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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

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

YouTube

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

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

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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
  • 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
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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
May 12, 2021

Server material

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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)
Jason Smith, DPA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
  • Sometimes we have to add some esoteric repositories to YUM, and that is a bit of a pain.
  • Sometimes we fight with SE Linux if it is enabled.
  • I wish I could get a CentOS t-shirt.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
  • Ugly User Interface - I can deal with a simple and barebones interface, but that doesn't mean it needs to look like it was designed in the early 90s.
  • Smaller user base than other distributions - CentOS, while well established as a viable Linux distribution, lacks as strong of a user base as other distributions, making it more difficult to get support on user forums.
  • Drive compatibility - CentOS lacks as robust driver support as other distributions. For instance, in my most recent install, I still needed to install networking support packages, rather than having in-built support.
Bear Golightly | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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!).
  • CentOS isn't (and may never be) a strong contender for a desktop (GUI) Linux distribution.
July 17, 2019

Why I love CentOS

Joseph Ngugi Muiruri | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
July 06, 2019

CentOS rocks!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Fast
  • Stable
  • Well documented
  • Secure
  • Not a big fan of Firewalld in CentOS 7 but it's pretty easy to switch back to Iptables if needed.
Valery Mezentsau | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
  • Configuring network interfaces sometimes causes a lot of issues, especially when you are using it out of regular configuration.
  • Server updates—would be better to decrease the time for that.
  • CentOS is not a good desktop solution.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Easy installation process with sensible and secure defaults.
  • Its very stable and reliable.
  • Good package management.
  • Fast security patching.
  • CentOS is community-supported, so some software vendors will not officially support it because it isn't Red Hat.
  • CentOS is not a great desktop platform, only for servers.
Charles R. Coggins III | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
David Wilson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Robust
  • Good package management
  • Fast security patching
  • Increase number of standard packages rather than having to use EPEL releases
  • Increase speed of getting latest version of base packages
  • More Stable arm builds
Aaron Smith | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
Kenneth Hess | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
germary zambrano | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • 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
  • What I do not like about centOS is that in some installations it has caused problems with the network interfaces which I have to do cumbersome procedures for their configuration
  • In rare cases there is a software that we want that is not available through a repository. I think it would be better if they expand more these repositories to improve the user's experience
November 02, 2017

CentOS 7 simply the best

Olumayowa Mosuro | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
  • Less text editors.
  • Options for full access for admin users.
  • More security functionalities for root access.
  • Server updates can take a while. The time for this can be reduced.
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