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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
7.4
Number of Reviews
270
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Rocky Linux
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
7th
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 March 2025, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 10.2%, down from 12.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rocky Linux is 14.8%, up from 9.1% 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

"Compared to any other product, Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a stable backported solution for a long time."
"The product is easy to use."
"The tool's most valuable features are stability and maturity. Linux offers cost efficiency. Red Hat comes at the top of other Linux vendors. I am very satisfied with RHEL's maturity."
"The solution's use of Kubernetes as an internal or core process on the system is brilliant."
"The knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux is good. It is easy to parse through all of the knowledge base."
"The tool is simple and easy to use. It has good support and doesn't have many outages due to the OS."
"It is a well-established operating system. We have tried to implement almost every feature of a version in our environment, and it has been very reliable. We are not facing many production issues on a day-to-day basis. They have well-documented articles on their documentation site and a knowledge base on their website. When we need to implement anything, we are able to find information about the best practices and the solution."
"The product is optimized for resource utilization."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its stability."
"It helps us keep our workstations in sync and ensures consistent settings across most of our machines."
"It's very simple to work with, easy to learn, and know where things are."
"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

"Red Hat can be tricky at times, but all operating systems are. The moves to systemd and NetworkManager haven't made the product more user-friendly. Let's put it that way. The network management they had before was easier and somewhat more reliable than NetworkManager, which Red Hat forces us to use now."
"I would mostly like to see improvement around corporate messaging. When Red Hat 8 came out, and Red Hat decided to change, it inverted the relationship between Red Hat and CentOS. This caused my customers who had a CentOS to RHEL development to production workflow quite a bit of heartburn that several of them are still working out. A lot of that probably could have been avoided through better messaging."
"While Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers many valuable features, some, particularly the latest ones, are not immediately available until deployed on-premises."
"The solution could provide more APIs and GUI interfaces."
"The vendor keeps rolling out many packets, which complicates our job."
"We just learned that we can get access to more support documents by going through the portal. I didn't know that. If it was something that was more known or advertised, that would have helped us to find out some of the information a little better."
"There's too much information on the support page sometimes."
"There is a steep learning curve, especially for users from a Windows or GUI background, because of the command-line 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."
"The solution's audio integration for virtual machines could be improved."
"In terms of improvement, Rocky Linux needs to clarify its identity and target audience."
"Improved integration with Windows, particularly Active Directory, would be beneficial for the product. Currently, this aspect requires additional effort."
"I have certain problems with the tool's DNS part, making it an area where improvements are required."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Lowering the cost of enterprise-level offerings could attract organizations seeking operating systems or Kubernetes solutions, as these tools are essential for many businesses in the region."
"Regarding the prices, the new changes are actually not bad as it works for enterprise solutions."
"We purchased the Red Hat Enterprise Linux license via Azure and the vendor."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux has a yearly subscription cost for the licensing that includes maintenance and support."
"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."
"RHEL is expensive. We have changed the cloud provider's subscription to a pay-as-you-go model."
"We like the model that Red Hat makes available for subscription and support. There are some free parts, subscriptions that facilitate solution development and implementation, and then, when the solution is well-defined, we move into the paid support license."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"Compared to the market prices of other tools, the solution has a very competitive pricing."
"The product is expensive. I rate the pricing a three."
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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)?
Red Hat could gain a competitive advantage in the Asia Pacific region by adjusting its pricing strategy. Lowering the cost of enterprise-level offerings could attract organizations seeking operatin...
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.
839,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.