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Flatcar Container Linux vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 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

Flatcar Container Linux
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
41st
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
448
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of Flatcar Container Linux is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 6.7%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)6.7%
Flatcar Container Linux0.9%
Other92.4%
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

YD
Senior Consultant at Capgemini
The solution is stable and allows us to make needed changes
The development teams could sharpen their skills.  They should offer applications on the net I have eight years of experience with Flatcar Container Linux. The version of Flatcar Container Linux that I am using is stable. The scalability of this product is fine. It allows us to make the needed…
CC
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Automation has transformed daily operations and supports secure, continuous infrastructure
When considering improvements to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I see one primary area. Within your portal, if you provided more study material along with demonstrations similar to the sessions we are attending, which feature a user-friendly guide, you could incorporate this into your Red Hat console. When I want to install an agent or something else, typing in the console should provide me with clear step-by-step instructions. Throughout the years, installation steps have been available, but regarding AI agents or Ansible automation, I need to verify whether clear information exists. Including this information would be beneficial. Additionally, if you add the sessions that have occurred to your portal or another location, this would help us review them multiple times to gain better understanding. Time is limited, and many sessions occur simultaneously, making it impossible to attend everything. Making these sessions available on your website would be very helpful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Flatcar's support is good, and the version I am using is stable and allows us to make needed changes."
"One of the most important features is the package manager. It provides the ability to very easily roll back transactions when something has gone wrong. It is an easy-to-use tool that helps me in situations where something unexpected has happened. I found that this was one of the solution's major advantages over other distributions."
"The deployment experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has been very easy."
"It eases the burden by restricting the use of open-source Linux and preventing the development community from obtaining their own images. This is crucial for maintaining a secure supply chain and ensuring the lockdown of live Linux packages."
"We can initiate 20 deployments, and they get configured automatically, which is efficient."
"The customer service and technical support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are very responsive."
"By using Red Hat OpenShift, resource consumption has been reduced significantly compared to what was consumed on Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers, reducing resource consumption by more than 80%."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers many features I appreciate, especially the increasing maturity of the operating system and its automation platform."
"The solution's SELinux feature is a gold standard for security. It also has the best ecosystem."
 

Cons

"The development teams could sharpen their skills. They should offer applications on the net."
"If Red Hat can improve on the cloud side, they can retain their customer base. Their customers do not need to go out for other cloud resources, and they can use the Red Hat cloud."
"RHEL is a pretty polished product, however, if it becomes more mainstream compared to other Linux distributions and if more people adapt it, it would be used as a much more universal product. This would make it easier for people to adapt to RHEL."
"There's too much information on the support page sometimes."
"RHEL is expensive. The servers or cloud images are quite expensive."
"The support can be better."
"There should be more upgrades to the security features."
"Support for older versions of the operating system could be improved."
"When considering ways Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) could improve, I often hear from the SUSE side that Red Hat isn't certified quickly enough with the SAP workloads. This is something Red Hat should start considering."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"We use open source. We only have a subscription for support."
"We still have a few with one-to-one standard server licensing, but we are utilizing the virtualization host licensing. We license it based on the host, not based on VMs, which is cool. I was very happy that there was certain licensing with SAP to have access to SAP repos. Its cost was the same as the regular one, so I was happy about that."
"Red Hat Linux is inexpensive. Linux solutions are generally inexpensive."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux is expensive, particularly for governments operating with limited budgets."
"The licensing with Red Hat is on par with other organizations like Microsoft. We have a site license, which gives us a certain number of servers, perhaps 25,000, for the type of license that we have. That works really well for us."
"I like my developer account. The free sixteen licenses that they give with the developer account are great because that gives me the ability to keep using it at home instead of trying CentOS or something like that."
"The cost has been pretty stable over the years for what you get."
"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."
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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
Comms Service Provider
26%
University
12%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business100
Midsize Enterprise52
Large Enterprise320
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?
When choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), our security requirement was that I am using it on IBM Power servers, which offered a bundle price. That is why I opted for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (...
What needs improvement with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?
Regarding disadvantages in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), the certification cost is a concern for me. The problem with the certification is that its price is high, and it needs to be minimal for ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for AWS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CISCO, mettle, Microsoft, Upguard, GMX
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Canonical, Rocky Linux and others in Operating Systems (OS) for Business. Updated: October 2026.
920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.