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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs Rocky Linux comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 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
275
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

"The feature that I like the most is that we can integrate it easily with our existing infrastructure. We found that it is much easier to deploy RHEL in our environment compared to a competing distribution like Ubuntu."
"This is a very robust product that doesn't require a lot of handling. It just works."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux's most valuable features are the Podman and a lot of packages that come inbuilt as part of the regular package."
"The security it provides is one of the most important features, as are the support and the documentation. The latter helps me to do everything."
"Security, packages, and updates are valuable. There is also the possibility to do unattended installations. This way you can define how you want the installation to behave and be configured whenever you do the deployment."
"The tool is simple and easy to use. It has good support and doesn't have many outages due to the OS."
"One of the most beneficial aspects of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is its performance, combined with the flexibility to install a wide range of available packages online."
"Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its stability."
"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."
"I haven't needed to use customer service or support, which speaks volumes about their product's reliability and ease of use."
"The custom install scripts streamline the setup process, making it straightforward."
 

Cons

"The deployment learning curve for Red Hat Enterprise Linux could be more user-friendly."
"There was a reduction in the amount of detail provided in backlog messages between Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions six and seven, compared to versions eight and nine."
"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."
"The organization moved away from Red Hat because IBM introduced paywalls and additional barriers that did not exist before, which made everything a lot harder."
"To enhance Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would like to see more focus on improving performance and tools such as compilers."
"Sometimes, when upgrading or migrating systems, there are differences in the repositories of the versions that aren't one-to-one replaceable. For example, there are significant differences in the repositories from version 7 to 8. We needed to upgrade RHEL from version 7 to 8 because it had reached the end of its life. A Postgres database was running on it that used a RHEL 7 package, allowing some database or reporting features. When I upgraded to RHEL 8, it was not in the repository. I needed to install it with some workaround. Of course, it was installed with some minor incompatible dependencies."
"I would like Red Hat to focus on continuous improvement."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux should provide more training because many people are not very familiar with Linux's user interface."
"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."
"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."
"The solution's audio integration for virtual machines could be improved."
"I have certain problems with the tool's DNS part, making it an area where improvements are required."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are coming from CentOS, so technically, our total cost of ownership has gone up, but it is still cheaper than Windows for a database server and things like that."
"The cost has been pretty stable over the years for what you get."
"As a developer, I pay around 10,000 Yen, which is around $100 per annum for support. SUSE and Red Hat are typically the same without standard support. The pricing is not a big deal. Enterprise customers will pay for the support."
"The cost of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is reasonable."
"There are special academic offerings for academic institutes, which is pretty good. We need these offerings. In my personal opinion, the prices are okay. However, for educational purposes, they could be lower. For example, in Germany, the budget in the education sector for IT is lower compared to the huge universities in the US."
"We purchased our license from Red Hat."
"The licensing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux in Peru is very expensive."
"While expensive, Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers efficiency and performance."
"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
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
14%
University
12%
Educational Organization
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
 

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)?
Though a bit expensive compared to competitors, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is still recommended because it works effectively and delivers value for its pricing.
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: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.