CentOS vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs openSUSE Leap comparison

CentOS and openSUSE are both solutions in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category. CentOS is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.8, while openSUSE is ranked #13 with an average rating of 9.5. CentOS holds a 5.1% mindshare in OSB, compared to openSUSE’s 6.3% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of CentOS users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of openSUSE users who would recommend it.

CentOS

Read 69 CentOS reviews

8,350 Views
8,466 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

openSUSE Leap

Read 6 openSUSE Leap reviews

6,981 Views
6,263 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...

Read 275 Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) reviews

32,560 Views
12,986 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

CentOS

openSUSE Leap

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between CentOS, openSUSE Leap, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Canonical, Oracle and others in Operating Systems (OS) for Business.

To learn more, read our detailed Operating Systems (OS) for Business Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 849,686 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of CentOS is 5.1%, down from 8.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of openSUSE Leap is 6.3%, up from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 9.6%, down from 12.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

Featured Reviews

Mahender Nirwan

Software developer at TAIGLE LLC

In-depth documentation available and command-line utility works well

One issue I recently faced, but I think it was due to my IT support guys, was that when the server storage gets full, the service crashes. It's very difficult to regain access and stability in that situation. That could be improved. So, the stability might be improved. But I don't think it's a CentOS-level issue. The system administrators need to come up with a solution for that, but I don't think it's CentOS's fault. I haven't done any research [R&D] on this issue. There's one thing for sure. We recently migrated from CentOS 7 to CentOS 9, and it was a bit difficult. For example, updating Windows is simple; you just download it, and it takes about 15-20 minutes. But that's not the case with migrating from CentOS 7 to 9. We had to back up the entire server, launch a new server, and then restore the backup to the new server. We couldn't directly migrate. I think that was a bit of a problem. The setup and updates are not that new in CentOS.

Read full review

NagendraKavadi

Systems Analyst at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

Provides BTRFS file system, which allows you to take snapshots

I only use the tool for testing purposes on my team, but multiple people use it. We don't make a team effort to install the solution. When it comes to maintenance, we ask our company to buy SUSE Linux Enterprise. My team consists of 13 people. We are currently integrating the solution with Ansible to do some coding. Although not a full-fledged automation, we are integrating the solution with Ansible and executing a couple of playbooks connected to openSUSE Leap. I would recommend the solution to other users looking for an open-source solution. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Read full review

Bruce Lundberg

Linux HPC Systems Administrator at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Reliable patch management, high uptime, and incredible knowledge base

In terms of security, it does a lot of things that most people still turn off. SELinux is turned on by default. They have pretty good firewall rules in their defaults. The audit rules always take tweaking, but, overall, it comes out of the box not too bad. I used to write scripts to harden them from there. There are multiple ways to provision and patch. You have everything from local repositories to doing it by hand. Their knowledge base is incredible. There is so much information out there. It has never taken me longer than 30 minutes to find an answer to anything, even very tough ones. One company I worked for was a security company, and we did a lot of patching on everything. It was designed around security and email hosting, and uptime was pretty much whatever we wanted it to be. I have had a couple of times when the uptime was bad, but it was caused by a third-party solution. In fact, the Norton antivirus was definitely the worst. Red Hat had nothing to do with it.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I find the solution's stability to be the most valuable feature of it since I have been using a virtual machine with the help of the solution since 2015, and it still works on all the laptops in my organization."

"The solution is productive."

"It is a scalable and cost-effective product compared to public cloud solutions."

"The product is very efficient when it comes to virtualization."

"The product offers a free community-based version."

"Its performance is most valuable. There is a performance boost as compared to when the applications are run on Windows OS."

"It has all the features of Red Hat, but you don't have to pay for the subscription."

"Very robust and easy to work with."

More CentOS pros

"The most valuable feature by far has been the virtualization capabilities of the operating system."

"The solution's most valuable feature is the BTRFS file system, which allows you to take snapshots."

"Stable - it just runs without the necessity to reboot."

"openSUSE Leap has helped me with using containers in Podman."

"The solution is very stable after it is configured. It is hard to have a panel slow, a problem, misconfiguration, or any kind of loss function."

"The solution is easy for me to use because the backend is derived from FreeBSD and this is something I have been using for over 20 years."

"From an administrative perspective, the cloud platform is the best because we don't have to wait long."

"The support is valuable. We get direct support from Red Hat. There is also no downtime. We can sleep better at night knowing that our systems are running."

"RHEL enables us to deploy applications and emerging workloads across bare-metal and virtualized environments and I find those workloads to be extremely reliable. The reliability is so good that I rarely find myself calling Red Hat support any longer. Support is the first benefit of using RHEL, but the second thing is that the platform is so stable that the need to use support is negligible."

"LVM is a valuable feature."

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux has given us better insights and allowed us to manage the environment more effectively."

"The knowledge base they offer has proven to be quite efficient and we haven't encountered any significant challenges."

"The most valuable feature is the reliability of Red Hat's support."

"I have seen a return on investment, especially considering the time taken to resolve the problem where we bought some support from Red Hat."

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) pros

Cons

"The solution could be more scalable."

"CentOS could be improved with more user-friendly monitoring."

"The solution must improve its security."

"If CentOS could add Office features then that would be beneficial. Additionally, the UI could improve."

"More security features could be included in the next release."

"Updates are going to a streaming version."

"The YUM install manager can be improved. It is below average as compared to the other install managers. This is the only major problem that I see with CentOS. They should reduce dependency on the YUM manager."

"We would like Red Hat to keep supporting the solution but they have decided to get rid of it and there isn't much we can do about it."

More CentOS cons

"In the future, the Active Directory could improve."

"I would like openSUSE Leap to have better link integration with Windows."

"Somehow the change from OS12.x via 13.x to Leap was a bit bumpy and some old issues seemed to reappear."

"There is room for improvement in the console."

"It would be helpful if we could easily switch from openSUSE Leap for testing to SUSE Linux Enterprise for production."

"Like most Linux-based operating systems, the biggest challenge Leap faces is the GUI."

"Linux overall needs improvement. They cannot go much beyond what Linus Torvalds's kernel implementation can do. I come from AIX, and there were very cool things in AIX that I am missing dearly, e.g., being able to support not only adding, but also reducing memory and number of processors. That is not supported on Linux right now, and it is the same for the mainstream file systems supported by Red Hat. There is no way of reducing a file system or logical volume. Whereas, in AIX, it was a shoo-in. These are the little things where we can say, "Ah, we are missing AIX for that.""

"The high cost of Red Hat Enterprise Linux has room for improvement."

"I would probably focus more on a rolling release schedule. Instead of a long-term operating support of ten years, I would just have one release and keep rolling it."

"We need to have more flexibility on the developed versions. Not everybody is ready to subscribe to enterprise versions. They would like to test the tool without subscriptions."

"Right now, since my company is in an air-gapped on-prem network, it is really tough to go through all the RPMs that we have to have based on different STIGs."

"Red Hat could enhance its user experience by incorporating built-in automation tools, eliminating users needing to install, set up, or configure external applications."

"Maybe they need to make it easier to apply patches from different resources. That said, at my level of usage, I never have to apply patches."

"The biggest challenge that we had was the migration from CentOS to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but after some tests, it was easy."

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Once you buy the license, Linux will provide you with yearly or monthly patches, so your systems will be scalable for a long time."

"For the enterprise version of CentOS, there is a license required. However, for personal use, I do not need a license."

"CentOS is a free solution."

"CentOS is an open-source tool."

"There is no license required for this solution."

"The solution is free of cost to use."

"There are no costs for CentOS, it is open-source."

"I'm not required to pay a licensing fee."

More CentOS pricing and cost advice

"This is an open-source operating system that can be used free of charge."

"openSUSE Leap is an open-source solution that is free of cost."

"The solution is open-source."

"The cost of this solution was reasonable and it was within our budget."

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers a straightforward pricing and licensing model."

"RHEL is expensive. We have changed the cloud provider's subscription to a pay-as-you-go model."

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux is expensive, particularly for governments operating with limited budgets."

"The pricing is suitable for midsize to large companies, though small enterprises might struggle. It is comparable to Windows licensing."

"We used to get our own license model. We purchased a license through Red Hat."

"As a developer, I pay around 10,000 Yen, which is around $100 per annum for support. SUSE and Red Hat are typically the same without standard support. The pricing is not a big deal. Enterprise customers will pay for the support."

"We purchased it directly from Red Hat. Compared to open source, it's very pricey, but you get the support, which makes it much better."

"If you don't buy the Red Hat subscription, you don't get technical support, and you don't have all the updates. To have everything working like a charm, the cost that you pay for it is worth it. In Bolivia, we don't have the best internet connection. Therefore, we have a local service with all the packages, repositories, etc. We manage them locally, and because we have a subscription, we can update them. So, we have local repositories with all the packages and other things to make it easy for us to update all the servers. Without the Red Hat subscription, we cannot update anything."

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Operating Systems (OS) for Business solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user281973

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

15%

Comms Service Provider

14%

Educational Organization

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 st...

See all answers

What do you like most about CentOS?

CentOS is very easy to use, and all the commands are user-friendly.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CentOS?

I am not responsible for the setup cost in my company, so I am unsure about the cost of the license.

See all answers

What do you like most about openSUSE Leap?

openSUSE Leap has helped me with using containers in Podman.

See all answers

What needs improvement with openSUSE Leap?

Both openSUSE Leap and the SUSE Enterprise version use the same kernel. Suppose I have a lower environment where I ca...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for openSUSE Leap?

I use openSUSE Leap for testing purposes. Before officially using any server in our office, we test it using the solu...

See all answers

What do you like most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?

It is open source. We can customize it as per our requirements.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?

Though a bit expensive compared to competitors, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is still recommended because it works...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?

The performance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux ( /categories/operating-systems-os-for-business ) (RHEL) could be improve...

See all answers

Comparisons

Oracle Linux vs CentOS

Compared 38% of the time

Ubuntu Linux vs CentOS

Compared 11% of the time

Windows Server vs CentOS

Compared 9% of the time

SUSE Linux Enterprise vs CentOS

Compared 8% of the time

Kali Linux vs CentOS

Compared 6% of the time

More CentOS Competitors

SUSE Linux Enterprise vs openSUSE Leap

Compared 28% of the time

Ubuntu Linux vs openSUSE Leap

Compared 21% of the time

Rocky Linux vs openSUSE Leap

Compared 18% of the time

Fedora Linux vs openSUSE Leap

Compared 10% of the time

Windows 11 vs openSUSE Leap

Compared 3% of the time

More openSUSE Leap Competitors

SUSE Linux Enterprise vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 23% of the time

Windows Server vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 15% of the time

Rocky Linux vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 14% of the time

Oracle Linux vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 9% of the time

Windows 11 vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 2% of the time

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CentOS

April 2025

Download CentOS product report

Buyer's Guide

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

April 2025

Download openSUSE Leap product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

April 2025

Download Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) product report

Also Known As

No data available

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL

Overview

CentOS is a versatile operating system with many use cases, including virtual spaces, scientific computing, data center servers, web-based applications, and more. Its valuable features include customization options, low memory consumption, performance, scalability, open-source nature, cost-saving, and compatibility with Red Hat packages.

The solution has helped organizations save money on licensing and improve testing capabilities for new implementations without spending additional resources. CentOS is a stable, reliable, and efficient operating system that is easy to use and integrate with other applications and services.

CentOS

openSUSE Leap is a brand new way of building openSUSE and is new type of hybrid Linux distribution. Leap uses source from SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE), which gives Leap a level of stability unmatched by other Linux distributions, and combines that with community developments to give users, developers and sysadmins the best stable Linux experience available. Contributor and enterprise efforts for Leap bridge a gap between matured packages and newer packages found in openSUSE’s other distribution Tumbleweed.

openSUSE

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is recognized for its stability, security, and performance, serving diverse industries with its robust support and seamless cloud deployment capabilities.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides comprehensive server applications across cloud environments, featuring tools like Ansible for enhanced user experience. It integrates OpenShift, Identity Management, and automation, supported by extensive documentation. Users seek easier upgrades, enhanced network virtualization support, and improved live patching.

What are the key features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

Stability and Security: RHEL is designed to provide a stable and secure environment, backed by consistent updates.
Cloud Deployment: Easily deployable across cloud platforms, enhancing flexibility.
Integration with Ansible: Enhances operational efficiency with powerful automation tools.
OpenShift and Containerization: Supports modern app development with integrated OpenShift features.
Extensive Documentation: Offers comprehensive resources for users to troubleshoot and optimize.

What are the benefits of using Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

Reliable Support: Benefit from extensive support options for seamless operation.
Enhanced Security: Built-in features ensure data integrity and protection.
Increased Flexibility: Suitable for diverse deployment environments, including on-premises and cloud.
Operational Efficiency: Tools like automation and cloud navigation improve productivity.
Training and Resources: Access to comprehensive training contributes to smoother implementations.

In sectors like finance, telecommunications, and education, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is crucial for running stable, secure systems. Its application spans web servers, data management, and containerization through tools like Kubernetes. Organizations adopt it for on-premises, virtualized, and cloud environments, ensuring robust infrastructure management.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Travel Channel, Mohawk Industries, Hilti, Molecular Health, Exolgan, Hotelplan Group, Emory University, BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina, HCA Healthcare, Paychex, UPS, Intermountain Healthcare, Brinker International, TransUnion, Union Bank, CA Technologies

Buyer's Guide

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

April 2025

Download Free Report

Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Canonical, Oracle and others in Operating Systems (OS) for Business. Updated: April 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.