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

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 21, 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

Flatcar Container Linux
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
27th
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
7.1
Number of Reviews
366
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 Flatcar Container Linux is 0.7%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 8.6%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)8.6%
Flatcar Container Linux0.7%
Other90.7%
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

YD
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…
Bruce Lundberg - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

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. The version I am using is stable and allows us to make needed changes."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has significantly improved our organization by providing a stable, secure, and standardized operating environment for our applications."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is valuable for us since it's stable and reliable."
"Red Hat always clearly describes the vulnerability on its security pages as a CVE score. You can fix errors by patching or mitigating them. If the patch hasn't been released, you can mitigate it to prevent the vulnerability from being exploited. RHEL helps us guide the data and ensure it is correctly placed. I was monitoring it daily, but it was a bit too frequently. Now, we get vulnerability notifications weekly or monthly about a vulnerability or exploit that's been discovered. I also look on Reddit directly to see if there's a fix or a mitigation we can implement."
"It is compatible with most Java microservices applications."
"The GUI for network adapters and built-in tools provided by RHEL, such as the Mozilla browser, have been valuable. Since they come built-in, it saves the time of having to install them, and you have everything necessary with the installation itself."
"I find Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to be super stable and super reliable."
"Customer support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is rated as a ten out of ten."
"The maturity of the OS helps with the stability."
 

Cons

"The development teams could sharpen their skills. They should offer applications on the net."
"The default settings are confusing."
"Workstations: More applications for graphics."
"Red Hat can be tricky at times, but all operating systems are. The moves to systemd and NetworkManager haven't made the product more user-friendly. Let's put it that way. The network management they had before was easier and somewhat more reliable than NetworkManager, which Red Hat forces us to use now."
"Customer service and technical support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is an area they could improve."
"I'm not certain if Red Hat could smooth out the migration process from CentOS to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). I think it's more internal stuff that needs to be ironed out rather than Red Hat having issues."
"The cost of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a bit high. Red Hat Enterprise Linux's support could be improved by offering human support in addition to their documentation."
"The product should be made available on Oracle Cloud."
"In the Asia Pacific region, where cost-optimization is highly valued, Red Hat's support and subscription costs are perceived as high and could be reduced."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I do not know what the pricing is like now. Previously, the pricing model was advantageous as it allowed unlimited installations for a single price, focusing on support. The recent introduction of paywalls complicates the cost landscape."
"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 like the model that Red Hat makes available for subscription and support. There are some free parts, subscriptions that facilitate solution development and implementation, and then, when the solution is well-defined, we move into the paid support license."
"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."
"RHEL has a decent pricing model. It's a subscription, which makes sense. The OS itself is free, but you pay for the support. I have never heard any complaints about the pricing."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"The solution's price is reasonable."
"The licensing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux in Peru is very expensive."
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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
17%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Retailer
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business83
Midsize Enterprise47
Large Enterprise249
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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 Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?
It is open source. We can customize it as per our requirements.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing is that I strongly believe Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) offers a good relationship between value and price, and despite it being quite pric...
 

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, Oracle and others in Operating Systems (OS) for Business. Updated: September 2025.
872,778 professionals have used our research since 2012.