Flatcar Container Linux vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) comparison

Kinvolk (acquired by Microsoft) and Red Hat are both solutions in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category. Kinvolk (acquired by Microsoft) is ranked #21, while Red Hat is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8. Kinvolk (acquired by Microsoft) holds a 0.7% mindshare in OSB, compared to Red Hat’s 9.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Kinvolk (acquired by Microsoft) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

Flatcar Container Linux

Read 1 Flatcar Container Linux review

670 Views
643 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...

Read 364 Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) reviews

20,998 Views
20,788 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Flatcar Container Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Flatcar Container Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Canonical, Oracle and others in Operating Systems (OS) for Business.

To learn more, read our detailed Operating Systems (OS) for Business Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

August 2025

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Helped 867,676 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Flatcar Container Linux

Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business

21st

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...

Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

364

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of Flatcar Container Linux is 0.7%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 9.0%, down from 11.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Operating Systems (OS) for Business Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)	9.0%
Flatcar Container Linux	0.7%
Other	90.3%

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

Featured Reviews

Yogesh Deore

Senior Consultant at Capgemini

The solution is stable and allows us to make needed changes

The development teams could sharpen their skills. They should offer applications on the net I have eight years of experience with Flatcar Container Linux. The version of Flatcar Container Linux that I am using is stable. The scalability of this product is fine. It allows us to make the needed…

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Bruce Lundberg

Linux HPC Systems Administrator at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Reliable patch management, high uptime, and incredible knowledge base

In terms of security, it does a lot of things that most people still turn off. SELinux is turned on by default. They have pretty good firewall rules in their defaults. The audit rules always take tweaking, but, overall, it comes out of the box not too bad. I used to write scripts to harden them from there. There are multiple ways to provision and patch. You have everything from local repositories to doing it by hand. Their knowledge base is incredible. There is so much information out there. It has never taken me longer than 30 minutes to find an answer to anything, even very tough ones. One company I worked for was a security company, and we did a lot of patching on everything. It was designed around security and email hosting, and uptime was pretty much whatever we wanted it to be. I have had a couple of times when the uptime was bad, but it was caused by a third-party solution. In fact, the Norton antivirus was definitely the worst. Red Hat had nothing to do with it.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Flatcar's support is good. The version I am using is stable and allows us to make needed changes."

"The solution's most valuable feature revolves around its simplicity, especially when maintaining it, which is an easy process."

"It is generally easy to initiate a support case with Red Hat, and there are clear escalation paths if needed. The support team responds based on the contract level."

"The benefits I get from this operating system are that it's secure, easy to use, and stable."

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is valuable for us since it's stable and reliable."

"The main reasons for using Red Hat Enterprise Linux are security, reliability, and efficiency. The system is very reliable, and it is more efficient than others."

"Red Hat's greatest asset is its extensive community, which provides valuable support and advice when issues arise."

"The number one thing we like is that it is a very reliable platform. It is a very consistent platform. There is very little that we cannot do with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and there is very little that we worry about when we are running a Red Hat distribution."

"Reliability is the most valuable feature."

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) pros

Cons

"The development teams could sharpen their skills. They should offer applications on the net."

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved regarding security-side integrations that can be tightened with the releasing of images compliant with CIS controls or DISA STIGs, so they're built in and not an extra step."

"If Red Hat Enterprise Linux can improve its monitoring capabilities, that would be helpful."

"The Authselect tool needs improvement. This tool is used to connect your system to an identity provider or directory service, e.g., openLDAP. There is documentation and descriptions. While there are a few use cases and examples described, it is sometimes hard to use these tools to set up the configuration that we need for our specific environment. I would like it if there was more general information about the tool, not just describing a use case. For example, here is how to do it and how to connect to some kind of openLDAP service as well as more information about when you need to configure certificate services and mutual authentication."

"We finally started doing Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Edge. That one definitely is an improvement. One piece that is missing is that we are required to use moby-engine, but currently, Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Edge forces Podman, so we have to work around it."

"The deployment learning curve for Red Hat Enterprise Linux could be more user-friendly."

"The solution's operating system configuration and function selection could be improved."

"The customer service and technical support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are okay; I would rate it a five out of ten."

"For using third-party software, such as security scanners or patch management systems not from the Red Hat family such as Azure Patch Management, sometimes there could be improvements regarding support, as it can take a year or one and a half years to receive support for certain RHEL major versions, so partnerships on the Red Hat side and collaborations with Microsoft would help."

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"It is very straightforward. We do not have to think much about having to get all the subscriptions related to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux fleet that we have because all the subscriptions came in pairs of CPUs or even for an entire bare-metal server."

"If Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can reduce its pricing, then it would be easier to convince others that there is not much difference between open-source solutions while still receiving several features for a licensing cost."

"The tool is getting expensive."

"The solution can get pretty pricey depending on how many machines we're licensing but for a good reason."

"I have very little experience with pricing and getting quotes. The whole VMware thing happened, and everybody is looking at different alternatives. At this point, any competitor is probably a good choice based on the cost."

"The price point for that is phenomenal because you are paying for support. From a pricing perspective, it is on point. It is definitely a value-add, and it is extremely transparent from a customer standpoint."

"The cost is based on each organization's budget and infrastructure."

"When I started using it, Red Hat Enterprise Linux was free for all and open-source. It is now paid with access to many features to upgrade and use their services."

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user281973

Storage and VMware Expert at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Aug 24, 2017

It's improved our company's system environments that run Oracle databases.

Red Hat is mission critical to our environment Red Hat has improved the mission critical environments running Oracle databases, while CentOS has improved our web environment and MySQL. Oracle and SAP Environment and all HPC environments. 10 years No issues Very stable i don´t find any problem…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

24%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	84
Midsize Enterprise	46
Large Enterprise	256

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Which would you choose - RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) or CentOS?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is fantastic. It is an inexpensive solution that has excellent security, performance, and stability, and also lots of features. I specifically like that the solution has fe...

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What do you like most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?

It is open source. We can customize it as per our requirements.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?

I can say about pricing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is maybe a two on a scale where ten is a high price.

See all answers

Comparisons

Ubuntu Linux vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 46% of the time

Alpine Linux vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 21% of the time

CentOS vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 9% of the time

Debian vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 7% of the time

SUSE Linux Enterprise vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 6% of the time

More Flatcar Container Linux Competitors

SUSE Linux Enterprise vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 19% of the time

Windows Server vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 15% of the time

Rocky Linux vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Linux vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 9% of the time

Ubuntu Linux vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 9% of the time

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

August 2025

Download Flatcar Container Linux product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

August 2025

Download Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) product report

Also Known As

No data available

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL

Overview

Flatcar Container Linux is a lightweight, secure, and reliable operating system designed for running containers at scale with automatic updates and a minimal attack surface. The solution is easy to use and manage and has a simple and intuitive command-line interface and a powerful set of tools for managing containers and clusters.

It supports various container runtimes, including Docker, Kubernetes, and Mesos. It can be deployed on various infrastructure platforms, including bare metal, virtual machines, and cloud environments. Flatcar Container Linux is an ideal choice for organizations deploying containerized applications in production environments.

Kinvolk (acquired by Microsoft)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is recognized for its stability, security, and performance, serving diverse industries with its robust support and seamless cloud deployment capabilities.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides comprehensive server applications across cloud environments, featuring tools like Ansible for enhanced user experience. It integrates OpenShift, Identity Management, and automation, supported by extensive documentation. Users seek easier upgrades, enhanced network virtualization support, and improved live patching.

What are the key features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

Stability and Security: RHEL is designed to provide a stable and secure environment, backed by consistent updates.
Cloud Deployment: Easily deployable across cloud platforms, enhancing flexibility.
Integration with Ansible: Enhances operational efficiency with powerful automation tools.
OpenShift and Containerization: Supports modern app development with integrated OpenShift features.
Extensive Documentation: Offers comprehensive resources for users to troubleshoot and optimize.

What are the benefits of using Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

Reliable Support: Benefit from extensive support options for seamless operation.
Enhanced Security: Built-in features ensure data integrity and protection.
Increased Flexibility: Suitable for diverse deployment environments, including on-premises and cloud.
Operational Efficiency: Tools like automation and cloud navigation improve productivity.
Training and Resources: Access to comprehensive training contributes to smoother implementations.

In sectors like finance, telecommunications, and education, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is crucial for running stable, secure systems. Its application spans web servers, data management, and containerization through tools like Kubernetes. Organizations adopt it for on-premises, virtualized, and cloud environments, ensuring robust infrastructure management.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

CISCO, mettle, Microsoft, Upguard, GMX

Travel Channel, Mohawk Industries, Hilti, Molecular Health, Exolgan, Hotelplan Group, Emory University, BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina, HCA Healthcare, Paychex, UPS, Intermountain Healthcare, Brinker International, TransUnion, Union Bank, CA Technologies

Buyer's Guide

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

August 2025

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