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 9.0, while Red Hat is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8. openSUSE holds a 5.7% mindshare in OSB, compared to Red Hat’s 11.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of openSUSE users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

openSUSE Leap

Read 7 openSUSE Leap reviews

7,663 Views
6,671 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...

Read 259 Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) reviews

43,717 Views
15,646 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

openSUSE Leap

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. openSUSE Leap

October 2024

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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:

Customer Service

No sentiment score available

Sentiment score

8.2

Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers responsive customer service, valued for its knowledgeable team, quick escalation, and extensive support resources.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the openSUSE Leap report

They promptly addressed my concerns regarding permission issues when I contacted them.

Zunaira Afzal

Jr. DevOps Engineer at Verdant Soft

Their documentation is clear and built into the GUI, so you can easily access information if you're curious about a topic.

Syed Azhar

Teams Support Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

They respond immediately based on the SLA level.

Sitakanta Chaudhury

Cloud Infrastructure Architect at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) report

Room For Improvement

No sentiment score available

Sentiment score

5.3

Red Hat Enterprise Linux requires improvements in documentation, support, pricing, UI, compatibility, updates, and integration for better user experience.

No quotes available

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The solution operates on a subscription-based model, which may not provide immediate return on investment for small to medium-sized organizations.

Sitakanta Chaudhury

Cloud Infrastructure Architect at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

Red Hat Enterprise Linux could make the interface more colorful and improve the user experience.

Syed Azhar

Teams Support Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

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

Zunaira Afzal

Jr. DevOps Engineer at Verdant Soft

For more quotes and insights, download the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) report

Scalability Issues

No sentiment score available

Sentiment score

7.8

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is scalable and adaptable, supporting efficient workload scaling across various environments, ensuring seamless IT operations.

No quotes available

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I would rate the scalability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux as nine out of ten, indicating it scales well with our needs.

Syed Azhar

Teams Support Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) report

Setup Cost

No sentiment score available

Sentiment score

6.3

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's pricing is justified by its support, stability, flexible subscriptions, and appeal for reliability-focused businesses.

No quotes available

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It may be considered expensive compared to other solutions like CentOS or Ubuntu, which offer some of the same features without additional costs.

Sitakanta Chaudhury

Cloud Infrastructure Architect at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

Its pricing has room for improvement because it's more expensive in the local market due to purchasing power parity in India.

Syed Azhar

Teams Support Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) report

Stability Issues

No sentiment score available

Sentiment score

8.2

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is highly stable and reliable, performing well for business-critical applications with minimal downtime.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the openSUSE Leap report

Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers great stability and performance compared to other operating systems.

Sitakanta Chaudhury

Cloud Infrastructure Architect at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) report

Valuable Features

No sentiment score available

Sentiment score

8.3

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is praised for robust performance, security, scalability, seamless integration, and comprehensive enterprise-level support.

No quotes available

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It also has strong security features, is OIS and FIPS certified, and has built-in Linux security configurations.

Sitakanta Chaudhury

Cloud Infrastructure Architect at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

It also has the 'top' command that gives you all the processes running and their utilization of resources like CPU, RAM, etc.

Syed Azhar

Teams Support Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

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

Zunaira Afzal

Jr. DevOps Engineer at Verdant Soft

For more quotes and insights, download the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) report

Categories and Ranking

openSUSE Leap

Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business

13th

Average Rating

9.0

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

7.4

Number of Reviews

259

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of openSUSE Leap is 5.7%, up from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 11.9%, down from 12.1% 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

Saravvana Kumar.

Developer at Capgemini

Highly stable, good knowledge base, and reasonable price

Its installation on a RAID or cluster system is something difficult. There are specific teams working on that. The GRUB configuration is also a little different from the other Linux distributions. In terms of additional features, as technology keeps evolving, the product will also have to evolve. For example, Microsoft Windows has come a long way. In Windows 11, there are so many features that are fundamentally the same as the oldest version, but there are other aspects or processes that have improved. macOS has also evolved over time. Similarly, in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux that I used in 2003 and the one that I am using now, some things are the same and some things have changed. Red Hat can continue to engage clients, understand the use cases, and update them.

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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

15%

Government

Educational Organization

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

12%

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?

I use openSUSE Leap as the base for the Kubernetes cluster we run in-house.

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...

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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...

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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 Enterprise Linux is expensive, but I'm not paying anything because it's the company's money. However, it's priced comparably to other enterprise Linux solutions. It costs a lot because you ...

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Comparisons

SUSE Linux Enterprise vs openSUSE Leap

Compared 28% of the time

Ubuntu Linux vs openSUSE Leap

Compared 24% of the time

Rocky Linux vs openSUSE Leap

Compared 16% of the time

CentOS vs openSUSE Leap

Compared 7% of the time

Oracle Linux vs openSUSE Leap

Compared 5% of the time

More openSUSE Leap Competitors

SUSE Linux Enterprise vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 20% of the time

Windows Server vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 17% of the time

Rocky Linux vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 13% of the time

Windows 10 vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 11% of the time

Windows 11 vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 1% of the time

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

November 2024

Download openSUSE Leap product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

November 2024

Download Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) product report

Also Known As

No data available

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL

Learn More

openSUSE

Red Hat

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.

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.

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

October 2024

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: October 2024.

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816,192 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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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.