Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs Windows 10 comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jan 9, 2023

We performed a comparison between Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Windows 10 based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: Users of both solutions agree that their initial setup is straightforward.
  • Features: Users of both products are happy with their stability and scalability.

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) users like the solution’s robust integration capabilities and its powerful security software. Reviewers say that it could be much more user friendly.

    Windows 10 users like its firewall and say the solution is flexible and user friendly. Several Windows 10 users mention that it requires a high amount of resources, and that its security needs to be improved.
  • Pricing: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) users say the solution is expensive. Most Windows 10 users feel that the price of the solution is fair.
  • Service and Support: Users of both solutions report being satisfied with the level of support they receive.
  • ROI: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) users report a positive ROI. Windows 10 users do not mention an ROI.

Comparison Results: Windows 10 wins out in this comparison. The main difference between the two solutions is that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is not user friendly, while reviewers say that Windows 10 is. Windows users are also happier with its pricing.

To learn more, read our detailed Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. Windows 10 Report (Updated: May 2023).
709,643 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The solution is useful for application support and automations.""The Red Hat support is most valuable. My team and I are really good at Linux, and we can do almost everything in any kind of Linux solution, but sometimes, we have a really nasty problem, and the Red Hat engineering support at the third level has been fantastic. They know how to fix almost everything. The reason why I pay so much money to them is to have this kind of service and assurance.""Because most databases run on Linux, that's what makes this solution so important. If you install a Unix system and want to use a database, you won't have to say, 'I can't find any database to run on this.'""The solution has good availability and is easy to use.""Aside from security, the advantage of Red Hat as compared to the other distributions is the availability of support and patching. When you have an enterprise subscription with Red Hat, you get support and patching.""OpenShift is the most valuable feature because it can be used to create applications on the fly.""We run Satellite on a lot of these, so having a central repository that we can use for patch management and remote execution is huge. That's something that is very difficult in a Windows environment. We're very compliance driven, so to have that built into Red Hat is easy. We don't need an agent or anything like that to get a lot of work done, so Satellite and centralized automation are the most valuable features for us.""The most valuable feature is its security. In Windows, there are risks of attacks or of data leaks because it is using .exe files, but in Red Hat's Linux-based operating system, the data is more secure."

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"The solution is easy to use and user-friendly.""The Windows Store concept, in my opinion, is valuable.""The most valuable feature is the ease of use.""Windows 10 is definitely stable.""The solution is very easy to install.""Windows 10 is stable.""Windows setup isn't very complicated. Mostly, we have someone proficient in Windows to do our installations.""The best thing is that all are using it and that there are some applications like Power BI that are only in Windows and not in any other environment."

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Cons
"The solution should improve its documentation.""I don't see anything that needs improvement with RHEL itself, but there is room for improvement of the support infrastructure for it. The management and updates to Satellite, which is the support update, have been cumbersome at best, including releases and changes to a release. Communication on how that will work going forward has not been great.""The price is something that can be improved, as they are still being undercut.""Sometimes we just don't have a web interface available for repetitive tasks. It would be nice to have a web-based tool for Red Hat Enterprise Linux since we don't always have access to a web browser.""The price has room for improvement.""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.""The solution could provide more APIs and GUI interfaces.""Red Hat Enterprise Linux's monitoring could be improved. I would like additional monitoring features, like a greater ability to monitor services and workloads running. Satellite can provide centralized monitoring of subscriptions and deployments. You can build a monitoring console, but there is no native monitoring."

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"Windows 10 is not so stable sometimes. We've seen bugs before, so we contacted Microsoft technical support and they resolved it.""The negative is that the OS has made the room heavier, so it requires much more hardware than before.""After some time it becomes slower. The performance seems to be affected after a while.""When it comes to the Home Edition, there is usually just a license.""The security and the updates could use improvements, as well as scalability.""The security could always be better.""I like the way it is already, I don't think I would improve anything about Windows 10. The licensing price could be cheaper, though.""Setup and use between multiple monitors should be easier."

More Windows 10 Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "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."
  • "We are an educational institution and as such, what we pay is less than the average company."
  • "It is more expensive than other vendors in terms of pricing and licensing, but because of its stability, I have to go with it."
  • "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."
  • "There are special academic offerings for academic institutes, which is pretty good. We need these offerings. In my personal opinion, the prices are okay. However, for educational purposes, they could be lower. For example, in Germany, the budget in the education sector for IT is lower compared to the huge universities in the US."
  • "We have moved to the Simple Content Access (SCA) model. It is much easier to do renewals and see how I am using my licenses. I used to have to do it all by hand. It would take me a good couple of hours every few months to make sure that we were up to snuff on everything. However, with the new model that they have, this is very easy. I just go to cloud.redhat.com to look and see how I am utilizing my licenses. If I am running out of bounds, I can find out why. If it is simply that we have images that need to be removed, we remove those images. If we need to buy more licenses, then we can start the process of purchasing more licenses."
  • "The prices are comparable, and good for what is being provided."
  • "Operating in the cloud space, we typically point our customers to pay-as-you-go licensing, which comes through the various cloud providers repository services."
  • More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I have a home license that costs me around 1,000 rupees."
  • "There is a license for this solution and it is a one-time purchase."
  • "There is a license for this solution and it normally comes free with any system."
  • "I believe there is an agreement with Microsoft to pay the licensing fee yearly."
  • "We already have a license for Windows 10 in our role as Microsoft partners."
  • "The license is built into whatever you have purchased. For example, we purchased our Lenovo laptop and the license for Windows 10 was built in."
  • "I do not have to pay for the license, it was included in the initial cost."
  • "The licensing fees could be cheaper."
  • More Windows 10 Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:Because most databases run on Linux, that's what makes this solution so important. If you install a Unix system and want to use a database, you won't have to say, 'I can't find any database to run on… more »
    Top Answer:I don't know about the pricing because I am not responsible for taking decisions about products used in the enterprise. Our clients use this product, and we use this product with the clients. In my… more »
    Top Answer:We are in 2022, so why can't we put a note in a folder?! Think how useful it is. As an organization, you and I have a mort of files, and usually a few employees work on the same file. They need to… more »
    Top Answer:We use Windows 10 for regular office jobs and automation design.
    Ranking
    Views
    52,809
    Comparisons
    16,939
    Reviews
    56
    Average Words per Review
    1,062
    Rating
    8.8
    Views
    14,840
    Comparisons
    9,220
    Reviews
    160
    Average Words per Review
    332
    Rating
    8.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL
    Learn More
    Overview

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a stable and reliable open-source operating system for running application servers, databases, web servers, and production systems. It is also used for cloud infrastructure services, BI, and disaster assistance. Its valuable features include support and subscription, ease of management and troubleshooting, integration with existing infrastructure, security updates and hardening tools, scalability, and flexibility. 

    Red Hat has helped organizations accelerate deployment, provide stability, control, and reliable updates, and enable the deployment of current applications and emerging workloads across different environments.

    Windows 10 is one of Microsoft’s most advanced operating systems for personal computers (PCs), tablets, and other similar devices. To date this operating system is active on more than 1.3 billion personal computers worldwide.

    Windows 10 has many features that make it arguably the most popular operating system for PCs on the planet. Included in these are a wealth of security features designed to stop malware from compromising both devices and networks. It has integrations for various multifactor authentication as well as non-password-reliant login technologies such as iris scanning. These keep networks safe from the moment that a user logs in. It also has security tools which not only identify, isolate, and remove threats, but also limit the damage that they can cause.

    Benefits of Windows 10

    Some of the benefits of using Windows 10 include:

    • A wide array of security features that proactively protect your system from malware of all kinds. The Windows Defender Exploit Guard feature constantly scans your system’s background for threats. It identifies, isolates, and removes the malware from your infected network. It can also quarantine infected devices to stave off an outbreak of infection across your network.
    • Allows you to browse the web in a way that protects your network from cyber-threats, enabling you to browse the internet from the confines of a virtual machine. If your device becomes infected, the malware will be unable to spread beyond the virtual machine that it has already infected.
    • The ability to synchronize multiple devices so that you can work from anywhere at any time. Windows 10’s Timeline feature enables you to save your work in a Microsoft application. You can then access this saved work on another Windows 10 device and continue from wherever you left off.

    Reviews from Real Users

    The Windows 10 operating system stands out from the competition for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its ability to secure users from digital threats and its main app management screen, which gives users the ability to easily manage their applications.

    One PeerSpot user who is the founder, president, and COO at an analyst firm, noted Windows 10’s impressive security suite when they wrote, “My impression is that the security via Windows Defender is good enough that I no longer feel a need for another third-party security solution, which had always been the case in the past. I think that perception still holds true.”

    Mike K., a collaboration specialist at a comms service provider, takes note of the main app management screen when he writes, “I like the main window pane where you can sort your mostly used and different types of apps, such as OneDrive, Google Chrome, and Access. I can just open up the main window, and those apps are right there at my fingertips.”

    Offer
    Learn more about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
    Learn more about Windows 10
    Sample Customers
    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
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    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Government17%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company14%
    Government10%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Manufacturing Company12%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company14%
    Comms Service Provider12%
    Educational Organization9%
    Government9%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business28%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise59%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise68%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business39%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise39%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise60%
    Buyer's Guide
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. Windows 10
    May 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. Windows 10 and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.
    709,643 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is ranked 1st in Operating Systems (OS) for Business with 85 reviews while Windows 10 is ranked 4th in Operating Systems (OS) for Business with 162 reviews. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is rated 8.8, while Windows 10 is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) writes "Feature-rich, good integration, stable, easy to deploy, and the security is kept up to date". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Windows 10 writes "Modern apps and features like Windows Hello provide a consumer-friendly experience". Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is most compared with Windows Server, Ubuntu Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Oracle Linux and CentOS, whereas Windows 10 is most compared with Windows Server, Ubuntu Linux, Oracle Solaris, openSUSE Leap and CentOS. See our Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. Windows 10 report.

    See our list of best Operating Systems (OS) for Business vendors.

    We monitor all Operating Systems (OS) for Business reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.