We performed a comparison between Ubuntu Linux and Windows Server based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Ubuntu Linux comes out on top in this comparison. It is a secure, easy to use, and robust solution that is completely free.
"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."
"The security features are better than many other solutions offer."
"Its security is the most valuable. It is very stable and has many features. It also has good performance. Some of our clients were using Windows servers and products. I suggested Red Hat Linux to them and described the features. They switched to it, and they really loved it. There were around 50 servers in my last company, and they switched all those servers from Windows to Red Hat. I used to manage those servers."
"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."
"Its scalability and ease of setup and configuration are most valuable. When we have a hardware failure, we just save the configuration files, and in about half an hour, we have another server running with the same configuration. It is really easy to replace servers. This is the best feature."
"The most valuable features are the specification and technical guides, they are most important the security."
"The feature that I like the most is that we can integrate it easily with our existing infrastructure. We found that it is much easier to deploy RHEL in our environment compared to a competing distribution like Ubuntu."
"This is a very robust product that doesn't require a lot of handling. It just works."
"Stable and scalable Linux operating system that can test and run virtual machines."
"It is open-source, secure, and easy to use."
"I feel the graphical interface to be very user friendly, as is first time installation."
"What makes Ubuntu easy to use is the large set of applications and the interface. The graphical interface is user friendly."
"The solution has a very good graphical user interface."
"The most valuable features of Ubuntu Linux are it is user-friendly, has plenty of features that you can develop and builds your own code. Additionally, it is secure and easy to operate."
"What I like best is the way in which packages are managed."
"It is a widely used and stable solution. Community members can offer support and technical guidance."
"We use this solution for hosting applications on the server."
"The support that Microsoft provides for this is very good."
"The installation is not difficult. I found it to be very straightforward."
"We find the initial implementation process to be quick and easy."
"This is a stable product and we plan to continue using it in the future."
"Most applications are compatible with this operating system."
"The most valuable features are the file transfer protocol (FTP) and the secure file transfer protocol (SFTP)."
"The scalability it offers is great."
"It is mostly better than other solutions. However, it is sometimes difficult for disaster recovery, so we have to plan accordingly."
"The price is something that can be improved, as they are still being undercut."
"I would like training to be added to the subscription. It would be useful for when you have to train yourself or get a certification. There are many things that we are not using because we don't know how to use them. Having training included in the subscription would help us in learning more things and utilizing the full power of the solution."
"The biggest thing that is crushing RHEL is documentation. Their documentation is haphazard at best. The man pages that you can use locally are pretty good, they've been fleshed out pretty well, but the documentation from Red Hat itself really needs somebody to go through it and review it."
"The Authselect tool needs improvement. This tool is used to connect your system to an identity provider or directory service, e.g., openLDAP. There is documentation and descriptions. While there are a few use cases and examples described, it is sometimes hard to use these tools to set up the configuration that we need for our specific environment. I would like it if there was more general information about the tool, not just describing a use case. For example, here is how to do it and how to connect to some kind of openLDAP service as well as more information about when you need to configure certificate services and mutual authentication."
"Their pricing and documentation can be improved."
"Linux overall needs improvement. They cannot go much beyond what Linus Torvalds's kernel implementation can do. I come from AIX, and there were very cool things in AIX that I am missing dearly, e.g., being able to support not only adding, but also reducing memory and number of processors. That is not supported on Linux right now, and it is the same for the mainstream file systems supported by Red Hat. There is no way of reducing a file system or logical volume. Whereas, in AIX, it was a shoo-in. These are the little things where we can say, "Ah, we are missing AIX for that.""
"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 Linux operating system is very traditional, and you need to use specific commands. I think that it can be improved to be more handy."
"The repository needs to be kept up to date all of the time."
"There should be more integration with other operating systems applications."
"The installation of Ubuntu is somewhat complicated, requires better documentation."
"The solution is not user-friendly in comparison with Windows."
"I think Ubuntu's performance is fine and so is its user interface. However, the latter is not as fancy as Microsoft Windows. It could be a bit fancier and easier to use."
"Similar to Windows 10, I would like the ability to manage it on Azure or integrate it with Azure."
"They can make it user-friendly. It is not totally user-friendly."
"Sometimes we face some overload on the server."
"The compatibility and the ease of use are areas that I would like to see improved."
"Windows Server needs to introduce more dashboards."
"It could be more secure. We don't like it because if you compare it to Linux, Linux is better."
"It would be nice if the solution was a bit cheaper. The product is a little pricey."
"The stability is not very good because you have to restart the system to keep the stability."
"The solution is rather expensive and could be more affordable."
"There are lots of improvements that can be brought by Microsoft, although for us Windows Server works mostly as expected. For how we're using Windows Server, security is a top priority, so when talking security, it can always be improved upon, no matter what."
More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Pricing and Cost Advice →
Ubuntu Linux is ranked 2nd in Operating Systems (OS) for Business with 84 reviews while Windows Server is ranked 4th in Operating Systems (OS) for Business with 140 reviews. Ubuntu Linux is rated 8.6, while Windows Server is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Ubuntu Linux writes "Low-cost open source operating system with better security and quick support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Windows Server writes "Easy to use, simple to set up, and scales well". Ubuntu Linux is most compared with Oracle Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise, CentOS, openSUSE Leap and Windows 10, whereas Windows Server is most compared with Windows 10, Oracle Linux, CentOS, SUSE Linux Enterprise and Oracle Solaris. See our Ubuntu Linux vs. Windows Server report.
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