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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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Product Demos

DELL OMSA CentOS 6.4 DEMO 2014

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

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CentOS Linux Hot Plug CPU and Hot Plug Memory Demo

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

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

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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

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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(134)

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.

Reviews

(1-21 of 21)
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CentOS Linux is a stable, mature operating system for rock-solid performance

Rating: 10 out of 10
July 02, 2021
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
CentOS Linux
10 years of experience
  • 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.

Server material

Rating: 8 out of 10
May 12, 2021
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
CentOS Linux
15 years of experience
  • Enterprise ready
  • Stable packages
  • Great Online knowledge base

CentOS: stable, reliable, and secure Linux distribution

Rating: 10 out of 10
December 04, 2019
JS
Vetted Review
Verified User
CentOS Linux
12 years of experience
  • Excellent "L" in the LAMP server.
  • CentOS is a total workhorse and very stable distribution.
  • Security and other updates are a breeze with YUM.
  • The community support and documentation is as good as it gets.

Cheap RPM support, not much else

Rating: 5 out of 10
October 31, 2019
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
CentOS Linux
1 year of experience
  • Barebones user-interface - CentOS doesn't aim to be flashy, and takes a no-nonsense approach to the user interface. Unfortunately, this is also one of its downsides.
  • RPM package compatibility - CentOS can readily use most RPMs making it trivially easy to set up a machine for development that you'll want to mirror for production.
  • Command Line Customization - CentOS is easier than other distributions for customizing from the command line, making it easier to automate the deployment of a new instance.

CentOS - Absolutely the best value for the money

Rating: 8 out of 10
October 24, 2019
BG
Vetted Review
Verified User
CentOS Linux
10 years of experience
  • As it is derived from the commercial Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution, most instructions for installing enterprise software on Red Hat also work on CentOS, including the package manager.
  • CentOS lags behind Fedora (the other free Red Hat derivative supported by Red Hat), which makes it a solid choice for the enterprise (or even SMBs - stability is universally appreciated!).

Fast, Reliable and Secure

Rating: 9 out of 10
May 01, 2019
VM
Vetted Review
Verified User
CentOS Linux
5 years of experience
  • 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.

CentOS: The Reliable and Secure Server

Rating: 7 out of 10
April 06, 2019
  • 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.

CentOS for those who need Red Hat Enterprise Linux but can't afford it.

Rating: 10 out of 10
July 31, 2018
KH
Vetted Review
Verified User
CentOS Linux
12 years of experience
  • 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 a great option for a stable server for small and medium businesses

Rating: 9 out of 10
February 13, 2018
gz
Vetted Review
Verified User
CentOS Linux
5 years of experience
  • is a good operating system to create servers due to its stability and security and budget-friendliness, since it is a free distribution
  • this system is stable and efficient in the consumption of resources, which helps our budget, especially since it has expanded to run Apache, PHP, MySQL and be more on a par with other systems

CentOS 7 simply the best

Rating: 9 out of 10
November 02, 2017
OM
Vetted Review
Verified User
CentOS Linux
3 years of experience
  • The operating system is open-source Linux based distribution. These have helped companies to spend money on purchasing licenses unlike the Windows operating system
  • You can find solutions to any issues for the operating system. Since it is a community build, access to basic troubleshooting or problems for CentOS can be found easily online. Other operating systems you might need to pay for their help desk assistance.
  • The command line in CentOS is really a valuable tool especially for the developers. This is one way in which applications can be installed and function properly. But one has to be a master of coding before performing functions on the OS.
  • Security is not an issue for the operating system as most linux boxes are prone to security. Unlike the Windows operating system, you might want to spend money buying an anti virus to run on your servers which is not really cost effective.
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