CentOS Reviews

CentOS is deployed in my organization on-premises. I have been working for my current company for the last two years and three months. We have a total of 64 servers in our infrastructure, and out of those, we use 10 to 12 CentOS OS servers. The versions we use are 7 and 8. From my past experience, the server has never rebooted or had any critical situation.

The most suitable feature of CentOS is its exceptional stability, security, and long-term support, which make it a popular choice for enterprise and server environments.

CentOS is widely recognized for providing a stable and secure platform, especially suited for server and mission-critical workloads. Whenever we face critical work, it is easy for our team to handle. For long-term support, each CentOS release generally guarantees long-term updates, ensuring reliability for extended periods.

CentOS should provide updates more regularly. Kernel parameters, sysctl config details, tuned profiles, process prioritization, optimized disk, and input scheduler choice are all points for performance optimization.

Regarding needed improvements, expanding hardware resources, adding more RAM, and switching to SSD storage would ensure hardware is able to match application demand.

I have been using CentOS for above six years.

From my past experience, the server has never rebooted or had any critical situation.

CentOS always provides good feedback. When I install CentOS, it is easy to handle and troubleshoot.

CentOS is stable, reliable, flexible, and very useful.

The experience from the last two months has been very good with CentOS OS.

CentOS's scalability is very supportive for both small deployments and large enterprise environments, making it very flexible. It allows users to scale resources vertically for upgrading hardware and horizontally by adding more servers, making it suitable for modern web hosting and containerized applications.

When we encounter issues or need troubleshooting assistance, we almost always find answers from the community or from other people's experience shared over the internet.

Neutral

On our previous servers, we used RHEL 8 OS. After formatting that server, we installed CentOS OS on request of users. Using it for the last two or three months on the same servers, the server has not automatically rebooted.

When users request to install or create new servers, they specify their preferred OS. They declared for us to install CentOS OS, so we create the servers and install CentOS OS based on their requests.

Recently we have installed MariaDB as a database, and for the OS, we use CentOS. Our physical server, which had RHEL 8 already installed, was not providing good performance. Our user requested to format the physical server and reinstall CentOS OS. I have recently installed CentOS OS version 8 on my physical server.

We provide infrastructure support to our customer, which is an Indian government PSU company, specifically the Ministry of External Affairs. They provided us with their data center. We developed the data center from scratch and created the entire infrastructure. We develop applications and websites, handling all infrastructure support from beginning to high level for our client.

My advice to others considering CentOS is that it offers significant advantages over other operating systems, making it an excellent choice for users seeking reliability and security. Key advantages include stability, reliability, and being free and open-source. It provides 100% free usage, along with security and long-term support.

The most suitable feature of CentOS is its exceptional stability, security, and long-term support, which make it a popular choice for enterprise and server environments.

CentOS is widely recognized for providing a stable and secure platform, especially suited for server and mission-critical workloads. Whenever we face critical work, it is easy for our team to handle. For long-term support, each CentOS release generally guarantees long-term updates, ensuring reliability for extended periods.

For package management, we use YUM and DNF in the new version for flexible and efficient software management.

It depends on our users' requirements for installing CentOS.

Licensing for CentOS is above my management details, so I am not aware of this information.

CentOS always provides good feedback, is easy to handle, and easy to troubleshoot.

The experience with CentOS OS has been very good over the last two months.

I rate CentOS nine out of ten.

CentOS is basically the community edition of Red Hat, and to get the flavor of Red Hat, users can visit centos.org to download the CentOS distribution and install it in their virtual machine, VirtualBox, or any Hyper-V platform. It gives users the Linux operating system based upon the Fedora flavor, providing an overview of how the enterprise version of RHEL looks similar to CentOS, though the features are very different.

I have been using it for many years now for my own testing and working with the operating system and Linux features. It's mainly for testing and checking Linux features. For application development and server management features, we have been using CentOS for many years. It offers a wide variety of testing cases and checking Linux features as server management. Linux distribution such as CentOS has many features related to server management, checking storage and networking facilities, and integrating with use cases. One of the key specific projects I worked on was testing server administration-related work such as file protocol testing using SMB and NFS, and checking features for networking and other use cases.

CentOS is an open-source platform that is free to use, which is one of its unique features. It's an operating system that offers a foundational view of Linux systems and has been a go-to operating system for a long time. Even though I've used other versions such as RHEL, SLES, and others including Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, and Oracle Linux, CentOS remains a top priority for my daily use cases.

The package management, security, and stability are the main aspects that stand out. Linux's built-in framework provides different layers of security on the file, permissions, and system levels. CentOS offers flexibility in package management features and excellent stability. The installation process is straightforward, even for someone with a basic foundation in Linux, making it user-friendly.

CentOS offers a secure environment with security mechanisms such as SE Linux and firewall protections. You can have a secure setup by having the necessary permissions for users and maintaining system-level access. Users who are not root have minimal command execution abilities, whereas root and sudo users have extended privileges.

Organizations using CentOS save on subscription costs and can run their applications effectively without upgrading to other versions such as RHEL. CentOS helps organizations and startups in cost optimization and application development.

The documentation and support could be improved, along with compatibility with newer hardware as hardware continually evolves over time. Additionally, if CentOS could receive better marketing and promotion, it might gain more traction among vendors, software developers, educational institutions, and colleges.

There is always room for improvement in any product, irrespective of challenges or how good the product is. In the current scenario with cutting-edge technology, improving the product to benefit a larger community would be a positive step.

I have been using CentOS for more than eight years.

Complex setups are not necessary. CentOS's simplicity and stability make it easy to use. It's scalable and user-friendly.

CentOS is scalable and user-friendly without requiring complex configurations.

The documentation and community support are great. I've seen many people across the globe interacting, and when users encounter issues, the community provides solutions. I faced an issue long ago, and it was resolved through the open-source community forum.

Positive

I have only used RHEL besides CentOS. RHEL is the enterprise-level flavor of CentOS itself. It's almost identical to CentOS.

The installation of CentOS is simple, offering both minimal and GUI installation options. A typical layman with a basic Linux foundation can easily navigate through the installation process.

The enterprise subscription cost is at a certain level, but CentOS saves customers from paying additional money, optimizing costs for enterprises and startups involved in application development.

Many are unaware of this operating system due to its open-source nature, but adequate marketing could allow many vendors, software people, institutions, and colleges to leverage CentOS. CentOS is a straightforward, non-complex operating system that offers great use cases.

Documentation and community support are crucial, and CentOS has active community engagement to assist users facing issues.

There is always room for improvement irrespective of how good the product is. Embracing new technology is essential.

I rate CentOS a nine out of ten.

My main use case for CentOS is that in the past, I used it as a Linux workstation, and currently, I use it as a CentOS server where we require RHEL-based server functionality.

The best features CentOS offers in my experience are that it is reliable, cost-effective, and easy to scale.

When I mention reliability and cost-effectiveness, I explain that our product-based company uses a performance testing tool, so to generate load using the tool, we use CentOS generators, which are also known as VMs. We spin up a number of VMs in different locations such as Central, East, and West. If we purchase a subscription, it requires a good amount of money, but if we use CentOS, it is free of cost, and we can scale from more than 20 to 100 servers.

The biggest benefit of CentOS for my organization is cost saving.

CentOS has made a positive difference for my team and company by making scalability easier. For testing, sometimes we require 50 to 200 servers in different locations, and I can easily spin up and scale in and scale down.

CentOS can be improved, but I have not yet faced any kind of issue or hectic problem.

I have been using CentOS for six plus years.

CentOS is stable in my experience.

CentOS scalability for my needs is easy to scale.

I have not used customer support for CentOS.

I did previously use a different solution before CentOS. Before CentOS, I was not using any solution.

I have seen a return on investment in terms of money saved and fewer employees needed.

Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing for CentOS, there is no cost for licensing or setup pricing, so it is easy to set up and scale up the server.

CentOS is more similar to RHEL. My advice to others looking into using CentOS is that if they require RHEL-based or RHEL flavor OS, they should definitely go for CentOS because it is free; if they use RHEL, it requires a subscription. I would rate this product a 9 out of 10.

My main use case for CentOS is setting up my RADIUS server. I have a RADIUS server, along with a DHCP server and Active Directory in Windows. I set up CentOS to run FreeRADIUS on the server and connect through Active Directory accounts using AD Connect. I also tried using the Samba server connection for the AD connection.

I set up CentOS RADIUS server for testing usage because our institution is fully adapted to Microsoft features and Microsoft accounts. I am implementing CentOS RADIUS server because of its speed and ease of accessibility. When you set up a RADIUS server in a Linux-based environment, it is easy to connect with global accounts, which is why I chose CentOS.

CentOS has helped me most through its enterprise-level stability. CentOS is very stable and easy to use because of the interface. It is easier for me to use CentOS for my specific requirements than Ubuntu server, which is mostly command-line. Security-wise, CentOS is also the best, comparable to Ubuntu and others. CentOS supports FreeRADIUS, which is helpful for my needs.

What has helped me most is that CentOS supports the latest stable FreeRADIUS packages with easy installation via YUM or DNF setup and wide module compatibility, including databases such as MySQL, and it supports Active Directory and LDAP setup, making it suitable for setting up a RADIUS server. CentOS also has long-term support, frequent security patches, and other features that are helpful for this operating system.

Regarding how CentOS can be improved, I am primarily expecting stronger security features on the security side. CentOS RADIUS server handles sensitive authentication data, so improving security is the priority. Enforcing SE-Linux with custom policies tuned for FreeRADIUS and enabling automatic security updates would be helpful. I would also recommend improving CentOS minimal OS installation.

If CentOS could be made more lightweight and minimal during installation, that would be beneficial because memory usage and service conflicts exist in this OS. Improved logging and monitoring are also needed. Better insight would make it easier to diagnose issues, so integrating FreeRADIUS logs with the Elasticsearch stack, Grafana, or Graylog would be helpful. Enabling systemd-journald persistence and storage would also be beneficial.

CentOS, being Linux-based, is the best in security, but it needs more on the security side for CentOS RADIUS server. FreeRADIUS security improvements and security patches are needed. If possible, including a graphical user interface for future features would be most welcomed.

CentOS is stable in my experience.

CentOS scalability is good and can handle growing workloads easily according to my setup, which is not heavy-load work or heavy usage. According to my work, it is adequate.

I did not try CentOS customer support, so I do not have an idea about it.

Negative

I did not previously use a different solution. In my institution, they had used Microsoft RADIUS, but I did not prefer it. There was conflict in setting up the Microsoft RADIUS server, and connecting it with global accounts was also difficult, so I chose CentOS.

I have seen a return on investment using CentOS. I can share that mainly time is saved because of the interfaces I have used. This has helped me the most. When you plan to improve this system, you must include all features that are accessible through graphical user interfaces, which are also best for users.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that I have used the free version of CentOS with fully free versions of software also inside the operating system. I set it up as a local server and used it in that system only, so there is no extra cost for me in this environment setup. CentOS licensing was also free for that setup, so there is no cost for me.

Before choosing CentOS, I definitely evaluated other options, specifically Ubuntu. Ubuntu was the other option I had before deciding on CentOS.

My advice for others looking into using CentOS is that it is a Linux-based operating system with a graphical user interface. That is the main thing for whoever needs a Linux-based operating system to use as a server with a GUI, so it is best for its GUI. I would rate CentOS overall as an eight on a scale of one to ten.

My main use case for CentOS is mostly development, as I use it when I have to create large builds over AWS EC2 instances. That is the main reason I use CentOS.

A specific example of a project where CentOS was especially helpful for my development work is when I had an application with a backend build that took a long while to build on my local machines. I used an EC2 instance to do that because it has more compute power than my local machine, so I used it with CentOS to build my application.

Other than that, hosting front-end applications back when I started working in the field was also a use case for CentOS, as I would use an EC2 machine with CentOS to host my front-end application alongside the backend applications and containers.

When using CentOS on EC2 for builds, I noticed it is around three to five times faster, especially considering my local machine is not that great with CPU resources, so it is quite faster than my local machine.

The best features CentOS offers that stand out to me include it being lightweight and the UI and the whole ecosystem, which I prefer. There is not something very specific about it that I like, but the generic UI and the whole setup, and it was the start of my career when I started using it, so I kind of stuck with it.

I like CentOS interface or setup process because the instructions were quite clear; I was able to set up a whole new ecosystem without a tutorial or instruction set. The UI is clean, simpler, and I know where everything is.

The Windows-like UI is quite helpful.

CentOS has positively impacted my organization regarding cost savings; having a dedicated high-resource machine is quite expensive these days, and since the compute power is so cheap on AWS, hosting a machine with UI over the EC2 is quite easier for beginners like me.

Sometimes it is quite difficult to find drivers when I have CentOS locally on my machine. For example, I have an old Lenovo laptop where I experience driver issues sometimes.

I have been working in my current field for around six years.

For my use cases, CentOS is quite stable, and I have not found any problems with it.

I have not had to scale up in the traditional sense, but I remember increasing the storage and RAM inside AWS, and CentOS handled it without any problems.

I never had to reach out to customer support for CentOS, so I cannot comment on that experience.

Negative

Before CentOS, I primarily used Windows, but I switched because the licensing fees for Windows were quite high, while CentOS was not that expensive; the exact numbers escape me, but it was cheaper than maintaining a Windows machine.

Migrating applications or workloads to CentOS was quite smooth; I just pulled in my code for the build scenario, and since the code was inside a container, that made it an easy process.

I purchased CentOS through the AWS Marketplace.

In terms of documentation and community support for CentOS, I find it quite easy; these days, OpenAI's ChatGPT is really helpful for information, and generally, it is quite good.

I am not entirely sure about the license I purchased for my local machine, but I assume it is the community version, while for the AWS one, I do not entirely remember the pricing.

I evaluated other options before choosing CentOS, including Mint and Ubuntu; I also considered Red Hat, though I do not exactly remember the name, but there are some expensive versions as well, which contributed to my decision.

CentOS is deployed in my organization in both on-premises and private cloud environments.

The cloud provider we primarily use for our private cloud deployment is AWS, and we also have a private server that is essentially a blade server where we have deployed it.

I have not dived into the security features of CentOS that much, so I am not sure I am a good person to answer that question.

I have pushed CentOS to the limit by testing an application where I had to accommodate multiple users; I increased the port number to allow 10,000 users to connect to that application hosted on a CentOS server.

CentOS handled that situation reliably; while there were some difficulties changing some settings inside the application, once I managed to tweak the settings, it worked very well, allowing around 10,000 users to connect and chat simultaneously.

The only compatibility issue I have faced with CentOS is with the biometric drivers, such as the fingerprint drivers, which were quite complicated, but generally, whatever I am trying to run works quite well.

My advice for others looking into using CentOS is that it is quite sane; there is not any bloatware on it, and everything just seems to work. I would rate my overall experience with CentOS an 8.

My main use case for CentOS is development and production servers. For development and production services, I use CentOS to deploy, and I am currently using it to deploy Docker Swarm applications for Dockerized applications for some legacy applications before we move them to Kubernetes.

In addition to my main use case, I have a few bastion servers I use for VPN connections.

The best features CentOS offers include stability, which I think is the most important. I have found CentOS servers to run very long without any issues, as well as clean updates that do not cause any downtimes.

CentOS's stability and clean updates have helped me in my day-to-day work and with my projects by providing predictable workloads and ensuring that I can assure stability for my stakeholders, which is the business. On features, security is always a good thing, and the important factor about CentOS is that security is a core feature. It is also part of the reason why the updates are so stable, which gives me the confidence to provide reports for the stakeholders.

Compatibility is great as Linux servers in general are usually amazing for deploying both development and production workloads, and performance has never been an issue because Linux is very good on resources.

I cannot think of anything that CentOS could be improved on at the moment. Considering the fact that I have not had any issues with needed improvements such as documentation, community support, or compatibility with newer technologies in the past number of years I have been running these servers, there is nothing to report.

I have been using CentOS for the past ten years.

CentOS is very stable.

Considering I use CentOS in legacy servers, I do not have a lot of experience scaling it.

I have not had any need to contact customer support for CentOS.

Neutral

I have previously used Ubuntu servers before, and the reason for my switch to CentOS was originally because of the security-forwardness of Red Hat based servers, as well as that hybrid kind of benefit you get from CentOS by receiving the updates from Fedora quickly in terms of the server environment. I found Ubuntu sometimes can be relatively unstable, which is why I moved to CentOS.

I have seen a return on investment, particularly in terms of money saved because I do not pay for the servers. I only pay for the use of the servers; I do not pay for the operating system. I would not say it translates to fewer employees, but for time, it is greatly considered once again the stability. Time is always positively impacted by stable systems, so I would say there is a lot of time that has been saved.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for CentOS has been very straightforward, as I use the free version of CentOS, so there is no fee for that.

Before choosing CentOS, I did evaluate other options, with Red Hat being one of them, but at the time, it was paid, so that is why I ended up using CentOS.

My advice for others looking into using CentOS would be to make sure you set up your update schedule to be manual so that you can choose when and how to do your updates. If you want a stable environment, choose a good cloud provider and set it up in your own way. I have also used it for bare metal, so there is not much I can provide in terms of that. I want to say keep up the good work with CentOS. I gave this review a rating of nine out of ten.

My main use case for CentOS is that I use it as an enterprise server for running multiple software applications like Apache, JBoss, and other middleware software.

I can give you a specific example of how I use CentOS as an enterprise server: multiple software as a service applications are deployed on CentOS servers, running Apache HTTP servers for web traffic, JBoss application server for application servers running Java applications, and multiple other purposes.

CentOS is the closest and best distribution other than Red Hat Enterprise Linux, making it a solid choice if you do not have the budget to spare.

In my opinion, the best features CentOS offers are that it is an easy to use Linux distribution based off Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is very solid and very well known across the industry, providing a good mix of features and reliability. CentOS is my go-to Linux distribution.

What I find most valuable about its reliability or feature set is that stability and reliability are key factors. Our staff is very knowledgeable in Linux, which is rare, and we do not rely on the community. I have access to Red Hat's knowledge base site, which is a great source of knowledge material, and it translates brilliantly to CentOS.

CentOS has positively impacted my organization in several ways: stability, reliability, and performance have improved our company cost-wise, especially moving out of paid operating systems for running distributed software. The cost is the main factor in this positive impact.

I do not find anything that can be improved in CentOS. I am a huge fan of it, and there is hardly anything that Linux in general does not already provide. I think CentOS is the best and closest thing to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which I consider the golden standard for Enterprise Linux.

CentOS is perfect as it is.

I have been using CentOS for more than ten years.

CentOS is absolutely stable.

CentOS's scalability is great, and I do not have a problem with it.

I do not know much about the customer support for CentOS, as we do not really need much support with our staff being very knowledgeable in Linux.

I previously used a mix of Microsoft and Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating systems, but since then, I switched almost everything to CentOS.

My experience with pricing and licensing for CentOS is that it was quite easy. The setup was not easy, but it is something that my team is very familiar with, making it easy for us. I understand that people who are not familiar with Linux may have a hard time with it.

I have seen a return on investment. My team had some time saved, but it was not significant. The money saved was significant, approximately fifteen percent of our IT budget.

Before choosing CentOS, I evaluated other options such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu. I ended up choosing CentOS since that is where my staff is more knowledgeable, making it the operating system we would be more familiar with.

Regarding cost savings, we have saved from a few hundred thousand dollars yearly to one or two million in the last years of transitioning, mostly because of moving out of other paid operating systems. I do not have any knowledge on how this budget was spent on other ends.

My advice to others looking into using CentOS is that if you are looking for a Red Hat Enterprise Linux alternative, CentOS might be the thing for you, especially regarding costs.

I love CentOS. I have a CentOS sticker on my laptop, and it is not just another tool for work; it is something that goes beyond that. Open source software is a belief that is very strong with me. I gave this review a rating of ten out of ten.

My main use case for CentOS is technical support, fixing the network or service-related technical issues faced by the customers.

One of our products, a web server based on Nginx, uses CentOS as the base OS. When a customer calls me stating they're not able to access the web UI of a certain product or not able to access the web server, I use the terminal to see the status of the services using different Linux commands. I can also try to restart the web services from CentOS commands; that's how I usually use it.

Sometimes I use CentOS to create cron jobs when I want a server to perform certain tasks at specific times. Instead of doing it manually, I can create automatic cron jobs so a service will be executed on a certain date or time.

In my experience, the best feature that CentOS offers is the network configuration of a device from the command-line interface, which is exceptionally clean.

Since joining my organization, which has been using CentOS, I've observed that all products with CentOS as a base OS run smoothly.

Even when a product does not function optimally, the base OS CentOS works smoothly; we can see the status of the services with the command-line interface, making it very efficient.

I think CentOS should introduce more security patches to fix different vulnerabilities.

I have been using CentOS for 10 years.

In my experience, CentOS is very stable.

CentOS's scalability for my organization has handled growth and changing needs smoothly.

The customer support for CentOS is amazing.

I would rate the customer support for CentOS a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10.

Positive

I am not aware of any different solution that was previously used before CentOS, as I was not part of the organization before, so I cannot comment on that.

I have seen a return on investment in terms of time. It saved a lot of time through troubleshooting, which gives us substantial room for improvement in terms of fixing things, so time saved is a good return on investment.

My experience with CentOS in terms of pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is an open-source operating system, so there was no cost in terms of deploying it or getting the license for it.

CentOS was the clear choice before choosing it; no other options were evaluated.

My advice to others looking into using CentOS is to go for it; it's the best OS. I rate CentOS 9 out of 10.

Positive

My main use case for CentOS is that we use it on some of our devices for VoIP or unified communications.

A lot of our older virtual appliances run CentOS, which includes our conference bridges and telephony switches.

The best feature CentOS offers is that it's free.

Stability is an important feature among others.

CentOS has impacted our organization positively by giving us an operating system for many of our virtual appliances, but for detailed information, you would need to consult someone in a higher position.

I think CentOS can be improved, but it's not really a viable option anymore. It could be brought back, but that seems unnecessary now that Rocky Linux exists.

I have been working in my current career field for almost 12 years.

In my experience, CentOS is stable.

I haven't seen any issues with CentOS's scalability as I haven't had to scale it.

I did not previously use a different solution.

CentOS was the standard for our appliances, though I did not have any input in that decision.

Everything we did with CentOS was internal for the company, at Mitel.

My advice for others looking into using CentOS is to use Rocky Linux instead.

I do not wish to add anything else about the features, including security, performance, or ease of management.

I haven't noticed any specific outcomes such as reduced costs, easier maintenance, better reliability in our team's day-to-day work, or less downtime.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate CentOS an 8.