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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.

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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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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

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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
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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
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Comparisons

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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

(1-21 of 21)
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Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
Jason Smith, DPA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • CentOS is all positive on return!
  • The more CentOS machines we have around here the better.
  • CentOS is a tight Linux distro, it is conservative and solid where it needs to be.
  • Security options are excellent. You can really make it tight.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
July 06, 2019

CentOS rocks!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • It has saved us money as we haven't had to bother with Windows licensing for some of our servers.
  • Downtime is somewhat reduced and updates are way faster than Windows.
Valery Mezentsau | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Being supported by Infosec software vendors provided us vendor documentation, knowledge bases and decreased time spent troubleshooting issues.
  • Fast and easy deployment: saved time and people resources for implementation.
  • Cost saving on deployment because no licenses needed.
Charles R. Coggins III | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • CentOS has just been a positive impact on our company. We have a fast, secure and reliable web server that has the same standards as the Enterprise version of Red Hat.
  • The biggest positive for me personally working as a System Admin is that I don't have to do anything with this server on a daily basis. It does what it is supposed to do for us every single day. Once a month, I run "yum update" and see if there are any updates and install as needed.
David Wilson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Software costs dramatically fell when we moved our web farm from Windows to CentOS
  • Time wasted on maintaining and patching reduced as we moved to automated methods
  • Easier to meet an agile development strategy
Aaron Smith | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • We've been able to run CentOS on various commodity hardware successfully. This can mean tremendous savings if running in virtual environments where automatic fail over or clustering is involved. Downtime is minimal for any hardware failures in these scenarios.
  • Since CentOS does not need to be licensed in any way, savings can be large. With latest versions of Windows Server, a single OS license can run into the thousands where there is no licensing cost with CentOS.
Kenneth Hess | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Since CentOS is free, our developers and engineers can use it without regard for dipping into project budgets.
  • We can spin up a CentOS VM, use it and then destroy it without having to worry about licensing headaches.
  • CentOS can run on just about any hardware platform: server, laptop, old hardware, etc. so that makes it less expensive in that we don't have to buy specialized hardware for it.
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