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

Kinvolk and Red Hat are both solutions in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category. Kinvolk is ranked #16, while Red Hat is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8. Kinvolk holds a 0.5% mindshare in OSB, compared to Red Hat’s 10.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Kinvolk 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

669 Views
528 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...

Read 270 Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) reviews

34,963 Views
13,602 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: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

March 2025

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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

16th

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

7.4

Number of Reviews

270

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of Flatcar Container Linux is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 10.2%, down from 12.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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 repository ecosystem is valuable."

"The technical support is very helpful."

"The AppStream feature provides access to up-to-date languages and tools in a way that interoperates with third-party source code. It makes it a lot easier to maintain that, as well as keeps our developers happy by having newer versions of development languages available."

"There are some nice integrations with scanning for vulnerabilities. That is the feature I have enjoyed the most because I am a security person, and that is my bread and butter."

"The solution has good availability and is easy to use."

"The support and stability provided by Red Hat Enterprise Linux contribute significantly to its value."

"The documentation is excellent."

"I like most of the features. I like its stability. I like its views. It provides a very stable environment."

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) pros

Cons

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

"Improvement is needed for supporting Kubernetes clusters because it is less supported by Red Hat according to my experience."

"Large application vendors may not have certified RHEL, or they have certified an older version. Most of the large application vendors are unfamiliar with the versioning that RHEL introduced, which I strongly support. They will support a given sub-version up to a point, not realizing that the sub-versions are essentially additive."

"We need to have more flexibility on the developed versions. Not everybody is ready to subscribe to enterprise versions. They would like to test the tool without subscriptions."

"Their pricing and documentation can be improved."

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux licensing is a bit complex. The solution operates on a subscription-based model, which may not provide immediate return on investment for small to medium-sized organizations."

"It's getting easier for the community to use it free of charge. If you have an account, you get to use it. It would be better if the community could use it on their own for lab projects."

"The vulnerability assessment part should also be improved. We do a lot of patching regularly. They try to fix an issue very quickly, and we also end up facing bugs that are not properly documented. When releasing the general availability for a particular solution, they need to do a lot more work on their side."

"We hope it will improve tasks we have found challenging in the past, like documentation searches."

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"It is cost-effective."

"I'm unsure what the standard RHEL license costs for one machine. We pay for premium support that guarantees a response in two hours."

"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."

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux licensing is expensive."

"It is more expensive than other vendors in terms of pricing and licensing, but because of its stability, I have to go with it."

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

"RHEL has a decent pricing model. It's a subscription, which makes sense. The OS itself is free, but you pay for the support. I have never heard any complaints about the pricing."

"Its licensing is pretty confusing. There are a lot of subscriptions, and it isn't always clear which subscription is the best, but with their support, it's easy to find the right one."

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…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

23%

University

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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)?

Red Hat could gain a competitive advantage in the Asia Pacific region by adjusting its pricing strategy. Lowering the cost of enterprise-level offerings could attract organizations seeking operatin...

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Comparisons

Ubuntu Linux vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 63% of the time

SUSE Linux Enterprise vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 9% of the time

Alpine Linux vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 8% of the time

CentOS vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 7% of the time

More Flatcar Container Linux Competitors

SUSE Linux Enterprise vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 22% of the time

Windows Server vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 16% of the time

Rocky Linux vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 15% of the time

Oracle 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

March 2025

Download Flatcar Container Linux product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

February 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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a stable and reliable open-source operating system for running application servers, databases, web servers, and production systems. It is also used for cloud infrastructure services, BI, and disaster assistance. Its valuable features include support and subscription, ease of management and troubleshooting, integration with existing infrastructure, security updates and hardening tools, scalability, and flexibility.

Red Hat has helped organizations accelerate deployment, provide stability, control, and reliable updates, and enable the deployment of current applications and emerging workloads across different environments.

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

March 2025

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