Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs openSUSE Leap comparison

openSUSE and Red Hat are both solutions in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category. openSUSE is ranked #13 with an average rating of 9.5, while Red Hat is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8. openSUSE holds a 6.3% mindshare in OSB, compared to Red Hat’s 9.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of openSUSE users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

openSUSE Leap

Read 6 openSUSE Leap reviews

6,981 Views
6,263 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...

Read 273 Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) reviews

32,560 Views
12,986 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

openSUSE Leap

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 7, 2024

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and openSUSE Leap are both popular Linux distributions. Users are generally happier with the pricing and support of RHEL, but openSUSE Leap is preferred for its feature set and perceived value.

Features: RHEL is praised for its robust security features, extensive documentation, and strong support network. openSUSE Leap, on the other hand, is valued for its advanced system administration tools, flexibility, and broad software repository. Users prefer openSUSE Leap's features due to its versatility and comprehensive toolset.

Room for Improvement: RHEL users indicate a need for improved user feedback mechanisms and simpler setup processes. openSUSE Leap users desire more frequent updates and streamlined package management. Both products have areas to improve, but openSUSE Leap's feedback focuses more on enhancement rather than fundamental issues.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: RHEL is recognized for its straightforward deployment and excellent customer service with prompt support responses. Conversely, openSUSE Leap is noted for its slightly steeper learning curve and community-driven support, which can be slower but often comprehensive. RHEL users find deployment easier, while openSUSE Leap users appreciate the community aspect.

Pricing and ROI: RHEL has a higher upfront cost which users feel is justified by its return on investment due to stable and secure operation. openSUSE Leap, being open-source and free, provides excellent ROI but may incur higher indirect costs through the need for customized support solutions. Users find RHEL's pricing more predictable, while openSUSE Leap offers more cost flexibility.

To learn more, read our detailed Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. openSUSE Leap Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. openSUSE Leap

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 847,862 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

openSUSE Leap

Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business

13th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

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

7.3

Number of Reviews

273

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of openSUSE Leap is 6.3%, up from 5.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 9.9%, down from 12.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

Featured Reviews

NagendraKavadi

Systems Analyst at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

Provides BTRFS file system, which allows you to take snapshots

I only use the tool for testing purposes on my team, but multiple people use it. We don't make a team effort to install the solution. When it comes to maintenance, we ask our company to buy SUSE Linux Enterprise. My team consists of 13 people. We are currently integrating the solution with Ansible to do some coding. Although not a full-fledged automation, we are integrating the solution with Ansible and executing a couple of playbooks connected to openSUSE Leap. I would recommend the solution to other users looking for an open-source solution. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature by far has been the virtualization capabilities of the operating system."

"openSUSE Leap has helped me with using containers in Podman."

"Stable - it just runs without the necessity to reboot."

"The solution's most valuable feature is the BTRFS file system, which allows you to take snapshots."

"The solution is very stable after it is configured. It is hard to have a panel slow, a problem, misconfiguration, or any kind of loss function."

"The solution is easy for me to use because the backend is derived from FreeBSD and this is something I have been using for over 20 years."

"Automation is the most valuable feature. I don't like having to solve a problem more than once. If I can just whip up some code to take care of deploying something, responding to something, etc., then that is what I prefer. It is a lot easier out-of-the-box to do than it is with Windows. With Windows, there is always the process of bootstrapping into being able to have the automation framework available, then making the automation framework work."

"It integrates with our automation base. We have Red Hat Satellite and Red Hat Ansible. All the engineers who are a part of our infrastructure or operation on the Unix side are Red Hat Enterprise Linux certified, so it is a lot easier for us to manage and integrate with the tools that we have. It makes much more sense from the middleware perspective and management too."

"RHEL is stable, mature, and relatively easy to handle. I'm pretty confident in it. We haven't had to raise a serious support ticket for any server in I don't know how many years."

"RHEL's robustness and support provide the biggest return on investment. It ensures stability and security for critical applications and helps deliver IT services effectively. The support behind it is excellent."

"Red Hat Insights is valuable. There is patch and vulnerability management."

"LVM is a valuable feature."

"The most valuable feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is its comprehensive ecosystem."

"We have support. If we have any issues with the distro, we can call their support team."

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) pros

Cons

"I would like openSUSE Leap to have better link integration with Windows."

"Somehow the change from OS12.x via 13.x to Leap was a bit bumpy and some old issues seemed to reappear."

"It would be helpful if we could easily switch from openSUSE Leap for testing to SUSE Linux Enterprise for production."

"Like most Linux-based operating systems, the biggest challenge Leap faces is the GUI."

"There is room for improvement in the console."

"In the future, the Active Directory could improve."

"We have had issues with the identification of new volumes when you add new disks or storage."

"It would be nice if they improved vulnerability management."

"The numerous links to different pages disrupt the flow of information and make it difficult to maintain focus."

"The implementation and limitations of SELinux should be re-evaluated."

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux could do better in live patching. In this day and age, vulnerabilities are constantly emerging, I feel that Red Hat Enterprise Linux has fallen backward in terms of live patching, particularly live kernel patching."

"The product should be made available on Oracle Cloud."

"RHEL could be improved in several ways, especially regarding transparency and communication of new features."

"The primary issues are related to integration."

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source operating system that can be used free of charge."

"The solution is open-source."

"The cost of this solution was reasonable and it was within our budget."

"openSUSE Leap is an open-source solution that is free of cost."

"Our client has a direct subscription to Red Hat."

"We purchased the Red Hat Enterprise Linux license via Azure and the vendor."

"It's pretty expensive, but I'm not familiar with the pricing of other vendors for their operating systems. I'd rate it a seven out of ten in terms of pricing. Red Hat Enterprise Linux's main advantage is the support that you get by purchasing their subscriptions."

"We have moved to the Simple Content Access (SCA) model. It is much easier to do renewals and see how I am using my licenses. I used to have to do it all by hand. It would take me a good couple of hours every few months to make sure that we were up to snuff on everything. However, with the new model that they have, this is very easy. I just go to cloud.redhat.com to look and see how I am utilizing my licenses. If I am running out of bounds, I can find out why. If it is simply that we have images that need to be removed, we remove those images. If we need to buy more licenses, then we can start the process of purchasing more licenses."

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

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux licensing is expensive."

"The licensing structure is very convoluted. It's very confusing. We have a Satellite server, and we license it through the Satellite server, but if we didn't, we'd have to buy individual Red Hat licenses. That would be a nightmare to maintain in terms of renewing it every year and things like that."

"We are a huge VMware shop. Our licensing cost works well with Red Hat. We license based on the data center. The way our license works is that we can run as many Red Hat VMs as we want and pay for a single license. On the VMware side, we gain a lot, and it makes much more sense."

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

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Operating Systems (OS) for Business solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

847,862 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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

15%

Comms Service Provider

14%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about openSUSE Leap?

openSUSE Leap has helped me with using containers in Podman.

See all answers

What needs improvement with openSUSE Leap?

Both openSUSE Leap and the SUSE Enterprise version use the same kernel. Suppose I have a lower environment where I can run openSUSE to test all my products. It would be helpful if I could easily sw...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for openSUSE Leap?

I use openSUSE Leap for testing purposes. Before officially using any server in our office, we test it using the solution. My office usually uses production servers on the SUSE Linux enterprise ver...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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

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

See all answers

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

The setup and licensing costs for RHEL are high, especially concerning support and associated applications. Red Hat charges high prices for support solutions like Ansible ( /products/red-hat-ansibl...

See all answers

Comparisons

SUSE Linux Enterprise vs openSUSE Leap

Compared 27% of the time

Ubuntu Linux vs openSUSE Leap

Compared 22% of the time

Rocky Linux vs openSUSE Leap

Compared 18% of the time

Fedora Linux vs openSUSE Leap

Compared 9% of the time

Windows 10 vs openSUSE Leap

Compared 3% of the time

More openSUSE Leap 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

Windows 11 vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 2% of the time

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

April 2025

Download openSUSE Leap product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

March 2025

Download Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) product report

Also Known As

No data available

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL

Overview

openSUSE Leap is a brand new way of building openSUSE and is new type of hybrid Linux distribution. Leap uses source from SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE), which gives Leap a level of stability unmatched by other Linux distributions, and combines that with community developments to give users, developers and sysadmins the best stable Linux experience available. Contributor and enterprise efforts for Leap bridge a gap between matured packages and newer packages found in openSUSE’s other distribution Tumbleweed.

openSUSE

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

Information Not Available

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. openSUSE Leap

April 2025

Free Report: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. openSUSE Leap

Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. openSUSE Leap and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

847,862 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. openSUSE Leap report.

See our list of best Operating Systems (OS) for Business vendors.

We monitor all Operating Systems (OS) for Business reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.