Likelihood to Recommend In any role where you need raw server power, CentOS Linux is extremely well suited. It is extremely stable, and in my experience, probably the most stable of the Linux distros available. It has a very wide base of support from 3rd party sources for additional functionality that do not come already in the CentOS Linux distribution itself. It is not as appropriate for situations that are customer facing or end user facing. For those, I recommend
Ubuntu Linux . But for everything server & compute related, I recommend CentOS Linux.
Read full review It is well suited in a work environment, being that an organization can set up their system to be specifically work related and only certain users can get access is really helpful. I also like that multiple users can log in on the same device and keep each account seperate without interfering with the other.
Read full review Pros First of all, CentOS is one of the most secure and stable OSes straits from the box. High performance on the average hardware. In most of my scenarios—easy and quick deployment. Huge KB community that helps to build and support different services on CentOS. Versions lifecycle. Read full review Smooth operating system Intuitive user interface Easy integration of other Microsoft products System encryption Very secure Read full review Cons CentOS is not a great desktop platform. Although some would disagree with that statement, I think that CentOS is better suited to life as a server. Since CentOS is community-supported some software vendors will not officially support it because it isn't Red Hat. Read full review confusing at first when shut down is under start menu task bar on 2 displays sometimes won't hide automatically even though set that way not so intuitive to set up 2 displays Read full review Usability Works fine until it stops working, then hard to troubleshoot and fix!
Read full review Support Rating Again, written documentation is excellent, even on the older versions. The support community is the best. It is comprehensive and I would say that it global because it transcends national boundaries. Also, you find all types of people using CentOS to do all sorts of things so you are bound to find someone to talk to if there are problems.
Read full review support remains spotty, researching online articles are a pain
Read full review Implementation Rating MDT helped deploy OS to users machines via PXE boot.
Read full review Alternatives Considered CentOS is based on RHEL, so it really came down to the costs when making the selection between our options. RHEL offered more support and features, but nothing that we specifically needed. CentOS is fully customizable, something
Windows Server was also lacking in many ways. The stability and speed was unmatched in comparison to Windows, and we were not utilizing any Windows-specific software to require us to use the Microsoft alternative. My years of experience have also made it a breeze to set up and configure new CentOS instances, leading me to stay where I'm comfortable.
Read full review Because of its compatibility with third-party software requirements.
Read full review Return on Investment CentOS's support of RPM packages makes it very easy to replicate RHEL servers for development or testing in cheap / free environments CentOS's minimalistic desktop environment requires additional tweaking / packages if you want to have a usable desktop environment with the niceties of other modern distributions. As a result, if developers want to use CentOS, they'll need to spend more time customizing it than other distros. CentOS's easy customization from the command line lends itself well to our virtualization infrastructure where setup can be easily scripted to modify CentOS's configuration files. Read full review Increased productivity Intuitive interface Quick operation Minimal interruption from system processes Read full review ScreenShots