CentOS Linux is a stable, mature operating system for rock-solid performance
July 02, 2021
CentOS Linux is a stable, mature operating system for rock-solid performance
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with CentOS Linux
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
- 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.
Do you think CentOS Linux delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with CentOS Linux's feature set?
Yes
Did CentOS Linux live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of CentOS Linux go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy CentOS Linux again?
Yes