We performed a comparison between CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) finishes ahead of CentOS in this comparison. Users feel that RHEL offers better stability, control, and consistent value-added updates. Additionally, the improved integration with RHEL provides for a better TCO, allowing resources to be distributed elsewhere in the organization, further enhancing productivity and profitability.
"CentOS is very easy to use, and all the commands are user-friendly."
"I find the solution's stability to be the most valuable feature of it since I have been using a virtual machine with the help of the solution since 2015, and it still works on all the laptops in my organization."
"The most valuable feature is that it is compatible with RedHat."
"The most valuable feature is performance."
"The community and knowledge base are very robust."
"The latest version of this solution has everything built in, making it comprehensive and very easy to use."
"CentOS's most valuable features are that it's cost-saving and helps to scale down your usage."
"It has minimal updates compared to other distributions."
"We use this product's built-in tracing and monitoring tools such as syslog and SAR (system activity reporter) to provide us with greater insight and visibility into what's going on."
"The robust networking capabilities offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux were highly valuable. They have numerous partnerships and dedicated efforts in low-latency technologies, which are particularly beneficial for trading firms. They possess extensive expertise in external tuning and similar aspects."
"The solution is very stable, reliable, easy to use, and has good technical support."
"The enterprise aspect of it is valuable. There is security patching, security scanning, and compliance. There are all kinds of features around managing and keeping it up-to-date and secure. Everything is in a box for us from Red Hat which makes it very easy to manage them."
"With regard to security, most companies are moving towards the black box approach and Red Hat. It's much more secure compared to the other vendors."
"Technical support is excellent."
"The most valuable features of RHEL are security, performance tuning, storage management, and OS-level automation."
"I prefer it to Windows because of the level of configuration, level of control, and the ability to see the performance of processes on a given system. I prefer the control over logging and the ability that logging gives you to investigate a problem."
"The YUM install manager can be improved. It is below average as compared to the other install managers. This is the only major problem that I see with CentOS. They should reduce dependency on the YUM manager."
"Continuous deployment is the only thing that can be improved."
"The price of CentOS could improve."
"We occasionally have issues with software installation."
"The solution might be discontinued but I hope that IBM will continue to develop it and improve on the functionally and features."
"This solution is no longer suited to our business following the change they have made to the release process. It is no longer an enterprise solution."
"CentOS is not easy."
"CentOS could be improved with more user-friendly monitoring."
"The solution should provide demos so that users can learn to use it and improve their environments."
"AIX will be out of support in the next few years, so that is a problem because a lot of the clinical apps use AIX."
"I would like to see improvements made to the subscriptions and management of them."
"The solution's licensing sometimes could be a little bit confusing for someone who's not a full-blown system admin and doesn't have a lot of experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux."
"We have had issues with the identification of new volumes when you add new disks or storage."
"The only issue that we have is that Red Hat specifically promotes OpenStack, and we don't use OpenStack. It's good if you're using OpenStack, but if you're not using OpenStack, and you're using Docker or something else, it isn't that good. Having more support for non-OpenStack would be very helpful, but, of course, as part of their business, we don't expect it."
"It could be a bit more user-friendly. It could also be cheaper."
"At times, language is a barrier when it comes to support."
More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Pricing and Cost Advice →
CentOS is ranked 5th in Operating Systems (OS) for Business with 63 reviews while Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is ranked 1st in Operating Systems (OS) for Business with 179 reviews. CentOS is rated 8.2, while Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of CentOS writes "Allows you to securely store data, and command prompts make it simple to use". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) writes "Highly stable, good knowledge base, and reasonable price". CentOS is most compared with Oracle Linux, Ubuntu Linux, Windows Server, SUSE Linux Enterprise and openSUSE Leap, whereas Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is most compared with Windows Server, Ubuntu Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Windows 10 and Oracle Linux. See our CentOS vs. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) report.
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We monitor all Operating Systems (OS) for Business reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
