Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs openSUSE Leap comparison

openSUSE and Red Hat are both solutions in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category. openSUSE is ranked #13 with an average rating of 9.0, while Red Hat is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8. openSUSE holds a 5.7% mindshare in OSB, compared to Red Hat’s 7.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of openSUSE users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

openSUSE Leap

Read 6 openSUSE Leap reviews

5,572 Views
5,516 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...

Read 389 Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) reviews

18,782 Views
18,406 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

openSUSE Leap

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and openSUSE Leap are competing in the Linux distribution space. RHEL has a distinct advantage in enterprise support and customer service, while openSUSE Leap is appreciated for its rich development features and flexibility.

Features: RHEL offers premium security features, stability, and support for a wide range of hardware and applications, positioning it as an ideal choice for enterprises needing robust performance and reliability. openSUSE Leap provides an extensive array of development tools, adaptability, and community-driven enhancements that are especially appealing to developers.

Room for Improvement: RHEL can improve its command-line interface, which often poses a learning curve for Windows administrators, and streamline processes to reduce the need for reboots with monthly patches. openSUSE Leap could enhance commercial support options and deeper enterprise support to better compete in business environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: RHEL is known for its efficient deployment processes and enterprise-level customer service, ensuring a stable and consistent deployment. openSUSE Leap focuses on simplicity in deployment with community assistance but lacks the commercial support structures found in RHEL.

Pricing and ROI: RHEL's pricing reflects its commercial nature, often justifying the cost in enterprise environments with its ROI stemming from stability and support services. openSUSE Leap offers a more budget-friendly option with no licensing fees, appealing to organizations with financial constraints, though the lack of enterprise-level support can be a limiting factor for larger organizations.

To learn more, read our detailed Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. openSUSE Leap Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. openSUSE Leap

February 2026

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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

openSUSE Leap

Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business

13th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

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

7.0

Number of Reviews

389

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of openSUSE Leap is 5.7%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 7.5%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Operating Systems (OS) for Business Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)	7.5%
openSUSE Leap	5.7%
Other	86.8%

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

Featured Reviews

Nagendra Kavadi

Senior Manager at Cognizant

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

Ray Ortega

Server administrator at Northrop Grumman

Empowers collaboration through streamlined integration and extensive documentation

Improving Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be tough, however, a significant area is collaboration tools. We have many Windows users that use Outlook and Skype or Teams to collaborate on our network. They want Linux desktops due to the fact that they want to use containers. Their biggest complaint is, 'I need two workstations to do my container work and one to collaborate.' If somehow RHEL can start introducing or collaborating with Teams and Outlook so their users can work with their Windows peers, that would be great. But I don't think that's available yet. Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, there needs to be more of an education piece to it. For instance, when purchasing 10 or 100 node licenses, they could suggest, 'We also offer this 1,000 node license instead, and it'll save you specific amounts.' Just more education on their offerings would be helpful, because usually, we're coming out with the requirements, and then they just provide it to us. They could inform us about saving by bundling it differently or using alternative approaches.

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

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

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

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

"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."

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has positively impacted my organization through automation, as my recent task saved a lot of time by reducing the work from months to a day using scripts developed in RHEL, thus boosting our productivity and cutting costs while empowering a skilled workforce, enabling scalable and secure infrastructure, and fueling innovation and digital transformation."

"I chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) because it is so user-friendly, in every server I need to use it for security reasons, and it is user-friendly for everyone."

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has positively impacted our organization because all of our enterprise applications run on Red Hat RHEL only, which is the enterprise version, and for our application runs and application connections, we use Red Hat, which is very helpful for managing our entire application."

"In my organization, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) provides an agnostic interface for many storage vendors that we deal with, which helps us to have a wider spectrum of offerings in our consultancy offerings."

"The deployment is a smooth process."

"It makes my system more secure, which is another important point since no one can have direct access."

"We can initiate 20 deployments, and they get configured automatically, which is efficient."

"The solution is useful for application support and automations."

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) pros

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the console."

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

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

"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."

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

"Some of the documentation that I have run into or encountered appeared to be a bit outdated. That would be an area for improvement."

"I encountered an issue updating the time zone for one of my assigned countries due to a daylight-saving time change."

"Though the product has many features, the tool's virtualization area has certain shortcomings that require improvement."

"If I see that one of my runs for any workload is taking five days, I immediately question why it is not completing within a day."

"There is definitely room for improvement on how to collect the troubleshooting logs, especially in live production."

"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."

"The cost could be lowered. We don't use RHEL in the cloud because Ubuntu is cheaper. Ubuntu factors support costs into the license when you're running it in the cloud, and it's a fraction of the cost of what RHEL is. I'm also not sure if RHEL supports open-source products. If they do, they don't advertise it. Adding stuff like Apache and other open-source tools like Tomcat to their support portfolio would help."

"I cannot remember the name, but monitoring was needed for a specific function. It was a pretty important function, but there was no monitoring set up. It took some extra effort. That was the only feature I asked for. I asked them if they could set up a monitor to make sure that the system was healthy or working correctly."

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) cons

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."

"While purchasing a small number of Red Hat Enterprise Linux licenses can be expensive, acquiring licenses for our entire ecosystem or environment often leads to better pricing."

"The licensing is tricky to understand. Enterprises want to be beyond reproach when it comes to licensing. We would rather over-license than under-license. However, that can be complicated with a high-performance development team who may need multiple operating system instances or want to experiment with spinning up many machines to see if something works or sticks."

"The licensing structure is very convoluted. It's very confusing. We have a Satellite server, and we license it through the Satellite server, but if we didn't, we'd have to buy individual Red Hat licenses. That would be a nightmare to maintain in terms of renewing it every year and things like that."

"Switching to Red Hat Enterprise Linux due to subscription costs can be a significant financial step."

"I am not involved in the budgetary aspect, but from what I understand, the pricing is competitive, similar to what we paid for SUSE."

"When you are running your infrastructure on this, you can always find some discounts with local support, etc. There are always some discounts to match your budget. It is definitely affordable."

"In terms of the solution’s single subscription and install repository for all types of systems, we can have as many RHEL installations as we want because we have a specific subscription that entitles us to have as many RHEL services as we want. We pay for a subscription and with that we get RHEL and Satellite as well."

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux licensing is quite costly, but I personally do not deal with pricing."

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Comms Service Provider

19%

Educational Organization

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	4

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	89
Midsize Enterprise	49
Large Enterprise	266

Questions from the Community

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 can run openSUSE to test all my products. It would be helpful if I could easily sw...

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 solution. My office usually uses production servers on the SUSE Linux enterprise ver...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for openSUSE Leap?

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

See all answers

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...

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)?

Regarding the pricing, setup costs, and licensing costs of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I have heard that the licensing cost is significant compared to free alternatives such as CentOS or AlmaL...

See all answers

Comparisons

SUSE Linux Enterprise vs openSUSE Leap

Compared 18% of the time

Ubuntu Linux vs openSUSE Leap

Compared 15% of the time

Rocky Linux vs openSUSE Leap

Compared 13% of the time

Debian vs openSUSE Leap

Compared 13% of the time

AlmaLinux vs openSUSE Leap

Compared 6% of the time

More openSUSE Leap Competitors

SUSE Linux Enterprise vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 13% of the time

Windows Server vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 11% of the time

Rocky Linux vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 10% of the time

Ubuntu Linux vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 9% of the time

Windows 10 vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 5% of the time

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

February 2026

Download openSUSE Leap product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

February 2026

Download Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) product report

Also Known As

No data available

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for AWS

Overview

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 offers stability, security, and support for mission-critical applications with robust tools and scalable architecture, ideal for diverse environments and hybrid cloud compatibility.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides organizations with a reliable platform ideal for high-performance computing and virtualization. Known for its robust security and seamless network administration, it integrates well with OpenShift and Ansible, ensuring adaptability and scalability. Despite challenges with documentation, upgrade complexity, and cost, RHEL remains a formidable choice thanks to its comprehensive documentation and extensive community support.

What are the key features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

Stability and Security: Maintains high stability and advanced security measures, critical for enterprise environments.
Extensive Support: Offers robust support through community and documentation, assisting with problem-solving and integration.
Automation with Ansible: Simplifies tasks and enhances efficiency, optimizing operations across the infrastructure.
Hybrid Cloud Compatibility: Supports cloud environments, enabling flexibility and strategic deployments.
Scalable Architecture: Adapts to different workloads, making it suitable for growing organizational demands.

What benefits should users look for when evaluating Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

Reliable Performance: Ensures consistent and secure operations across diverse environments, including cloud infrastructure.
Efficient Management: Centralized operations make it easy to manage enterprise workloads effectively.
Community and Documentation: Access to a strong community and comprehensive documentation aids in resolving issues.
Integration Capabilities: Easily integrates with technologies like OpenShift and SAP, enhancing operational versatility.
Adaptability: Supports a wide range of environments and technical requirements, improving strategic deployment.

Organizations across industries like financial services, telecommunications, and application hosting implement Red Hat Enterprise Linux for server and application management. Its compatibility with technologies such as SAP, Oracle, and Ansible supports functions including web, database, and enterprise solutions, ensuring stable and secure performance in high-pressure environments.

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. openSUSE Leap

February 2026

Free Report: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. openSUSE Leap

Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. openSUSE Leap and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.

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