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 Anyone with an iPhone or iPad would benefit from having a macOS-based computer. Additionally, the learning curve for a new user is much less steep than for a Windows computer. Apple has updated its OS for 20+ years, however, still maintains the same basic functionality (turn on/off, open/close apps, etc), the same cannot be said for Windows (Windows Vista, 8, 8.1, 11).
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 Integrates with other apple devices seamlessly Information passed between those devices is encrypted end to end (understanding that apple has the keys in some cases) Compact design Aesthetically pleasing 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 Integration within a windows environment does require more work. Does not play well with PCL based network printers that do not also support PS. Dongles for everything 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 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 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 Apple supports their hardware longer than most manufacturers, which is good. Apple's hardware is more expensive than similar equipment competition, which is bad but offset somewhat by its longevity. Apple in an Apple world works great. Apple in a Windows world has some work to do to get things talking. Read full review ScreenShots