Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

AlmaLinux vs Windows 10 comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 4, 2026

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

AlmaLinux
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
17th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
4.3
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Windows 10
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
284
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Reliable long-term hosting has reduced server migrations and lets me focus on projects
One area for improvement with AlmaLinux is the use of SELinux to secure and harden my server, which I find to be a complicated beast. Better documentation on that part could be useful, although there is a lot of material out there. I choose a nine because nothing is ever perfect. For example, coming from Ubuntu, I found their firewall software easy to use, while with AlmaLinux's entire ecosystem, I always have to look up how to use firewall-cmd. These are just little preferences. I cannot think of anything else AlmaLinux could improve; it serves me well, and I have not been missing anything.
R Pranavan - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
Collaborative development has become more secure and efficient for our team
We have faced some issues with Windows OneDrive because if one developer has a folder in a common OneDrive folder, it took some time to show it to others. It becomes somewhat difficult to work, as there is latency on that, so if you update that, it will be more efficient and useful for the developers. My main focus on Windows 10 is the giving of regular updates, so it might take some time to update Windows, which is also mandatory. As a developer, when we are working with Windows 10, if it takes more time to update and restart the PC, it affects our efficiency at work. If we could stop the updates on a regular basis or if they were delivered faster, it would be easier. As a developer, the frequent updates are too annoying for working on it, so it would be better if we stop the frequent updates and only provide the most important ones. Performance issues over time due to background apps and programs piling up and using an SSD instead of a hard disk are also concerns.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature I find in AlmaLinux is the binary compatibility with RHEL and the long-term stability, which makes it a predictable, rock-solid system behavior, while also having small and safe packaging for subsystems or systems that run twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week."
"AlmaLinux provides free updates and security, unlike Red Hat, where support must be purchased separately."
"The long-term support provided by AlmaLinux helps my business by ensuring that we do not have to renew our servers every four to five years."
"Positively, I can say that AlmaLinux has brought a sense of stability, and besides the security patches, we also noticed better virtualization for our use cases."
"Windows 10 is stable and scalable."
"The best thing about Windows 10 is that you can run anything on it."
"The performance is decent. I don't see many incidents of it crashing."
"Technical support is great in South Africa."
"The most valuable feature is the interface."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"It helps me with being able to multitask and run various applications in tandem."
"It's very simple to use."
 

Cons

"One area for improvement with AlmaLinux is the use of SELinux to secure and harden my server, which I find to be a complicated beast."
"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."
"After six months of migration, we ended up using more resources for the same websites, and that's not acceptable."
"The interface itself could be more user-friendly."
"MS Office or Internet Explorer has a big ribbon on top, which occupies needed space."
"Major update, that poses an issue should be able to be rolled back."
"Windows reboot too often, it is a nightmare. I hate it."
"The negative is that the OS has made the room heavier, so it requires much more hardware than before."
"Windows 10 wasn't a very stable solution."
"After some time it becomes slower. The performance seems to be affected after a while."
"It's difficult to determine the source of an issue when it comes to performance."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The tool's pricing is reasonable and I would rate it a four out of ten."
"There is a license for this solution and it is a one-time purchase."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"There is a standard license to use Windows 10."
"The price is fine."
"The licensing price could definitely be cheaper. I pay a yearly license for Windows 10."
"We have a license for all the products in my organization—the license for Windows Server and the license for the desktop version like Windows 10."
"The price goes down by the number of licenses."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Operating Systems (OS) for Business solutions are best for your needs.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
8%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Performing Arts
8%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business125
Midsize Enterprise64
Large Enterprise120
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AlmaLinux?
AlmaLinux is free of charge, which is why I chose this distribution. It offers an alternative to Red Hat, which is free only without support and updates. AlmaLinux provides free updates and securit...
What needs improvement with AlmaLinux?
It is hard to say what needs improvement because I am on the operations side and focus on installing servers and running our software.
What is your primary use case for AlmaLinux?
I use AlmaLinux as the base operating system for all of our Linux servers. Our environment includes use cases that range from a load balancer on the NGINX platform to our monitoring software, Check...
What needs improvement with Windows 10?
We have faced some issues with Windows OneDrive because if one developer has a folder in a common OneDrive folder, it took some time to show it to others. It becomes somewhat difficult to work, as ...
What is your primary use case for Windows 10?
As a developer, we can work collaboratively, and Windows 10 is also good from a UI perspective. I chose to rate it an eight because I have faced issues when updates come in, which can be annoying. ...
 

Comparisons

 

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 Red Hat, Rocky Linux, Canonical and others in Operating Systems (OS) for Business. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.