Skip to main content
TrustRadius
CentOS Linux

CentOS Linux

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.

Read more
Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

CentOS Linux is widely used in various industries and for a multitude of purposes. Organizations rely on CentOS as a stable and reliable …
Continue reading

Server material

8 out of 10
May 12, 2021
Incentivized
We use CentOS as the host OS for MongoDB servers in our analytics service. We also used to have it as the host for the user file Backup …
Continue reading

CentOS rocks!

10 out of 10
July 06, 2019
Incentivized
CentOS is our go-to. For any software that can run on Linux, we choose it. We don't have to mess with Microsoft licensing and Windows …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

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

Return to navigation

Product Demos

DELL OMSA CentOS 6.4 DEMO 2014

YouTube

demo of free open source CentOS Linux, R, and RStudio for quant

YouTube

CentOS Linux Hot Plug CPU and Hot Plug Memory Demo

YouTube

VMware Tutorial Beginners | Session 14 CentOS Linux Hot Plug CPU and Hot Plug Memory Demo

YouTube

Learning Centos Linux : LVM Management on CentOS XenServer Demo Linux VM

YouTube
Return to navigation

Product Details

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 Linux Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(129)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

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

(1-5 of 5)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As we have small clients we prefer to use CentOS, the installation is easier and it’s very stable and reliable. It’s recommended for faster security patching. The applications running on it don’t need to be updated as often and the cost is also very less than compared with other Linux essentials.
  • Applications doesn’t need to be updated often.
  • Reliable and scalable
  • User friendly
  • It should be made ready for bigger enterprises.
  • It should be faster for booting.
  • It should be a viable for daily use.
It’s best suited for smaller organisations and not suited for companies that have the most number of clients. It should be made in a way that it can boot faster and also user friendly. The support should be better and have better features incorporated when compared with its rivals.
  • Smaller clients adaptable
  • Reliable and scalable
  • Easily available
  • As it’s going eosl.
  • Suitable for limited users.
  • Suitable for only smaller company.
As it’s only for smaller clients and it’s best suited for our organisation and also it’s reliable. The patching cycle is okay and the applications need not be updated regularly so the downtime will be reduced hence it’s recommended for smaller clients as it’s less costly when compared to others.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use CentOS Linux in almost every capacity except as an end user facing system. I use it as a mail server, web server, router, vpn endpoint, development system, high availability clustering node, virtual machine hypervisor, wireless access point, encryption appliance, and virtually every other kind of system, other than laptop or desktop. It excels at all of the server type roles that it is placed in.
  • 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
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.
  • Ease of rolling out new features
  • CentOS Linux package management ("yum" system) makes it easy to add new functionality without a lot of headaches. Most yum packages are well constructed so that you're not adding a bunch of junk you don't need just to get a single thing.
  • CentOS Linux is stable. CentOS does a great job of integrating up-to-date features from the CVEs and kernel patches with older, tried-and-true stable code.
  • By investing in CentOS Linux, we've been able to standardize on it and keep it consistent across all our infrastructure. We don't have to have engineers learn new stuff just for one-off systems, we can apply CentOS Linux universally so we don't have incompatibility, retraining, or other issues that you get with heterogeneous setups.
  • Our staff came in already familiar with CentOS, RedHat, and Fedora systems, which all have a common thread between them, and so we didn't need to retrain much.
  • With minimal effort, CentOS Linux systems are more or less self-maintaining once they are setup correctly. We put them up and they run for years.
Ubuntu Linux is another candidate that we've evaluated. It stacks up well against CentOS Linux, however it does have some quirks we need to deal with such as package management and stability. For the most part, the server version of Ubuntu is stable, but we stick with CentOS Linux because it seems to have a slight edge over Ubuntu in that realm as well. I have colleagues at other firms that are wholesale Ubuntu server infrastructure, and they are very happy with it and Ubuntu is favorable there. With the changes that have occurred or may still yet occur at CentOS Linux, we may go down the path towards Ubuntu. But for now, CentOS Linux is where we are parked and will remain for the foreseeable future.
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use various CentOS systems in our organization on over two thousand servers all over the world. We write custom software for CentOS and rely on it to be a stable and secure platform for our needs. CentOS needs to be reliable for our business org to function properly and not introduce issues.
  • Stable
  • Reliable
  • Secure
  • Undoing the move to CentOS Stream.
  • Increasing the lifetime of CentOS.
  • Provide already tested updates to users.
  • Don't use the users as guinea pigs for testing.
CentOS 7 has a longer support life than CentOS 8, and in that case, should be used in production environments until the support ends. Moving to CentOS 8 now would be a mistake with the switch to CentOS Stream, and the decreased support model for CentOS 8. Because of this, CentOS 8 is not a production stable environment.
  • Security
  • Reliability
  • Stable
  • Very easy to use for multiple systems.
  • Creating uniform environment.
  • Having to switch from CentOS 8 to another system.
Ubuntu Linux LTS used to be a more bleeding edge and did not provide the reliability and stability compared to CentOS, but with the move to CentOS Stream. This is reversed and we're considering moving to Ubuntu even though that is a lot of work. We simply can't work with CentOS Stream and had to redo planning to use another OS.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
CentOS has been my Linux flavour of choice for many years. I use it both personally and professionally for multiple purposes. We have CentOS running for our corporate firewall filtering, network file storage, web application development and MySQL hosting. We primarily use the operating system on headless machines, accessed over SSH. We utilize the command line interface, not the GUI options.
  • 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
I have been a CentOS user for over 10 years and remain loyal to the core OS. When it comes to stability and speed, there's no other OS I'd recommend over it. I base this recommendation on my personal experience, as I have multiple development and production servers running the CentOS software today. It's running on newer and older hardware with ease, and the price is right!
  • Stability
  • Security
  • Easy to use package updater (YUM)
  • Wide selection of compatible software
  • You can't argue the price tag. The amount saved by having no licensing fees over the last 10 years is significant.
  • The reliability of CentOS means we do not need constant attention or maintenance once the machines are deployed. Infrequent patching is all that's needed to keep things running smoothly.
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.
May 12, 2021

Server material

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use CentOS as the host OS for MongoDB servers in our analytics service. We also used to have it as the host for the user file Backup Service Front Ends. We use it both on bare metal and in virtual machines. We also have development and testing virtual machines setup with it as a host OS.
  • Enterprise ready
  • Stable packages
  • Great Online knowledge base
  • It's not as intuitive as it could be
  • Some packages can be quite old compared with other distributions
  • Breaking changes appear often when packages are obsoleted usually with no supported transition path (this is a general *NIX problem, but it's more accentuated in CentOS)
CentOS is well suited as a server host OS, for web servers, databases and even container host. We found that NFS performance was better inside physical machines than in virtual ones, so for some critical IOPS bounded applications we used physical servers that ran CentOS and some of them were even Docker hosts with no noticeable performance degradation.
  • Bash scripting for automation
  • Solid packages repositories
  • Long term support
  • On premise support with no cost
  • Small upkeep in man hours
  • Good security, no breaches
  • Quick patches in case of major vulnerabilities found
CentOS has a better reputation than Ubuntu Server. In the past some of the packages were quite old compared to Ubuntu Server. CentOS 7 had longer support cycle than the 4 year Ubuntu LTS. And CentOS Stream promises even longer support.
It is harder to manage than Ubuntu Server, and less intuitive in some areas (like networking).
Return to navigation