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

Kinvolk and Red Hat are both solutions in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category. Kinvolk is ranked #18, while Red Hat is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8. Kinvolk holds a 0.6% mindshare in OSB, compared to Red Hat’s 9.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Kinvolk users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

Flatcar Container Linux

Read 1 Flatcar Container Linux review

677 Views
527 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...

Read 321 Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) reviews

28,080 Views
11,381 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Flatcar Container Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Flatcar Container Linux 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: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

June 2025

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Helped 856,873 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:

Categories and Ranking

Flatcar Container Linux

Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business

18th

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

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

7.4

Number of Reviews

321

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of Flatcar Container Linux is 0.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 9.3%, 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

Yogesh Deore

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…

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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.

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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."

"One of the most valuable features is the package manager because it makes it easier to keep everything up to date."

"Customer support is valuable."

"It enables customers to deploy any type of application. A lot of enterprises are moving to the Linux environment from the Windows environment. When it comes to development, it saves time because, unlike Windows, you don't require a lot of different things and licenses."

"The most valuable feature of RHEL is the Ansible Automation Platform, closely followed by Satellite."

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux stands out for its stability and support, which are critical for enterprise applications in the finance sector. We don't want any downtime, so we need fast support support and quick issue resolution."

"I prefer AIX, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux is cheaper."

"The simplicity of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) benefits my company in general since we're under many audits and regulations that allow us to track any discrepancies we may find in the reports, as to remediate those vulnerabilities and apply the necessary patches so that we can be compliant with our systems."

"The most valuable feature is the Identity Management. You pay almost the same subscription cost for normal RHEL and you get the central Identity Management. You would need to pay much more if you were using other applications or products like Active Directory from Microsoft."

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) pros

Cons

"The development teams could sharpen their skills. They should offer applications on the net."

"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."

"I'm also using IBM AIX, which supports a tool called Smitty. You just put Smitty, and you can do anything. At the backend, the command will run automatically. It is not exactly like a GUI, but you just give the input and it will give you the output. That is something that Red Hat should work on. That would be an added advantage with Red Hat."

"They are continuing to push the ecosystem forward, but as a consumer, what was most important for me was the reputation of openness that Red Hat has fostered. I would like that back."

"Overall, I am happy with it, but I believe, security-wise, it could be better."

"When we tried it last week, we found it challenging to automate things using Ansible."

"If we can update certain parts internally without having to remove them from the entire server, that would be fantastic since, else, there will be downtime, and we will need to reboot."

"I like the way the operating system works now, and I do not really see any bad functionality with it. The only thing I would say is getting rid of some aspects. That is the one part that a lot of admins probably get annoyed with."

"There is a steep learning curve, especially for users from a Windows or GUI background, because of the command-line interface."

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"While the cost of Red Hat Enterprise Linux may seem high, it's necessary to support Red Hat's extensive research and development, which includes maintaining long update cycles for the operating system."

"Pricing depends on the model used, costing about $3,000 per virtual host in the virtual environment. It varies depending on whether you get high availability. There are modules that are upsold such as kernel patching, which we do not use due to cost considerations."

"I do not have much knowledge of licensing. That is handled by the procurement team, but I know that it is expensive. If they can provide more licensing options, it will be much easier for companies to buy."

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux is suitably priced with various support tiers to match organizational needs and environments."

"The pricing is great for virtual systems."

"It is expensive. Everything is. I was happy to get a three-year Red Hat Enterprise Linux contract for our initial rollout."

"We are coming from CentOS, so technically, our total cost of ownership has gone up, but it is still cheaper than Windows for a database server and things like that."

"For the basic operating system, its price is fair. It is not cheap, and it is also not expensive. For the OpenShift or OpenStack implementation, the cost is a little higher than what I would expect, but it is doable. For a storage solution, it is almost impossible to pay. In comparison to open-source competitors, RHEL has the most cost-effective open-source subscription model."

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

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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…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

25%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

University

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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...

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

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

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

Pricing is sometimes an issue for our clients because it's not a cheap solution. The different licenses have a high cost, and perhaps they could improve by offering different kinds of discounts or ...

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Comparisons

Ubuntu Linux vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 52% of the time

Alpine Linux vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 17% of the time

SUSE Linux Enterprise vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 7% of the time

CentOS vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 7% of the time

Debian vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 5% of the time

More Flatcar Container Linux 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

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

June 2025

Download Flatcar Container Linux product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

May 2025

Download Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) product report

Also Known As

No data available

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL

Overview

Flatcar Container Linux is a lightweight, secure, and reliable operating system designed for running containers at scale with automatic updates and a minimal attack surface. The solution is easy to use and manage and has a simple and intuitive command-line interface and a powerful set of tools for managing containers and clusters.

It supports various container runtimes, including Docker, Kubernetes, and Mesos. It can be deployed on various infrastructure platforms, including bare metal, virtual machines, and cloud environments. Flatcar Container Linux is an ideal choice for organizations deploying containerized applications in production environments.

Kinvolk

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

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

Buyer's Guide

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

June 2025

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