most compared with Windows Server, Ubuntu Linux, Windows 10, CentOS and Oracle Linux, whereas SUSE Linux Enterprise is most compared with Ubuntu Linux, openSUSE Leap, Oracle Linux, CentOS and Rocky Linux. See our Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. SUSE Linux Enterprise report.
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