CentOS Linux vs. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
CentOS Linux
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
CentOS 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
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a Linux distribution mainly used in commercial data centers.N/A
Pricing
CentOS LinuxRed Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CentOS LinuxRed Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
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 LinuxRed Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Considered Both Products
CentOS Linux
Chose CentOS Linux
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 …
Chose CentOS Linux
Free no cost, Lower costs for support, and overall doesn't require a per licensing for each install.
Chose CentOS Linux
Long ago we used to run Red Hat ES. However, the management of the licenses and stupid dashboards just killed us. Too much time was wasted on worthless administration. Support was not good either. Now I used SUSE way back in the 2000's and it was ok. About two years ago I tried …
Chose CentOS Linux
For our development environment, we evaluated CentOS against Ubuntu and SLES, and actually did not end up picking CentOS, as our developers found it primitive compared to the niceties offered out of the box from Ubuntu. In addition, our developers found that Ubuntu had an …
Chose CentOS Linux
When the rubber meets the road, any Linux distribution will do. However, RHEL and distributions that are derived from RHEL have a fantastic ecosystem of users, software packages, and documentation (which is generally compatible between RHEL-derived distributions) that make it …
Chose CentOS Linux
CentOS has a longer release cycle; it also has a much longer support cycle. i think overall CentOS is more stable and secure.
Chose CentOS Linux
Comparing to Ubuntu Server OS, CentOS is better from the security hardening side. RHEL: from my hands-on experience it is pretty much the same as CentOS, but in lots of cases, costs money. However, RHEL has better internal, community and software vendors support. Windows …
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
RHEL is much more flexible in configuration than any Unix system like IBM AIX or Oracle Solaris. At the same time has the excellent release of updates and support that Oracle Linux or CentOS Linux doesn't have. RHEL has also companion tools in the Red Hat products which help …
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
They have their own pluses and minuses, but for what RHEL eight is and for what it does, I would recommend it above anything else for an enterprise. Two, consistency and stability of the environment, making sure the packages that our developers need are available and not being …
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
We selected RHEL because it is a supported platform from our ISVs, because of the Enterprise-level support, and because of the long history of Open Source involved and community contributions.
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
We had to request support and this is one of the main features we need due to customer requirements.
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
While many enterprise applications offer Windows Server support, I never really seriously considered it for our application, as Windows simply Blue Screens too often for serving a business critical application. Instead, I took a look at Red Hat's upstream distro, CentOS. Had …
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
RHEL is very different than Windows, but in terms of just a simple operating system, RHEL is much more lightweight than Windows and in many cases runs more efficiently than Windows. Given the choice between the two, some application are preferable on RHEL, like Apache or …
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Windows Server's are perfect competition for RHEL as many people use Windows Servers for deploying their applications. Windows provides good GUI but it lacks in many aspects in which RHEL is a win-win. As earlier mentioned, the performance of RHEL is unbeatable cannot be …
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Each of the different flavors of Linux have their positives and negatives but ultimately for the projects that I chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux was due for the need of online and phone support just in case something came up and we could not solve it on our own. This happens …
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
While the other flavors of Linux listed above can be used to achieve similar goals, RHEL was chosen due to:
1. Excellent support, both professional and through the community
2. Tried and tested security
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
CentOS LinuxRed Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Small Businesses
Ubuntu
Ubuntu
Score 9.0 out of 10
Ubuntu
Ubuntu
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Score 9.2 out of 10
IBM AIX
IBM AIX
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Score 9.2 out of 10
IBM AIX
IBM AIX
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
CentOS LinuxRed Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Likelihood to Recommend
7.0
(21 ratings)
9.6
(52 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(5 ratings)
8.5
(7 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
CentOS LinuxRed Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
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.
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Red Hat
I guess to give it more context, my first job in the Linux ecosystem was in web hosting. And that was basically a Cintas shop and it was all run extremely lean and very bootstrappy do it on your own. You don't get any support. And for that environment, it was kind of just the way it is. It's very cutthroat. You have to move super fast. Once I moved over to the corporate side, every company I've worked with has been on rail. And the thing that really kind of makes it the best choice compared to using another operating system, another flavor of Linux and just kind of figuring out your own is the amount of support that Red Hat gives rail as far as extra tools like Satellite Insights and what's coming up now with Ansible and especially Ansible. Lightspeed, but also SLAs and stuff like that. Because yeah, I mean it was good learning in that first environment because there were no tickets, there was no support. It was figured out. But nowadays it's just nice to have an SLA agreement. I can just open a ticket. I say that that's something that does really well, but I also want to see it expanded, just more like vendor support at an enterprise level. I'm not sure yet what that would mean. I just have that every time we come up for renewal, I look at the price tag and it's like, what else can we do here? I like what Red Hat is doing just more.
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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.
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Red Hat
  • For us, it's going to be the deployment and the patching. It does a good job because you can put your no reboot tags and things like that because working with production systems and so we don't want them just rebooting suddenly because they were patched in the Linux world. So the non-reboot tags and the operating system deployment is the biggest thing we find that saves time and that's the biggest thing that we like. The tools. The tools that save time.
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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.
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Red Hat
  • From an automation perspective. RHEL is really moving forward, but some of their ideas are still not ideas, but their implementations of it still feel half-baked, like the functionality's there, but it's not the kind of functionality that to me makes it a full-on solution with OpenShift in particular as we're bringing this in and we're getting more into containers because it's more important for the banking industry and other industries. Justice General, well you can do this by script and we don't have an interface for this and sort of things sort of like that. I'm trying to think if there's anything else that RHEL does that bothers me as a general rule.
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Likelihood to Renew
Open Source
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
We find RHEL to be a superior OS with stable operations and long life. It is also easier to use and fix then most other OS's.
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Usability
Open Source
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
RHEL has most of the features that are required by an ERP solution. If you need any additional packages, RHEL has a great repository and a very easy package installation/upgrade process.
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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.
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Red Hat
Red Hat support has really come a long way in the last 10 years, The general support is great, and the specialized product support teams are extremely knowledgeable about their specific products. Response time is good and you never need to escalate.
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Implementation Rating
Open Source
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
Don't be afraid of it, its easy to install and configure for the tasks needed.
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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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Red Hat
The biggest thing about RHEL that makes it stand out for enterprise users is the support that we get from the vendor. Whereas with the other ones, you're basically left on your own. There's no official repo, there's no satellite for patching. You're very left on your own with the community.
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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.
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Red Hat
  • Auditors are happy that we use an enterprise class distribution
  • Patch process is easy and fairly predictable
  • Information Security is fully satisfied with the speed of the fixing the errata and general state of the security patches, including the backporting process
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ScreenShots