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CentOS vs Kali Linux comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 3, 2025

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
4.0
CentOS is valued for efficiency, reducing downtime and costs, saving time, and enhancing business operations without detailed financial tracking.
Sentiment score
8.5
Kali Linux provided cost-effective vulnerability testing, enhancing system security and efficiency, while integrating with DevOps and facilitating faster learning.
We have saved approximately 50% of our revenue by using CentOS.
It saved a lot of time through troubleshooting, which gives us substantial room for improvement in terms of fixing things.
Integrating Kali Linux with DevOps tools has resulted in reduced operational costs due to automated test cases, making it a worthwhile investment with significant returns by decreasing the attack surface area and the frequency of attack incidents.
If we had installed it on-premises or through other means, it would have incurred significant money and effort to create the VMs, deploy it on machines, and then delete and format it after use.
I have saved time by avoiding the lag I sometimes face on the TryHackMe in-built machine, and I have learned more efficiently.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.2
CentOS depends on community support, with users utilizing forums and resources, while Red Hat offers paid technical service.
Sentiment score
4.6
Kali Linux support relies on active community forums, offering reliable guidance and documentation, with limited traditional support.
I would rate the customer support for CentOS a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10.
I've seen many people across the globe interacting, and when users encounter issues, the community provides solutions.
I would rate the documentation about eight in terms of usefulness.
Since most of the tools and other things are community-based, the documentation and other community support are very good.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
CentOS efficiently scales for diverse users, adaptable for extensive growth in industries like scientific computing and microservices.
Sentiment score
7.0
Kali Linux offers strong scalability, efficiently supporting single to multiple users for both personal and professional environments.
CentOS is scalable and user-friendly without requiring complex configurations.
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.
CentOS's scalability for my organization has handled growth and changing needs smoothly.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
CentOS is reliable and stable, with recent versions improving past issues, earning favor for its simplicity and consistent performance.
Sentiment score
7.8
Kali Linux is highly praised for its stability and reliability, particularly in virtualization, despite occasional system-specific issues.
CentOS is stable, reliable, flexible, and very useful.
CentOS's simplicity and stability make it easy to use.
I believe CentOS is stable, but we are gradually moving away from it.
 

Room For Improvement

CentOS requires enhanced user-friendliness, stability, support, and updates to address compatibility, security, and usability concerns.
Kali Linux needs better automation, AI integration, user interfaces, security, and community engagement for improved user experience and compatibility.
The documentation and support could be improved, along with compatibility with newer hardware as hardware continually evolves over time.
Kernel parameters, sysctl config details, tuned profiles, process prioritization, optimized disk, and input scheduler choice are all points for performance optimization.
CentOS removed long-term support, and version releases every two to three years are not ideal for production environments because they necessitate frequent updates.
If real-time customized port scanning can be added, for example, instead of a default port such as 8080 or 443, if we can use a customized port such as 9876, that capability would be great.
Making Kali Linux more customizable would allow users to personalize it to their style.
It's still advertised as a Linux distro used only for security testing, and many of the tools run as root by default or with the highest privileges.
 

Setup Cost

CentOS offers a cost-effective, open-source solution, praised for affordability and low total cost of ownership compared to Windows.
Kali Linux is free and open-source, offering cost-effective tools without licensing fees, except for potential setup costs.
There was no cost in terms of deploying it or getting the license for it.
CentOS is a free product with free updates.
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.
Kali Linux is free software, an operating system that's available to download without any cost or licensing fees.
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Kali Linux has been positive, as it operates under an open-source model.
The pricing and the deployment, resource usage are all spot on and clearly defined, making it helpful and useful for me to deploy and calculate costs.
 

Valuable Features

CentOS is a stable, secure, and cost-effective open-source OS offering compatibility, performance, and robust community support for organizations.
Kali Linux offers robust tools, security, scalability, and efficiency, enhancing penetration testing and reducing cybersecurity threats effectively.
The update cycle changed when CentOS was prioritized for updates, causing stability issues.
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.
The best feature CentOS offers is that it's free.
Kali Linux has positively impacted my organization by improving efficiency in penetration testing; its open-source nature permits extensive customization and inclusion of numerous comprehensive pre-installed tools, contributing to a secure network environment with effective monitoring of network applications.
Kali Linux has the capability of real-time data scanning for vulnerability assessment for backend services.
The overall focus on security in Kali Linux is what I find most useful.
 

Categories and Ranking

CentOS
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Kali Linux
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of CentOS is 4.5%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kali Linux is 3.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
CentOS4.5%
Kali Linux3.0%
Other92.5%
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammad Wasif - PeerSpot reviewer
Has supported reliable deployments and simplified issue resolution in complex environments
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.
Aditya Pillai - PeerSpot reviewer
Has helped me learn penetration testing through hands-on tasks and faster workflows
It would be helpful if Kali Linux could be involved in more systems or laptops. Windows is a standard for many laptops and comes pre-installed on many devices available in the market. If Kali Linux could do the same and increase their reach to better areas, it would be beneficial. They could improve Kali Linux's UI/UX. They have been following a standard UI/UX. They could add more options, similar to how CachyOS distro of Arch Linux has many different UI options to select from. Making Kali Linux more customizable would allow users to personalize it to their style. Many users utilize Kali Linux through virtual machines. Sometimes Kali Linux has issues detecting hardware such as inbuilt or external Wi-Fi adapters. Improving device detection would be beneficial.
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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%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
7%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
University
12%
Educational Organization
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
 

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 CentOS?
CentOS is very easy to use, and all the commands are user-friendly.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CentOS?
CentOS is a free product with free updates. There are third-party companies available for support, but they charge varying amounts for their services.
What do you like most about Kali Linux?
I use the tool with Nmap to perform network audits. We use it to find vulnerabilities in our network through attacks. It's for those who want to launch or create viruses or perform attacks on syste...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kali Linux?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Kali Linux has been positive, as it operates under an open-source model with setup costs primarily related to hardware and virtual machine...
What needs improvement with Kali Linux?
There are areas for improvement in Kali Linux, particularly regarding its use of the Linux kernel, which requires external additional patching, and the fact that network services are disabled by de...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

CentOS 7 (x86_64) - with Updates HVM
No data available
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about CentOS vs. Kali Linux and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,655 professionals have used our research since 2012.