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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    CentOS Linux

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/ACentOS Linux is a Linux distribution is an enterprise OS platform compatible with its source RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Its end of life was announced for December 2021.N/A

    Cisco IOS

    Score9.2 out of 10
    N/ACisco IOS, presently in its 15th edition, is a network operating system for service providers and enterprises alike.N/A
    Pricing
    CentOS LinuxCisco IOS
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    CentOS LinuxCisco IOS
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    CentOS LinuxCisco IOS
    Considered Both Products
    Open Source
    No answer on this topic
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    73%
    Would buy again
    8 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    11 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    82%
    Happy with the feature set
    9 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    8 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    10 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Best Alternatives
    CentOS LinuxCisco IOS
    Small Businesses
    Debian OS
    Score8.3 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM AIX
    Score9.4 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Cisco NX-OS
    Score8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    CentOS LinuxCisco IOS
    Likelihood to Recommend
    10.0
    (22 ratings)
    9.3
    (4 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.3
    (3 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.6
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    CentOS LinuxCisco IOS
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Open Source
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    I've worked with several network device vendors in my 10+ years of being in the industry and my favorite continues to be Cisco IOS. Overall, Cisco IOS tends to be the most stable, the most intuitive, has the best TAC support, and has the best knowledge base articles and white papers.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Open Source
    • 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.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    • User friendly CLI.
    • Quick fixes for critical bugs.
    • Longer uptime.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Open Source
    • 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.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    • By this point, there are several "flavors" of the Cisco IOS such as XE, XR, and the standard Cisco IOS. While they are all fairly similar, there does exist syntax differences between them. It would be ideal if at some point in the future, Cisco is able to unify all of them into one standard operating system which would use the same syntax across all platforms.
    • While overall Cisco does a great job of QA'ing their IOS, no matter the release, there's always some minor bugs. I think it's important that Cisco continue to pour resources into their QA team to test their software.
    • While I'm very familiar with the graphical readouts of "show processes cpu history" I would love for Cisco to eventually find a more intuitive way to display this data. I can't begin to count how many times I've had to teach more entry level (and even mid level) engineers how this graph is interpreted.
    • I do wish that Cisco had something similar to Juniper's "commit check" or "commit confirmed". This helps validate the changes you're about to apply, and catch errors, so that you have a better idea of the impact of the change.
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    Usability
    Open Source
    It is a very typical server software, so you will have just the console. But it is still very easy to use, you can do anything from there and you have te built in manuals to review any information. For the other hand, if you need a graphical environment is not an issue, you can install any environment you what, Gnome, xfce, etc.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    IOS is pretty intuitive as you can use the question marks to check for all the options or parameters for a specific command. Also having the tab key to complete the words is nice as you don't need type the complete command. Using also abbreviated commands with 2 or 3 letters instead of the whole Word makes it a great OS.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Open Source
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Open Source
    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.
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    Cisco
    Cisco has a better presence on corporate business so it makes it easier to find engineers and technitians to support your network. Also a lot of Universities and schools use it as a reference and use it to teach and prepare students so it will be easier to recruit people with cisco preparation.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Open Source
    • 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.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    • Great uptimes on proven availability/reliability.
    • Longevity of these switches ensures great ROI.
    • Easy to learn for new users.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots