Overview
What is CentOS Linux?
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.
Centos review to the best of my knowledge
CentOS Linux is a stable, mature operating system for rock-solid performance
Stay away from CentOS Stream
CentOS - Stable, secure, fast. What more could you ask for in an Operating System?
Server material
CentOS Free Alternative to Commercial Alternatives
CentOS: stable, reliable, and secure Linux distribution
Cheap RPM support, not much else
CentOS - Absolutely the best value for the money
CentOS - the best flavor of Linux out there
Why I love CentOS
CentOS rocks!
CentOS to save time and money.
Fast, Reliable and Secure
CentOS: The Reliable, Lightweight and Secure Server
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Product Demos
DELL OMSA CentOS 6.4 DEMO 2014
demo of free open source CentOS Linux, R, and RStudio for quant
CentOS Linux Hot Plug CPU and Hot Plug Memory Demo
VMware Tutorial Beginners | Session 14 CentOS Linux Hot Plug CPU and Hot Plug Memory Demo
Learning Centos Linux : LVM Management on CentOS XenServer Demo Linux VM
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
What is CentOS Linux?
CentOS Linux Technical Details
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
---|---|
Mobile Application | No |
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(130)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
CentOS Linux is widely used in various industries and for a multitude of purposes. Organizations rely on CentOS as a stable and reliable operating system for hosting a wide range of services. It serves as the foundation for information cyber security virtual appliances, making it a popular choice among vendors in this field. Additionally, CentOS is well-suited for network services like web servers and network file sharing, providing a solid platform for organizations to deliver their online presence.
Academic institutions also find great value in CentOS, using it as the primary Linux distribution for instructional and research computing endeavors. It offers a stable research platform that is easy to manage and comes with a solid support path. Moreover, CentOS is preferred by developers for custom software development and deployment, as it provides a stable and secure environment while offering regular security updates.
For organizations looking for cost-effective solutions, CentOS is an excellent choice. It eliminates the need for costly licenses associated with other Linux distributions like Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Many companies use CentOS for hosting public-facing websites, infrastructure monitoring, DNS services, phone systems, and various other server roles. Its compatibility with RPM packages makes it cloud-friendly and allows mirroring of expensive Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers.
Overall, users appreciate the speed, stability, and ease of use that CentOS offers. It serves as the go-to choice for virtual machines throughout many organizations and is known for its reliability. Additionally, CentOS eliminates the need for Microsoft licensing and Windows updates, making it a hassle-free option for those seeking an alternative to Windows-based systems.
High Security and Stability: Many users have expressed their satisfaction with the high level of security and stability provided by CentOS. They value the peace of mind that comes from using a reliable operating system straight out of the box.
Smooth Performance: Users consistently praise the performance of CentOS, even on average hardware. They appreciate its efficiency and optimization, which result in a smooth and responsive user experience.
Versatile Deployment: The ease and speed of deployment in various scenarios make CentOS a versatile choice for different projects. Users find it convenient for their needs, allowing them to quickly set up their development environment or host necessary network services.
Network Configuration Issues: Some users have experienced difficulties configuring network interfaces in CentOS, particularly when using it outside of regular configuration. This has been a common frustration among reviewers.
Slow Server Updates: Reviewers have expressed a desire for faster server updates in CentOS. They feel that the current update process takes too long and they would like to see improvements in this area.
Limited User-Friendly Features: CentOS is not considered a good desktop solution by some users due to its lack of certain user-friendly features and an intuitive user interface. These limitations have been mentioned by multiple reviewers as drawbacks of the software.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-6 of 6)- CentOS Linux works extremely well as a development system. Development packages are readily available and 3rd party compatibility is very high.
- CentOS Linux works extremely well for high availability clustering. It has native packages for DRBD which make it easy to provision high availability.
- CentOS Linux has very little extra "nonsense" running, it can be slimmed down to a bare minimum system very easily to allow for maximum compute power to be devoted to the application.
- It is extremely stable, however it could use a more robust "experimental" branch where new/different/updated code could be applied
- It lacks end-user niceties. As a laptop/desktop system, it's absolutely awful. It would be very nice if there were better developed frontends for it
- Extremely Stability
- Widely Used - Lots of reference material available
- Runs fast, even on older hardware
- FREE!
- Moderate learning curve, not ideal for a Linux novice
- Support for newest software updates may require installing unofficial distros
- Support life cycle recently changed, pushing users away from traditional CentOS
Why I love CentOS
- It is highly customizable.
- Very secure.
- Very stable distribution with a wide user community.
- It is a little complex because few c/c++ libraries will give dependencies issues.
- Installing/uninstalling packages in RHEL is a little bit of a headache.
- Not being able to run certain things on CentOS because everything is so out of date.
- CentOS is great for businesses and developers that don't need the newest releases. CentOS is more stable and secure because of that - it always uses stable (but older) versions of their software.
When developing/publishing PHP based projects, we always prefer to use CentOS. We always use unmanaged services so there is no problem of sticking to older versions of PHP. We use PHP 7.1 / Laravel 5.4 without any problems on CentOS.
On the other hand, when we are working with Ruby-based projects- we do face dependency issues with c/c++ libraries while installing certain newer gems on CentOS.
CentOS: The Reliable and Secure Server
- CentOS is very secure and stable. It is on par with RHEL and receives a lot of the same corporate level security updates making it a great choice for all users.
- Another strength of CentOS would be its longer release cycle and longer support cycle. RHEL packages have been through a lot of testing before going to the repositories. This helps makes sure that all bugs are found and "hopefully" fixed prior to being released. Both RHEL and CentOS releases are usually supported for about 10 years.
- Then I think really the other thing is just speed as I mentioned above. CentOS runs very basic software and will run much faster than other similar Linux distributions.
- I also really like CentOS Web Panel for our web server. I don't know if that was built in or if it was something we added on, but it is a free application that allows us to manage our hosted sites very easily and see how everything is doing. We can just open up a web browser and browse out to CWP and see all the stats of our websites.
- The hugest drawback, but also the best feature of CentOS is the lack of updates. It is awesome because you know what you have installed on your server is going to just work, but it works because the release is usually older and has been tested to work. With that being said you don't get the latest and possibly greatest versions of the software. So you could be missing out on some great new features.
- Nothing else really I feel is a con. It is a really good Linux server option.
CentOS gives us a secure and very reliable OS to host these services on commodity hardware for a very little financial impact.
- Quick and easy installation process with sensible and secure defaults.
- Its very stable and reliable.
- Very easy to install 3rd party software via upstream repositories.
- SELinux that helps to harden CentOS can sometimes get in the way of 3rd party software and working around it can be a trying process.
- CentOS provides businesses with a very complete development platform for all open source software languages and some proprietary ones. Entire development environments are available with a few commands or clicks in the GUI.
- CentOS is a powerful and free web host platform. Using Apache, Nginx, or other web servers, CentOS can be part of a standalone web solution or as part of a large farm of load balanced systems.
- CentOS provides a free platform for hosting all necessary network services such as DNS, file sharing, printer sharing, DHCP, and more. It also works extremely well as a virtual machine, to further that no cost platform into a farm of systems.
- 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.