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CentOS vs MySQL on Ubuntu comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 9, 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

CentOS
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
MySQL on Ubuntu
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
28th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammad Wasif - PeerSpot reviewer
IT infrastructure executive at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
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.
NP
Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Database platform has supported secure ecommerce growth but still needs simpler scaling and monitoring
MySQL on Ubuntu can be improved in a couple of things in my mind. I can consider performance-wise, scalability-wise, reliability, availability, security, and operational simplicity. Right now it is good enough for ourselves or our organization. But if it is considered from a scalability perspective, currently, MySQL on Ubuntu scales fairly well. Write scaling is hard and manual sharding is required. In that case, what we can improve is native sharding support, better distributed write handling, and easier multi-primary setups. For performance optimization, I can say currently the limitation is the required expert tuning. The default configuration is conservative. What we need to do in that is auto-tuning based on the hardware, better index recommendations, and smarter query optimization. Another point is high availability. Currently, what happens is that replication setup is complex. If you make the setup but if you want to replicate it, it will be complex. What we have to do is build in automatic failover, easier cluster setup, and faster recovery time. The fourth thing is security enhancements. Currently, whatever security is set up is manual. Misconfiguration risk is there. What we can improve in that is secure-by-default configuration and mandatory SSL in production because SSL is very important nowadays. This thing we can improve. Stronger password policy by default. For the security perspective, we can provide a stronger password policy by default. For recovery and backup simplicity, I can say that currently, we need scripting for the backups and recovery testing is a manual thing. What we can do here is built-in backup scheduler. We can run one scheduler and every day it will take the backups. If we can have it, it will be great. One-click restore and automated recovery validation. Those things we can improve. Another thing is observability and monitoring. Currently, what happens is limited built-in visibility and external tools required for that. What we can do here is provide native performance dashboard, query heat maps, and bottleneck detection. Those things we can improve. Another thing I can consider is at the Ubuntu level. Because if you consider, the OS and DB configuration is disconnected and kernel tuning is also manual. What we can improve in that is DB-aware kernel tuning, better file system defaults for the DB workloads, and pre-tuned DB server profiles. I can say cloud-native enhancements. Right now we are working on a traditional architecture and manual cloud optimization. It would be better to have Kubernetes native auto-scaling and storage-aware tuning. Those can improve my area for that. Another thing is developer experience. Debugging a query is hard. Currently, if we are running on Ubuntu and code something, there are no other tools we are using. Debugging is very hard. Also, error guidance is limited. We can say that a clearer error message, query rewrite suggestions, and schema change safety checks by default. Those kinds of improvements we can do. I can say I mostly covered the improvements needed for MySQL on Ubuntu, but one thing I can say is that there is also some limitation on the governance and compliance base. Auditing needs configuration. Some configuration we need to read. Compliance reporting also is manual right now. We can improve that with built-in audit templates, compliance-ready modes we can provide, and easier data masking we can do. Those things we can add also.

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 of this solution is that it is free."
"The product offers a free community-based version."
"The technical support is good."
"It's a good and stable system. It provides everything you need for web servers and database servers."
"Since joining my organization, which has been using CentOS, I've observed that all products with CentOS as a base OS run smoothly."
"Setup is straightforward. You can complete it in about 30 minutes."
"The product's initial setup phase is very straightforward."
"The pricing is good. We pay a minimal fee."
"MySQL on Ubuntu offers very good performance, it is secure, and it is easy to use."
"MySQL on Ubuntu is very simple, easy, and quick to use for people with database expertise."
"MySQL on Ubuntu is the base for most of our applications that are based on Linux, so it is wonderful."
"I have saved a significant amount of time because it's faster to create features with machine learning since it's very fast, and so we get the result in a few seconds."
"I appreciate MySQL on Ubuntu for its relational tables which are faster to read, contributing to the performance in simple applications."
"MySQL on Ubuntu is a great platform to deploy your data as it integrates well with services for ETL, analytics, or even machine learning platforms, and we have not encountered a single downtime while achieving high scalability, availability, and strong data security within our VPC."
"The primary aspect of MySQL on Ubuntu that I appreciate is that it is extremely reliable among the RDBMS that I have used, and another important quality is that it extends with volume very well as most RDBMS don't scale very well, but this one scales very well and has been very reliable and highly available."
"MySQL on Ubuntu combination handles it in a very efficient way."
 

Cons

"Lacks sufficient security and some coding tools."
"There is no notification before updates are applied to the solution, which occasionally means that new functionality isn't compatible with how the product is currently being used, and causes issues."
"If a proper GUI-based tool was connected remotely or on the machine, it could be a great addition to CentOS."
"The stability could always be improved."
"CentOS is very close to the end of life."
"The documentation and support could be improved, along with compatibility with newer hardware as hardware continually evolves over time."
"Like every operating system, it could be more secure."
"It would be ideal if Red Hat would continue the CentOS versions in an open-source format. They seem to be moving away from that. Now only paid versions are available."
"I cannot answer regarding improvements. As I said, I am not watching, and I don't know what is in between the application and the database."
"I would say that MySQL on Ubuntu can be improved particularly in its scaling capabilities."
"Sometimes, if the indexing is not done very well, I have noticed slowness, but largely, it has performed pretty well."
"Integration is always important regarding operating systems and these types of products, so being able to integrate and export or import from JSON structures is very critical."
"MySQL on Ubuntu can be improved because it has limited analytics query capabilities rather than other competitors."
"Currently, what happens is that replication setup is complex; if you make the setup but if you want to replicate it, it will be complex."
"Despite some issues such as security concerns when changing passwords which compromised the database, it remains a very good database engine."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is open-source and does not have any costs or licensing fees."
"CentOS is cheaper compared to Windows."
"CentOS is an expensive solution. There are other solutions that are rated at the top that are not expensive, such as Red Hat."
"It's freeware, so we can use it without worrying about licensing."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"CentOS is an open source that is free of cost."
"We don’t have to pay for the system’s licenses."
"The price could be better. The cost depends on how the organization or a specific person licenses it. If you want the free version, there's Ubuntu which is supported by forums. You can pay for the license yearly or pay for a specific version."
Information not available
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Comparison Review

it_user281973 - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage and VMware Expert at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
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
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Educational Organization
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise28
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

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?
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MySQL on Ubuntu?
My experience with the pricing is that we are using free.
What needs improvement with MySQL on Ubuntu?
Integration is always important regarding operating systems and these types of products, so being able to integrate and export or import from JSON structures is very critical. Sometimes that is a l...
What is your primary use case for MySQL on Ubuntu?
I used MySQL on Ubuntu for temporary storage of financial data utilized for analysis of creditworthiness as the main use case, as I had some streaming services that pulled in data from Equifax.
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about CentOS vs. MySQL on Ubuntu and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.