CentOS Reviews

My main use case for CentOS is that we use it on some of our devices for VoIP or unified communications.

A lot of our older virtual appliances run CentOS, which includes our conference bridges and telephony switches.

The best feature CentOS offers is that it's free.

Stability is an important feature among others.

CentOS has impacted our organization positively by giving us an operating system for many of our virtual appliances, but for detailed information, you would need to consult someone in a higher position.

I think CentOS can be improved, but it's not really a viable option anymore. It could be brought back, but that seems unnecessary now that Rocky Linux exists.

I have been working in my current career field for almost 12 years.

In my experience, CentOS is stable.

I haven't seen any issues with CentOS's scalability as I haven't had to scale it.

I did not previously use a different solution.

CentOS was the standard for our appliances, though I did not have any input in that decision.

Everything we did with CentOS was internal for the company, at Mitel.

My advice for others looking into using CentOS is to use Rocky Linux instead.

I do not wish to add anything else about the features, including security, performance, or ease of management.

I haven't noticed any specific outcomes such as reduced costs, easier maintenance, better reliability in our team's day-to-day work, or less downtime.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate CentOS an 8.

Our clients are pharmaceutical companies, and they're hesitant to change anything that's working. They want us to continue with what's proven. So we stayed on CentOS 7 for a long time. If we changed, we'd have to provide extensive validation that the new operating system is perfect and has no vulnerabilities.

However, CentOS 7 reached its end of life a few months ago, forcing us to migrate to CentOS 9. This was a big effort because we have a lot of in-house servers. For the production servers on AWS, we didn't face any issues migrating from CentOS 7.

The in-depth documentation available for CentOS is great. If I need to install a feature or fix a server issue, I can easily find answers online. The CentOS community is also vast and helpful. Overall, I think it's a very good Linux distribution.

We work on the terminal. If you work on the server, the command-line interface makes perfect sense because we need to do automation, and that requires entering commands. The command-line utility works perfectly. I have no issues with it.

For security, we have an AWS load balancer in front of our servers. We don't give public access to our CentOS servers directly. That's why I haven't focused much on CentOS's security features, as AWS is ultimately responsible for the security.

One issue I recently faced, but I think it was due to my IT support guys, was that when the server storage gets full, the service crashes. It's very difficult to regain access and stability in that situation. That could be improved.

So, the stability might be improved. But I don't think it's a CentOS-level issue. The system administrators need to come up with a solution for that, but I don't think it's CentOS's fault. I haven't done any research [R&D] on this issue.

There's one thing for sure. We recently migrated from CentOS 7 to CentOS 9, and it was a bit difficult. For example, updating Windows is simple; you just download it, and it takes about 15-20 minutes. But that's not the case with migrating from CentOS 7 to 9. 

We had to back up the entire server, launch a new server, and then restore the backup to the new server. We couldn't directly migrate. I think that was a bit of a problem. The setup and updates are not that new in CentOS.

Everyone in my company has used CentOS from the very beginning. So, we've been using it for the past five to six years. We used CentOS 7 for four or five years. 

It's very stable. We've hosted other solutions for about three to five years, and I've never seen an issue at the OS level. But upgrades are a different story.

It is a pretty scalable product. Currently, our production schools are hosted on CentOS. So, that is about ten lakhs (one million) users could be using it. I'm not entirely sure about the exact number, but since the application is hosted on the CentOS operating system, that's the approximate user base.

A ton of articles are available on the internet about CentOS, so I haven't really felt the need for active support. But overall, you can say that the internet is still a great source of information on how to work with CentOS.

The setup is pretty straightforward. We've installed other facilities that are just as good. There's nothing particularly different in the process.

The integration is as good as any other Linux platform. If another Linux platform can integrate with something, then CentOS can also integrate with it.

I think we don't pay for it. It's a Linux distribution, so it's open source. But I'm not sure if they might be charging for support or not because I haven't contacted their support.

For CentOS, I would rate it as nine out of ten.

CentOS is pretty old now, so I wouldn't recommend anyone use it. Everyone should follow the Docker container model at the moment. They should build their Alpine images of Dockers and host them. 

If they want to host them in the cloud, then AWS ECS (Elastic Container Service) works fine. If they want to host their services on-premises, they can use Kubernetes to host them.

My company plans to drop the use of CentOS since Red Hat has stopped offering it support.

The tool was useful for hosting our company's website and email servers.

The value that my organization gained from the use of the product stems from the fact that we were able to use our email effectively, and we had only done a small deployment for the email servers.

The product lacks a graphical user interface that can help users automate certain systems using the native features offered by CentOS. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in the product.

I have experience with CentOS.

It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

My company used to host email servers with the help of CentOS. There were around 400 users of the product in our company.

My company has not used the technical support of the product since it was a tool that relied on the community-driven part to provide help to its users. My company could use search engines to get answers whenever we faced any issues with the product.

I have no experience with other tools in the market.

The product's initial setup phase was straightforward and not complex, especially if you are familiar with CLI. There can be an issue in the product's setup phase if you are a person who uses graphical interfaces.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

CentOS is an open-source tool.

CentOS and other Linux products have almost the same features, but Fedora Linux, a product that is a more futuristic tool, was a bit buggy. The aforementioned area consists of details on why my company chose to work with CentOS.

There was nothing special that I liked about the product in terms of features that were positive for team management in our company. My company only needed a robust system that was also secure. Though my company knew about various Linux products, a major reason for opting for CentOS stemmed from the fact that it was closer to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I don't know about the stability and security features of the product since it was an area involving technical decisions that were taken care of by the technical domain in my company. Presently, there is no support available for the product, and I believe that the updates should also stop shortly.

We did not need any technical staff to take care of the product since everything was okay with it until our company took care of the updates and upgrades provided by the tool.

I feel that the product shouldn't be stopped, and CentOS should focus on improving the tool.

The management of updates in the product was straightforward, and it used to happen every week, after which it was usually promoted to production, but it was all manual work, and my company did not try to automate it.

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.

We use the solution for file servers and emails. It is an operating system. Our email server, file server, and web server are running on CentOS.

The product is stable. We have to update it every once in a while. The vendor updates the tool regularly to solve vulnerabilities. We have to do patches. The software and hardware compatibility are updated. The vendor updates the versions to keep up with the new hardware.

The solution must improve its security. It must provide security against hackers. The security features must always be updated.

I have been using the solution for more than 15 years.

The tool is stable. I rate the stability a ten out of ten. It doesn’t shut down or crash.

The tool is not for large systems. We have about 20 users in our organization. We are not planning to change the solution for now.

We get plenty of support from the web. Since the product is open-sourced, a lot of community support is available. We can find answers to our queries.

The initial setup is easy. I rate the ease of setup an eight or nine out of ten. The time taken for deployment depends on what we have to add to the tool. Generally, the deployment can be done in about an hour.

The product is free. It’s open-sourced. It is the biggest advantage of the product.

Many software applications are open source. We do not have to spend money on them. Many people are using CentOS. It is a popular OS for those who don’t want to spend lots of money on Windows. People who are knowledgeable in setting up servers use the product. Those who do not know the technical setup choose Windows. CentOS users are programmers with technical knowledge.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

On CentOS, we use Docker to run our different services, which are interconnected among themselves.

As far as my experience with CentOS is concerned, it's a stable product. It is stable and reliable.

The initial setup is very easy.

They could add a tool or a dashboard where we could properly monitor the machine's performance rather than using different commands. If a proper GUI-based tool was connected remotely or on the machine, it could be a great addition to CentOS.

I've used the solution for the last five years. 

It's a stable product. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

There are 1,000 people using the solution. 

I've never dealt with technical support. Our DevOps team takes care of issues and troubleshooting.

Before joining the current company, I was using Ubuntu Linux. When I used CentOS the first time, I didn't find any hurdle or issue in using that OS.

It's easy to set up the solution. It's not overly complex.

As far as the installation is concerned, it hardly takes an hour, based on the configuration or the software we want to install. After that, it's another hour or so to configure it as per our needs.

I can't speak to the pricing. The DevOps team handles that aspect of the product. 

My organization asked us to identify the possibilities of using Oracle Linux. That's why I am studying options.

We're end-users.

The solution can be deployed on the cloud and on-premises. 

I personally also tried to work on CentOS 8. It's easy to use.

I'd recommend the solution to others. 

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

Many of my customers use Linux as their client operating system because it is more secure. Since it doesn't have a UI and there are a lot of anomalies and viruses affecting the UI-related applications, some customers prefer to have an operating system without a UI. I have seen most people use CentOS, Red Hat, or Ubuntu as a client operating system or server.

CentOS is very easy to use, and all the commands are user-friendly. Installing any package or application is pretty easy with CentOS. Security-wise, most of the latest security software and applications are compatible with CentOS. Updating the patches for CentOS is very easy.

CentOS is a stable, consistent, and secure solution.

The solution’s stability could be improved.

I have been using CentOS for three years.

CentOS is a very stable solution.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten for stability.

The solution is very scalable. CentOS is very good for any microservices or any application that has an auto scalability mechanism available. The number of users usually depends on how many users can access the OS through the network based on the bandwidth.

The solution provides good technical support for all flavors of Linux.

The solution’s initial setup is very straightforward.

The solution’s deployment takes hardly 10 to 15 minutes. You can use the image to manually deploy the solution, or you can use the DevOps or any automation methods to deploy it.

CentOS provides very good cost efficiency. It is a very efficient operating system without any hassle or inconsistencies. I don't see much difference between CentOS and Ubuntu. Ubuntu has a few more user-friendly commands than CentOS. Once you are familiar with the flavors, CentOS is also very user-friendly. For a new user of Linux, Ubuntu is a little bit easier.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We used the solution as an operating system. We were using CentOS because it supported the Red Hat flavor. Now that CentOS has stopped providing the support, we have switched to Alma OS.

We used the solution as an operating system. The solution is simple to use.

Currently, CentOS is not providing support, so you will not get new packages that are compatible with that operating system.

The solution provides good stability.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

Around 70% of our organization is using CentOS.

We previously used Ubuntu. We switched to CentOS because it was a business requirement, and our clients demanded it.

CentOS is an open source that is free of cost.

I would recommend CentOS to other users because it supports the Red Hat flavor. It is easy to integrate the solution with other tools and systems.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

In my company, we use CentOS to work in my test environments on my laptop. I didn't implement CentOS on the enterprise server.

My company uses it like a work server, and I got access to services provided by Apache and ManageEngine, which I used to deploy solutions, especially the minor ones like Elasticsearch. I didn't use other solutions because of security reasons in my company. I use it for testing purposes related to DNS servers, directory servers, binding servers, and Hyper-V servers, which are minor cases.

CentOS is not very different from other solutions apart from its distribution since it is a free edition of Red Hat.

I find the solution's stability to be the most valuable feature of it since I have been using a virtual machine with the help of the solution since 2015, and it still works on all the laptops in my organization.

I don't think any improvements are needed in the solution since we can just use it to test Red Hat before deploying it in our IT environment. We can learn more about CentOS from Red Hat.

In the future, CentOS should provide a free or open-source version for its community, which can involve improving and testing it.

CentOS NetworkManager is an area of concern in the solution that needs improvement, and it is the same with other products from Red Hat. CentOS NetworkManager was better earlier compared to what it is nowadays. The implementation or configuration would be better if there was some new CentOS NetworkManager available.

I have been using CentOS for seven to eight years. I currently use CentOS 7. I haven't got ISO on my laptop to use CentOS 8 in my test environment.

It is a highly stable solution.

It is a scalable solution. When testing the product, I found its scalability features very stable while considering its impact on the testing phase I was involved in with the tool.

CentOS has no technical Support since it is an open-source or free edition platform. If I face any issues or I want to learn something about the product, then I would have to learn them through the online communities for the tool. In Linux, you can find every documentation you need by doing a simple Google search or on the online communities created for CentOS.

The initial setup is the same as installing an ISO file in Red Hat. The product allows me to configure the IPS and allows me for automatic configuration, making a big difference. If a person is familiar with Linux, the setup phase gets easy. If a person is familiar with Windows, installation will be hard for the first time.

Considering the use of the solution for my company's test environment, the deployment process takes only a minute or two.

There are no cons in CentOS or Red Hat products. The cons are mostly found in Microsoft products.

It is completely easy to maintain the solution. I haven't faced any issues with CentOS. For CentOS, I have a virtual environment on my laptop in a VMware workstation. If I face any issues with CentOS, it will be because of VMware workstation owing to the version or edition I use.

CentOS is a good product for testing and learning purposes. You can go with CentOS or Linux if you are into cyber security.

With CentOS, I didn't conduct or operate myself in a GUI environment for testing or learning purposes.

I rate the overall product a ten out of ten.