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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs Rocky Linux comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 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

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
Rocky Linux
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
5
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 Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 9.9%, down from 12.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rocky Linux is 15.2%, up from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

Bruce Lundberg - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Dominique Locksley - PeerSpot reviewer
Very simple to work with, easy to learn, and has a competitive pricing
The UX design, the user front end, and the user GUI are very well done on the GNOME and KDE platform side. It's very simple to work with, easy to learn, and know where things are. I have worked with a lot of different solutions like Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, and CentOS. Rocky Linux is very easy, and if you switch from one to the other, you can easily detect your tools in the front end. Since it is very similar to the file system breakdown of downloads and documents, it's very easy to show users where things will be.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is more supported and supportable in the enterprise sense than Ubuntu or perhaps a smaller distro, but it's also flexible enough to easily transport from platform to platform: ISA to ISA, production to development, and vice versa."
"I recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux to others, especially larger companies."
"We have used many of the Linux-based operating systems for production purposes, but this is the only solution that guarantees performance and scalability. When we run industry servers, they demand high performance."
"The biggest benefit is from a security standpoint. As the product progresses and they come up with new versions, the new security features are addressing vulnerabilities. From that perspective, it has worked well."
"The solution is useful for application support and automations."
"It is a good operating system. It is very stable. It does not take a lot of maintenance. You set it up well and it runs."
"The systems are just bulletproof. We do not have problems with it. Support for file system differences and migrations has been solid."
"I like most of the features. I like its stability. I like its views. It provides a very stable environment."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its stability."
"The custom install scripts streamline the setup process, making it straightforward."
"I haven't needed to use customer service or support, which speaks volumes about their product's reliability and ease of use."
"It's very simple to work with, easy to learn, and know where things are."
"It helps us keep our workstations in sync and ensures consistent settings across most of our machines."
 

Cons

"Some problems may occur with the product if you don't patch it after a year or two."
"The documentation is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux's monitoring could be improved. I would like additional monitoring features, like a greater ability to monitor services and workloads running. Satellite can provide centralized monitoring of subscriptions and deployments. You can build a monitoring console, but there is no native monitoring."
"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."
"Support for older versions of the operating system could be improved. If people can't afford to upgrade, or if they have servers that are outdated, they need to be able to provide back-field support for those."
"The licensing cost of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is high and could be improved."
"Red Hat should improve its support services, specifically the responsiveness and expertise of its India-based team."
"It would be great if Red Hat had its cloud instead of using AWS, Azure, or GCP. RHEL should have a dedicated cloud. I would also like to see more Windows support."
"I have certain problems with the tool's DNS part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"The solution's audio integration for virtual machines could be improved."
"Improved integration with Windows, particularly Active Directory, would be beneficial for the product. Currently, this aspect requires additional effort."
"In terms of improvement, Rocky Linux needs to clarify its identity and target audience."
"One of the potential issues is that if you don't pay for support, you may need to manage certain aspects on your own and rely on the community for assistance."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"While expensive, Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers efficiency and performance."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a more cost-effective solution than Windows Servers."
"We charge €2,000 per system for three years."
"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."
"It is more expensive than other vendors in terms of pricing and licensing, but because of its stability, I have to go with it."
"I do not know enough to give a comprehensive answer, but other operating systems are in use at my company because they have more favorable licensing terms."
"The pricing is fair. The workstation licensing cost is fair. If you're running enterprise-level deployments, depending on what you're using, the volume licensing is good. I personally am worried that if they get so successful, they can increase the price, and then it won't matter because we'll be stuck on them. Hopefully, their open source mentality keeps that from happening. Where it's right now is good."
"Licensing is the most attractive part of it. With Red Hat Insights and Ansible, we now know that it was done with the intention of simplifying the licensing so that you get the support for what you have and not necessarily what you want to have."
"The product is expensive. I rate the pricing a three."
"Compared to the market prices of other tools, the solution has a very competitive pricing."
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Comparison Review

it_user281973 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
14%
University
12%
Educational Organization
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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)?
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...
What do you like most about Rocky Linux?
It's very simple to work with, easy to learn, and know where things are.
What needs improvement with Rocky Linux?
Improved integration with Windows, particularly Active Directory, would be beneficial for the product. Currently, this aspect requires additional effort.
What is your primary use case for Rocky Linux?
I use the solution in my company to do some automation stuff to run Ansible, and it has an administration server to provide all the Linux control like a client node can be connected to that master ...
 

Also Known As

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. Rocky Linux and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.