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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) pros and cons

Vendor: Red Hat

4.4 out of 5

364 reviews
97% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is renowned for its stability, security, and scalability, making it ideal for enterprises seeking to optimize IT infrastructure. Its automation and integration with Ansible simplify management, while robust support and documentation aid in maintaining performance and compliance. However, RHEL could improve on upgrade policies, licensing clarity, and technical support responsiveness. Enhanced migration support and documentation are also needed to better serve user demands.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) offers outstanding stability, making it a reliable choice for enterprise applications and reducing downtime.

The security features of RHEL are highly valued, providing protection and compliance, which are crucial for businesses.

Enterprise-level support from Red Hat ensures quick issue resolution and exceptional guidance, enhancing overall user experience.

RHEL integrates seamlessly with existing infrastructure and different platforms, making deployment and management more efficient.

The automation capabilities, including Ansible integration, streamline operations, resulting in time savings and operational efficiency.

CONS

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) upgrade processes between major versions should be simplified.

Licensing costs for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are perceived as high and should be reduced.

The documentation for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) needs improvement for better clarity and accessibility.

Support from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) should be more responsive and knowledgeable.

Integration with cloud services and platforms for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) should be enhanced.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Pros review quotes

DB

Systems Administrator at Ithaca College

Aug 18, 2021

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.

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JonathanShilling

System Analyst II at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

May 26, 2021

I like the fact that most of the system configuration is Namespace so it's easy to get to and easy to configure, and most of it still uses text documents. Not all of it's a menu-driven-type entry. I also like the fact that it's a very standard file system layout so it's easy to navigate.

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JD

Jeffrey Donovan

Senior Infrastructure Architect at Ensono

May 9, 2024

The systems are just bulletproof. We do not have problems with it. Support for file system differences and migrations has been solid.

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

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Learn what your peers think about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2025.

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reviewer2399139

Field Solutions Architect OCTO at CDW

May 8, 2024

We are able to have a Linux system that is open-source and that allows us to do domain trust IBM and all that fun stuff. We have a good solid enterprise Linux.

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BY

Senior Systems Engineer at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

Sep 1, 2021

This is a very robust product that doesn't require a lot of handling. It just works.

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TO

Enterprise Systems Engineer at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees

Feb 12, 2023

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.

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reviewer1486413

Principal Analyst - AIX and Linux at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

Feb 9, 2021

The integrated solution approach reduces our TCO tremendously because we are able to focus on innovation instead of operations.

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Sr. Enterprise Engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

Mar 31, 2022

It is a good operating system. It is very stable. It does not take a lot of maintenance. You set it up well and it runs.

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reviewer2399706

Technology Operations Engineer III at a hospitality company with 10,001+ employees

May 9, 2024

Their support is valuable. Whenever I had a problem, I could get on a phone call with somebody. I did not have to go to some random forum or send an email and wait forever. I could call somebody.

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CTO at Standard Bank International

Aug 9, 2022

It is more supported and supportable in the enterprise sense than Ubuntu or perhaps a smaller distro, but it's also flexible enough to easily transport from platform to platform: ISA to ISA, production to development, and vice versa.

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Cons review quotes

DB

Systems Administrator at Ithaca College

Aug 18, 2021

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.

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JonathanShilling

System Analyst II at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

May 26, 2021

I'd like to see more of NCurses type menu systems in some instances. We're dealing with SUSE Enterprise Linux, they have an NCurses menu system. It's a menu system. It will write there. Even some of the higher-end Unix systems like AIX have some inner menu system where all the configuration tools are right there so your administrator doesn't have to jump through multiple directories to configure files if needed. I like the simplicity of Red Hat because it's pretty easy but having an NCurses menu when you have to get something done quickly would be nice.

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JD

Jeffrey Donovan

Senior Infrastructure Architect at Ensono

May 9, 2024

A lot of it is related to communication. They are building solid products, and quite often, people do not find out about them until two or three years have passed.

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Free Report: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2025.

867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.

reviewer2399139

Field Solutions Architect OCTO at CDW

May 8, 2024

Red Hat training is phenomenal, but it is expensive. There has to be a better way to onboard new engineers into Linux to really and truly compete with Microsoft.

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BY

Senior Systems Engineer at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

Sep 1, 2021

The price is something that can be improved, as they are still being undercut.

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TO

Enterprise Systems Engineer at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees

Feb 12, 2023

Deploying clusters on Red Hat, as well as on Oracle Linux, is a bit involving. I'd like them to simplify the setup or at least give meaningful log files to be able to see what's happening at the cluster level.

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reviewer1486413

Principal Analyst - AIX and Linux at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

Feb 9, 2021

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."

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Sr. Enterprise Engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

Mar 31, 2022

It is a bit on the pricier side. However, due to the stability and support that they provide to my management and me, we really don't see a reason to choose another way to go. It is hard to get good support.

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reviewer2399706

Technology Operations Engineer III at a hospitality company with 10,001+ employees

May 9, 2024

It does have a workstation option, but you rarely hear anything about it. I would love to see the workstation replace Windows. That is a stretch goal, but it is possible.

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CTO at Standard Bank International

Aug 9, 2022

Large application vendors may not have certified RHEL, or they have certified an older version. Most of the large application vendors are unfamiliar with the versioning that RHEL introduced, which I strongly support. They will support a given sub-version up to a point, not realizing that the sub-versions are essentially additive.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 347)

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Ubuntu Linux vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Rocky Linux vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Oracle Linux vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Windows Server vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

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CentOS vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

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Windows 11 vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

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Fedora Linux vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Oracle Solaris vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

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