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

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 21, 2025

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
33rd
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
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
382
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of Flatcar Container Linux is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 8.0%, down from 11.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)8.0%
Flatcar Container Linux0.8%
Other91.2%
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

YD
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…
RO
Server administrator at Northrop Grumman
Empowers collaboration through streamlined integration and extensive documentation
Improving Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be tough, however, a significant area is collaboration tools. We have many Windows users that use Outlook and Skype or Teams to collaborate on our network. They want Linux desktops due to the fact that they want to use containers. Their biggest complaint is, 'I need two workstations to do my container work and one to collaborate.' If somehow RHEL can start introducing or collaborating with Teams and Outlook so their users can work with their Windows peers, that would be great. But I don't think that's available yet. Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, there needs to be more of an education piece to it. For instance, when purchasing 10 or 100 node licenses, they could suggest, 'We also offer this 1,000 node license instead, and it'll save you specific amounts.' Just more education on their offerings would be helpful, because usually, we're coming out with the requirements, and then they just provide it to us. They could inform us about saving by bundling it differently or using alternative approaches.

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."
"I like RHEL's clustering capabilities and high-level architecture. It has high availability, built-in disaster recovery, SSH features, and scripting."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) brings a robust operating system that has stable and solid versions, gives you many tools to automate things, is a secure system, and has very good user and access management with lists, privileges, and SELinux."
"I find the clustering feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux the most useful. It helps us to cluster our application service to maintain high availability."
"The feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that I appreciate the most is the scalability."
"RHEL benefits my company by providing a stable platform and strong support behind it, which are the motivating factors of using it in general."
"The file system is very good. We also have flexibility. We can scale the file system and add the mounts on the go without any downtime."
"The security updates and the support that comes along with it for applications are valuable."
"It is a stable solution."
 

Cons

"The development teams could sharpen their skills. They should offer applications on the net."
"The licensing cost of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is high and could be improved."
"I'm seeking a streamlined method for migrating from an OpenShift environment to a VMware virtualization platform utilizing Red Hat Enterprise Linux."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in integration with different cloud platforms."
"I wish IBM would give them more leeway. IBM seems to have restricted Red Hat Enterprise Linux more since the acquisition."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) could be improved by incorporating some of the third-party repositories, as different repos might show more options than one would get with a base builder for Red Hat, so having the choice to include those during install would be beneficial."
"An area for improvement in RHEL has to do with security policies. I know they are doing something about this in RHEL 9, but I haven't worked with that version yet. When it comes to security policies in RHEL 8, it is a bit behind. It would be better if we could just enforce a certain security policy such as CIS Level 1. That was not available, out-of-the-box, in RHEL 8."
"Maybe they need to make it easier to apply patches from different resources. That said, at my level of usage, I never have to apply patches."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"Operating in the cloud space, we typically point our customers to pay-as-you-go licensing, which comes through the various cloud providers repository services."
"I have purchased the license via hyperscalers and transferred it as well. I purchased the license from the marketplace and also from Red Hat. Pricing is something that can always be better."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux is only affordable for large organizations."
"For me, it is not too bad, but my company pays the bill, so I do not worry too much about it."
"The solution is moving away from its open source roots and licensing is a little bit of an issue."
"It is cost-effective."
"I do not know what the pricing is like now. Previously, the pricing model was advantageous as it allowed unlimited installations for a single price, focusing on support. The recent introduction of paywalls complicates the cost landscape."
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Comparison Review

it_user281973 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
12%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business86
Midsize Enterprise47
Large Enterprise262
 

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...
What do you like most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?
It is open source. We can customize it as per our requirements.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, the pricing is good; however, licensing is a bit confusing.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for AWS
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Rocky Linux, Canonical and others in Operating Systems (OS) for Business. Updated: December 2025.
879,310 professionals have used our research since 2012.