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AlmaLinux vs MariaDB on CentOS comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
4.7
Organizations saved costs and time with AlmaLinux due to its free RHEL compatibility, stability, and reduced vendor lock-in.
Sentiment score
3.7
MariaDB on CentOS streamlines deployment, enhances performance, and reduces admin reliance, saving time and costs significantly.
The clearest measurable benefit is avoiding operating system subscription costs while maintaining enterprise Linux compatibility and stability.
Associate Systems Engineer at Dhanyaayai Enterprises Pvt Ltd
We saved approximately 70% of our budget with AlmaLinux, and the system is stable and reliable.
Systems Engineer at SARL Rajafood
Moving over to AlmaLinux saves a lot of time because of the long-term support, meaning I do not have to support the latest version every couple of years.
I have seen a return on investment with MariaDB on CentOS; the management is easy.
Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
I have seen a return on investment through specific improvements in performance optimization for the application, resulting in a better user experience.
Senior Cloud Engineer at Globant
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.5
AlmaLinux offers strong community support and third-party assistance, differing from RHEL, with variable response times and effective solutions.
Sentiment score
7.1
MariaDB on CentOS sees mixed reviews, with many relying on community support and some finding customer service lacking for complex issues.
For technical issues, the community is very useful for installation, configuration, migration, and troubleshooting.
Technical Solution Development Engineer at Ericsson
AlmaLinux offers strong community support and excellent documentation.
Associate Systems Engineer at Dhanyaayai Enterprises Pvt Ltd
The best features AlmaLinux offers include its support, which is outstanding from TuxCare, as we are getting the fixes and patch sets for the OS very fast.
Cloud Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
The communities and the blogs are already available, and we referred to those to accomplish what we needed.
Senior Software Developer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
When we have some big problem on the database, we need to have a database administrator, not a person who reads instructions on the screen.
Performance Testing And A PM Expert at ADM
Customer support for MariaDB on CentOS is excellent and very good.
Principal Data Infrastructure Engineer at Susquehanna International Group
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.0
AlmaLinux is scalable and compatible with major platforms, offering reliable performance, flexible deployment, and effortless scaling for enterprises.
Sentiment score
5.3
MariaDB on CentOS is praised for scalability despite challenges, with efficient replication and resource management reported by most users.
It is very scalable and performs well both on small deployments and large-scale infrastructure with many servers.
Ingénieur Systéme at Groupe Open SA
AlmaLinux scales very well and can support everything from a small virtual machine to large enterprise deployments.
Associate Systems Engineer at Dhanyaayai Enterprises Pvt Ltd
AlmaLinux has good scalability and is well-suited for both small deployments and large enterprise environments.
Technical Solution Development Engineer at Ericsson
MariaDB on CentOS's scalability is impressive, as it easily handles the growth in data, users, and workload.
D V A 3 at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
The scalability of MariaDB on CentOS depends on the use case.
Performance Testing And A PM Expert at ADM
Regarding the scalability of MariaDB on CentOS, it's pretty scalable.
Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
AlmaLinux offers stable, reliable enterprise compatibility, ensuring minimal disruptions and security with consistent performance for production and research environments.
Sentiment score
7.9
MariaDB on CentOS is praised for its stability, ease of management, superior documentation, and reliable clustering capabilities.
Its security is another highlight, providing minimal disruptions, timely security patches, bug fixes, and a reduced attack surface.
system administration | DevOps | Softrware Developer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
AlmaLinux is a reliable and stable version of Linux.
Systems Engineer at SARL Rajafood
It is designed for enterprise workloads and follows a long-term support model, making it suitable for production servers, databases, web applications, virtualization platforms, and cloud environments.
Associate Systems Engineer at Dhanyaayai Enterprises Pvt Ltd
I rate the reliability and stability level of MariaDB on CentOS as very high; it is among the best databases that I have ever seen.
Owner at Syntlogo GmbH
Regarding stability, I have been working on my project for the last year and, while the project has run for four to five years, I have not seen any technical glitches from MariaDB on CentOS that caused downtime.
Software Developer at Apptom
MariaDB on CentOS is very much stable in my experience.
Senior Software Developer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

AlmaLinux needs better host access control, documentation, enterprise tools, hardware compatibility, support, updates, integration, and community resources.
AI-enhanced optimization, compatibility updates, and deployment improvements are crucial for MariaDB on CentOS amidst repository management challenges.
The AlmaLinux team can look into this and see what they can improve in terms of resource consumption and monitoring tools that can actually help the users of AlmaLinux pinpoint the exact processes or services that are causing that amount of resource consumption.
DevOps at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees
If something is added to AlmaLinux that allows for some subscription or makes it exactly equal to RHEL, it would be perfect.
Devops Engineer at EDAG
If AlmaLinux could provide ten to twenty years of fixes, that would be an improvement because I do not want to update the system all the time, as it becomes more challenging for me as a system administrator to track all the patches and everything I should patch on the system.
system administration | DevOps | Softrware Developer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
Postgres is easier to work with because you can use the explain plan to see directly and immediately if your new request is good or not.
Performance Testing And A PM Expert at ADM
For potential improvements that could be made in the future for MariaDB on CentOS, I think two or three things are needed; one is AI to support rewriting queries because at this stage every database supports AI.
Software Developer at Apptom
I think MariaDB on CentOS needs improvements in some memory-level implementations within the operating system, as I have noticed issues related to memory orientation, such as out-of-memory problems.
D V A 3 at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

AlmaLinux offers enterprises a cost-effective, stable, and RHEL-compatible platform with free updates and no licensing fees.
Enterprise users find MariaDB on CentOS cost-effective, with favorable pricing, eliminating licensing fees and flexible project-specific resource allocation.
In the open-source environment, I believe a Linux distribution is always free of cost.
Junior Software Test Automation Engineer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
AlmaLinux itself is free and open-source, so there is no OS licensing fee.
Technical Solution Development Engineer at Ericsson
AlmaLinux is free, so there are no costs there.
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, in our case, it was just the open-source MariaDB, so we did not require any licenses or setup costs; we just use it directly.
Software Engineer at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been positive since it is open source, and we did not have any issues with licensing and pricing.
Senior Cloud Engineer at Globant
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for MariaDB on CentOS has been that we use MariaDB Enterprise Edition, so the cost and pricing are very competitive.
Principal Data Infrastructure Engineer at Susquehanna International Group
 

Valuable Features

AlmaLinux offers enterprise-grade stability, security, and cost savings with RHEL compatibility, enhanced by TuxCare support and KernelCare integration.
MariaDB on CentOS is praised for its performance, compatibility, advanced features, and cost-effectiveness, enhancing organizational workflows.
The tooling stability for DevOps is also significant, allowing easy use of infrastructure as code with Ansible or scripting playbooks that remain valid for years, making it especially important for the CI/CD pipelines.
system administration | DevOps | Softrware Developer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
Because AlmaLinux is binary compatible with Red Hat, it provides a very stable and reliable operating system suitable for production environments.
Ingénieur Systéme at Groupe Open SA
At this moment, AlmaLinux is a very open platform. It not only includes the latest security patches but also integrates very recent AI technologies alongside the direct patches that help harden the server.
DevOps Engineer at SMC Labs, LLC
Many functionalities are not available in MariaDB on CentOS, so those aspects needed to be rewritten, particularly Oracle proprietary features.
Architect at LTIMindtree
We set it up for high availability in the production environment using the 2.x version and the latest version with a GUI, making it an advanced feature for high availability, especially when the master goes down, allowing the slave to take over read and write mode automatically, without any interaction or impact on the application side.
D V A 3 at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
The primary thing that we got from MariaDB on CentOS is the connection handling capability.
Senior Software Developer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

AlmaLinux
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
MariaDB on CentOS
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
22nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of AlmaLinux is 4.0%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MariaDB on CentOS is 0.3%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AlmaLinux4.0%
MariaDB on CentOS0.3%
Other95.7%
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

Arka A - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Solution Development Engineer at Ericsson
Enterprise workloads have run reliably while operations have reduced costs and simplified patching
AlmaLinux is already very strong, but it could be improved in a few areas. Better centralized management and monitoring, easier major version upgrades, and more enterprise-focused automation tools would make administration simpler. Having more integrated tools for patch management, compliance, configuration management, and troubleshooting could reduce manual work for system administrators. The main area for improvement is enterprise management. Better centralized patching, monitoring, compliance, and automation would make it easier to manage large-scale deployments. I would also like to see smoother and more predictable major version upgrades, especially for systems with third-party dependencies. AlmaLinux is already improving in this area through ELEvate and its migration tools.
DM
Performance Testing And A PM Expert at ADM
Performance tests have been streamlined for analysis while query tuning still needs improvement
The technical support or community support for MariaDB on CentOS is bad. There is a main problem with all the companies that sell this kind of tool and services. The first level of support is the first one you reach. When you begin to have a more difficult problem, there is no one available because sometimes you need to update the call and recall on it. This is not good because when we have some big problem on the database, we need to have a database administrator, not a person who reads instructions on the screen. It is always the same problem. My rating is two.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
34%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Transportation Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AlmaLinux?
AlmaLinux has helped mainly in reducing OS licensing cost while maintaining a stable RHEL compatible platform. From an operational perspective, the familiar RHEL ecosystem makes it very easy for ou...
What needs improvement with AlmaLinux?
AlmaLinux is already very strong, but it could be improved in a few areas. Better centralized management and monitoring, easier major version upgrades, and more enterprise-focused automation tools ...
What is your primary use case for AlmaLinux?
My main use case for AlmaLinux is enterprise server environments, hosting different applications, databases, and our charging workloads. I use it where I need a stable, secure, RHEL compatible OS w...
What is your primary use case for MariaDB on CentOS?
My main use case for MariaDB on CentOS is as a database for my application. A quick specific example of how I'm using MariaDB on CentOS for my application includes Laravel-based applications and Wo...
What advice do you have for others considering MariaDB on CentOS?
I would rate MariaDB on CentOS a nine on a scale of one to ten. I choose a nine because there is always room for improvement for any software, but in general, it is a reliable, stable, and easy-to-...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MariaDB on CentOS?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been positive since it is open source, and we did not have any issues with licensing and pricing. My costs are based on resource allocation...
 

Also Known As

AlmaLinux OS 8 (x86_64), AlmaLinux OS 10 (x86_64)
No data available
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about AlmaLinux vs. MariaDB on CentOS and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.