Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

We primarily use RHEL for LAMP stacks. Our deployment is currently on-premises, but if they change their licensing model on the cloud, we might start rolling it out in the GCP. It's used globally in VMware environments. We use it in APAC and AMEA, but the majority of the deployments are in the US. The major platforms that we run on it are PLM environment and digital asset management.

Our shop is what we call out of the box and if it doesn't run on a container out of the box, then we don't run it on a container. So none of our stuff is running containers right now.

RHEL has made our operations more reliable by giving us a more repeatable process. After we've built it once, we know it will work the same way the next time we build it. It has reduced the time I spend training my operations team, and the cost of ownership is low. 

The OSCAP scanner and Ansible help enforce company security standards, decreasing our exposure to attacks, data loss, ransomware, etc. From an operations point of view, managing the environment requires less overhead.

I like the Ansible automation and RHEL's backward compatibility with Script. It's also reliable. I also used the OSCAP stuff for a while for PCI/PI compliance. That was pretty handy and straightforward. I like the SE Linux for the LAMP stacks.

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 have been using RHEL for 12 years

Linux is highly scalable in general, especially if you are using the container model, but unfortunately, we're not. I have no problem with scaling Linux or Red Hat's specific implementation of it.

I rate Red Hat support eight out of 10. Most of the support engineers are competent and helpful.

When I deployed RHEL initially, it was not very straightforward, but it's relatively easy today. The difference is the improvements to Satellite. Satellite Version 5 was kind of clunky. Version 6 seemed a little more straightforward and reliable. We don't use any kickstart, golden image, and roll and update, so there's not much to our strategy. 

The initial deployment took over a week, but it took about two days when we moved to RHEL 6. 

RHEL is competitive on-premises, but it's too expensive in the cloud. There are many cheap solutions for the cloud. In terms of upfront costs, open-source is more affordable and, in many cases, free. The long-term cost of support, staffing, and maintenance make it untenable. 

I have used Ubuntu and CentOS. I'm not a fan of Debian platforms. That's the main difference.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of 10. I've been pretty happy with RHEL over the years. That's 20 years of Unix right there. I tell anybody coming into Linux or Unix to learn the program. Scripting is your best friend, and you can't understand automation if you don't understand basic scripting. 

If you've never seen Unix or RHEL before, go to a class and learn how to do it in a lab so you don't have to screw up your job. Once you're comfortable with that,  start learning containers because I firmly believe containers will replace how we do most of what we do today.

We use a combination of Red Hat and Oracle Linux in different parts of the organization. We have a cluster, where RHEL is running. The instances are both virtualized and real, depending on which part of the cluster you're utilizing. They are set up as either RAC or single instance, depending on what we are trying to achieve in terms of performance.

We have PeopleSoft systems that are all deployed on Red Hat. We also use it for deploying simple websites. PostgreSQL is running on the systems, along with a frontend that was created by the developers. We also use it for DNS fallback authentication.

We have quite a few Windows systems, as well, and some of the applications that we used to run on Linux have now been migrated to Windows.

We have a mixed environment, although, in the cluster, our deployment is primarily on-premises. There are some deployments into different cloud providers, depending on the service that we're looking for. However, when we head into the cloud, we tend to go to Product as a Service rather than Infrastructure as a Service or the like. This means that we're less concerned about the underlying operating system and we try to avoid interacting with it as much as possible. So, it is just virtualization in this case.

We rely on RHEL for stability, control, and reliable updates. There may be other Linux variants that work as well or better but we're quite happy with this solution.

We try very hard to ensure that everything is working irrespective of what it's running on, in terms of the operating system and middleware, including what database is running. RHEL helps maintain consistency of application and user experience, regardless of the underlying infrastructure, simply by not being part of the problem.

RHEL enables us to deploy applications across bare metal servers and virtualized environments, and it's an area where everything seems to be working okay. It is reliable and there is nothing that is causing us grief at the moment. The only ones causing us trouble are the applications that we're customizing, although that is nothing at the operating system level.

You can set up the security services quite quickly, which we found very useful in our context because we're a highly public organization and we need to ensure that we've got things patched as quickly as possible.

This is a very robust product that doesn't require a lot of handling. It just works. It doesn't really matter whether we've got Apache components on it or anything else. It'll run.

We have used RHEL's monitoring tools, albeit very rarely. The last time we used this feature, we were trying to track down a problem with one of our LDAP services and we were not getting any useful response back from support for that service. Ultimately, we were able to track the issue to a particular character in a user's surname.

There is nothing to work on in terms of speed and performance.

We started using Red Hat Linux approximately 15 years ago.

Overall, the stability is very good.

The most recent stuff that's been a little bit kinky was in the release of version 8. They were looking to change things around with how the product is built, so it just took us a while before we started using it.

I think we waited until version 8.1 was out and then we were fine. It was a case of us letting that version settle a little bit, as opposed to version 6 and version 7, which we went straight to once released.

Scalability-wise, it suits the needs of our organization and we haven't tried to do anything more than that. When we had multinode, Oracle RAC systems, we had a four-node RAC, each of them had four CPUs and 64 gigs of RAM, and they were all running one database. Performance was not an issue with the database.

This is one of those systems that people can use without knowing it, in a web context. Pretty much all of our research staff and students are using it, at least to a degree, even if it's just for storage management. From their perspective, if you ask them what they're using then it's just a Windows share, but in reality, it's RHEL. There are between 30,000 and 50,000 users in this category, and the majority of them wouldn't even know it was Red Hat.

We've got a fairly straightforward Red Hat implementation but the users do a variety of jobs. Some of the work that we do is implementation integration, so there are no specific users per see. It's just about migrating data and files, depending on what we need. The people that use it in this capacity are academic staff, finance staff, libraries, IT staff, students, and researchers. It is also used by systems engineers, senior systems engineers, the senior security person, my manager, and his boss. There is also a deputy director and the director.

We're probably not going to increase our usage by any level of significance. At the same time, we're probably not going to decrease in any great rush either. We're in a phase where we're looking at what can be put into cloud systems, and we are targeting Product as a Service in that space rather than infrastructure.

Essentially, we're looking to move away from managing operating systems when we put stuff in the cloud, but we still have hundreds of servers, just in one of our locations. The majority of them have no plans to move at this stage, so our installed base is fairly stable.

Primarily, we haven't had to use technical support and I can't recall the last time we actually had to log a call with them. It's a really good situation to be in.

It's an interesting situation because we use Oracle Enterprise Linux primarily. It is really not very different from RHEL because it's just recompiled and they resend it. We use RHEL on one of our clusters, which has about 300 nodes in it and is used in research. In short, we use both Oracle Linux and Red Hat Linux, but the reality is that nothing much is different between the two of them.

We initially implemented Red Hat and we consolidated everything to Oracle Linux because it was cheaper from a support standpoint. That was when Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 4 was out. I think that version 5 had only just been released and we switched to Oracle, which is the same thing anyway.

The last time the research cluster was updated, it switched from the IRIX operating system to Red Hat on HP. They weren't necessarily going to implement Red Hat but we had to make sure that everything was licensed correctly, and that's how it came into play. Since it is not using our Oracle license, but it's already bought and paid for, we have not consolidated it. We could consolidate again but it doesn't make a lot of difference in terms of what we do on a day-to-day basis. It runs the same and it operates the same.

We were running version 7 of Red Hat on the cluster and we have versions 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 running in the Oracle Linux space. The applications running on version 4 will only run on that version, and there are only two of those left. We have three instances of version 5, about 30 running on version 6. We are trying to reduce this number and we had more than 60 running on version 6 a few months ago. The fact that this is going down is nice.

Versions 7 and 8 are still supported, so the specific version is not a concern.

Prior to using Linux, we used Digital's TruCluster. However, after Digital was bought by HP, they discontinued the product.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward. We put in the satellite server and then ran the config on each of the nodes to tell them where it was. After that, the updates were happening and there wasn't anything else to be done.

We did not use a formal approach for our implementation and deployment. It was probably more haphazard than structured.

We implemented it in-house.

We have four people that support it, although they do not work on it full-time. For example, the person who works on it most consistently also does work in the networking and firewall space, as well as identity management. We have more support staff for Windows within our environment.

The most recent change we made is a flag that had to be set on the kernel for some of the machines. Setting the flag means that you can patch it without having to reboot. This wasn't particularly problematic, although we had to make sure that it was in place because we now have patching occurring on a monthly basis.

In general, there is not much to do in terms of maintenance. The biggest drama has come from organizing upgrades to the application side that sits on top, rather than the operating system itself.

We've had some done ROI analysis over the years and it's always interesting when you read them. When you consider the initial implementation and you couple that with what we did with Oracle, we saved about $500,000 USD on purchasing all of the different parts by going with Red Hat.

This is significant as well because we still had the same capability with the hardware.

We've had similar kinds of examples thrown at us over the years, but primarily that's when comparing HP-UX and other vendor-closed products.

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

We are an educational institution and as such, what we pay is less than the average company. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

Red Hat's single subscription and install repository for all types of systems is something that we're quite interested in because it's simpler and easy to manage hundreds of virtual machines. However, from a pricing standpoint, it's part of the problem because it's what Red Hat utilizes to explain why they cost more.

The Oracle licensing of support for the same Red Hat product is cheaper, and it's cheaper to the level of significance that it makes it worthwhile. We have spoken with the salespeople at Red Hat about it, and they have said that there was nothing they could do.

It's starting to become a question mark over the patching with version eight. We might be changing, but we're unlikely to be changing from Red Hat. It's more a case of who's running our support, be it Oracle or Red Hat. However, we would need to look at the numbers next time we renew, which is not until next year.

Prior to choosing RHEL, we looked at a number of different things. We conducted a fairly large scan of product offerings and our analysis included cost, availability, and support. It took us about three months to go through the process and Red Hat was successful.

The fact that Red Hat is open-source was a consideration, but it wasn't necessarily a winning ticket at the time. We came from a closed source product that we were very happy with but when we were looking at the alternative closed source options, none of them were even close in terms of product offering. Also, they were actually more expensive. So, when looking at the open-source with support opportunity that we were presented with from Red Hat, it was very much a cheaper option that also brought with it a lot of reliability. That is why we chose it.

RHEL provides features that help to speed deployment, although we don't use their tools. We use tools from a third party.

My advice for anybody who is looking into implementing RHEL is to make sure that it is going to work for you. Ensure that it supports all of the products that you need it to support once you've actually assessed all of those things. It is a quality product, there's no doubt about that. Once you have made that assessment, I would say, "Great, go for it."

In summary, this is one of the products that works well and does what we need.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We use the solution internally for developing our software, including running databases and banking applications. These are the kinds of services we provide to customers, as well as our own internal software products.

The solution has helped enormously in terms of development and infrastructure. It enables us to centralize development and improve productivity significantly by providing a stable platform with documentation and best practices for deploying robust solutions.

One of the most valuable features is the ease of consumption and the extensive community-driven resources. The documentation is extensive, allowing users to get started without difficulty. 

Additionally, the support and stability provided by Red Hat Enterprise Linux contribute significantly to its value.

The solution requires a lot of prerequisites and understanding of the Red Hat ecosystem before one can get started. This complexity could be improved. 

More comprehensive support for OpenShift integrations and a less customized, Red Hat-specific setup process would be beneficial.

We have been using the solution for more than ten years.

The solution has been stable. We partner closely with Red Hat, and the operating system has been reliable for a long time.

I am not directly involved with scaling aspects, so I can't provide specific insights on this.

We have been very happy with customer service and support. Red Hat offers prompt support with a good turnaround time, effectively addressing any issues.

Positive

The pricing is competitive. It is not cheap. That said, it provides value considering what it offers.

I would suggest that anyone starting to develop should consider starting with a community-based version, however, for production workloads, it is important to have the support model from Red Hat as it provides stability and quick issue resolution.

I use Red Hat Enterprise Linux as an operating system for government contracts. 

I like the flexibility Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers in terms of permissions. The patch management is much shorter and easier. Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps us move workloads between different clouds and data centers. It's pretty smooth and transparent. 

We use AMIs — machine images — for provisioning. The image builder is nice. It's a vertical Amazon machine image. They have each machine image, so you don't need to install anything. You can just copy the machine image. 

There's an operating system called EdgeOS, which is an edge operating system used by edge computing nodes in the cloud. If Red Hat Enterprise Linux had a version incorporating EdgeOS-type functions, that would be great. Otherwise, you have to learn a little bit of EdgeOS to work with those nodes.

We have used Red Hat Enterprise Linux for several years.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of 10 for stability. 

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of 10 for scalability. 

I rate Red Hat support nine out of 10. 

Positive

Red Hat offers better support and stability. There are several others, including Windows, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a pretty stable standard operating system. 

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of 10 for ease of deployment and migration. Deploying an AMI is straightforward. We hardly had to do anything. It's pretty much automatic and uninterruptible. 

I wasn't involved in the licensing, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux's price should be reasonable if the government and others get it. 

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 out of 10. It's the top of the line.

We use Red Hat for everything or we have a Red Hat derivative.

We use it on-prem and on the cloud. We use it in a hybrid cloud environment. We see it everywhere. We have a more consistent view. We do not have the same churn that we have with other operating systems. The longevity of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is pretty cool.

We see it being used a lot for containerization projects. A lot of the things that I am involved in involve Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is a great experience. It is something that we know we can come into and have a good outcome. It is very reliable.

They are at the forefront in terms of built-in security features. I have seen a lot of things that they are doing. We would like to see more of that because security is something that is impacting everyone. 

The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is great for keeping our organization agile. It is consistent. When I build an image with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I know what is in it. I know it is trusted. I do not have the same churn that I would have with others. The way they support it and the way they communicate are well-known.

It is the number one Linux operating system that we've run in to, and the way it does things is the way I prefer. I do not know if it is because they did it first, or they just read my mind.

The number one feature we like is that it is a very reliable platform. It is a very consistent platform. There is very little that we cannot do with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and there is very little that we worry about when we are running a Red Hat distribution.

Red Hat started as a very open and outwardly focused release, but recently, some of the changes that were made have affected that reputation. From the standpoint of what they can add to the product, the product is pretty stable. 

They continue 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. I wish they did not care about CentOS and things like that. I have seen my customers push away from Red Hat as a result of that perception, which is weird because it does not change anything. I wish they would value that. Because of new owners too, the perception has changed suddenly.

I started with Red Hat before Enterprise Linux. I started in the nineties when Red Hat first went on floppy disks. They had a bunch of floppy disks. That was my first release, and then they started doing it via CD-ROMs. The first Red Hat Enterprise Linux release that I used was 2 or 2.1 in early 2000. I remember the Red Hat person coming to where I was working at the time and saying that they are going to start this enterprise distribution. We were really skeptical. We were like, "We have Red Hat. We love Red Hat. Why are you messing with a good thing?" It is kind of funny.

It is stable.

It is scalable.

It has always been solid. It is getting a little worse than it was before. When you get to the right people, you always get amazing support. It is just a bit harder to get to the right people. I would rate their support a ten out of ten. I love it when we get there.

Positive

It has been very long since I started working with these types of solutions. I have used them all.

We use it in the cloud. We use it on-prem. We use it in a hybrid situation. We use all cloud providers.

Its deployment has always been simple.

I am a consultant and integrator.

For us, our ROI is the predictability of Red Hat. We know what is coming. It is well-communicated. We could see the upstreams. We know how it is supported. We know how they communicate about CVEs and things like that. We know how to iterate the ecosystems. We know how to deal with RPMs. Very rarely, you are like, "This is brand new." It always usually works into a construct. There is always a utility that you can use to wrap complex things, such as SELinux or containers. There is always something.

We have done bake-offs before with the big three that everybody talks about. There is Red Hat. There is SUSE, and there is Ubuntu. Personally, I am not a fan of Ubuntu. I do not run a desktop, which is probably why. The ones that I run into all the time are SUSE or Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

If I were not going with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would go with a Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone. In business, I would always use Red Hat. Personally, I would use CentOS just because I prefer the way Red Hat organizes everything, so it has always been Red Hat or a Red Hat clone.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. I love it.

We primarily use RHEL for data analysis servers supporting our scientific researchers, who access the systems remotely.

The reliability and long support lifespan of RHEL are crucial for us. It lasts for ten years, meaning we don't need frequent changes. Updates are quick, simple, and reliable, automatically backing out if issues arise, saving us from patching headaches.

I'm eager to see how the AI features in RHEL can enhance our capabilities. We hope it will improve tasks we have found challenging in the past, like documentation searches. We are particularly interested in automation and easily finding information.

I have been using RHEL for 15 years.

RHEL is scalable. We have scaled our data analysis clusters with it quite well.

I would rate the customer support as a nine out of ten.

Positive

Deploying RHEL for the first time was simple. It was a long time ago, and we had documentation from previous admins which made it straightforward. We did the deployment on our own.

We have seen ROI with RHEL. Our biggest investment is in professional development through Red Hat Summit, online training, and a Red Hat Learning subscription, which we have used for courses.

Our experience with RHEL pricing and setup costs has been good. We will be purchasing an extended license for another year.

We have used RHEL since I joined my company about 15 years ago. We have looked at other options like Fedora and Ubuntu for more up-to-date libraries, but we keep coming back to RHEL for its reliability and long-term support.

Using RHEL for containers has simplified our processes. While we, as system managers, aren't heavily involved in development, we provide RHEL containers for our developers. Overall, it has improved support for container management within our organization.

We rely on Linux for our web and file servers to ensure file integrity and service verification. Additionally, we use the host firewall regularly on all our hosts for enhanced security.

We started agile development and containers help us by making it easier for developers to teardown and recreate environments. This allows for more frequent updates, improving our workflow.

Our Red Hat portfolio reduced our cost of ownership by using RHEL Workstation instead of full server licenses where possible, saving money. We use full RHEL only on our enterprise production servers.

I would advise a colleague to check out Red Hat for its long-term support and reliability compared to other open-source Linux-based operating systems.

Overall, I would rate RHEL as a nine out of ten.

We have RHEL deployed on the Cloud and also on-premises. We purchased it from a Red Hat representative.

We have several use cases, one of which is in the manufacturing field. In this case, we leverage manufacturing data for R&D engineering workflow purposes. Specifically, we use the HPC workload to visualize the utilization of all compute nodes as a percentage. RHEL also finds application in the automotive industry for specific engineering workloads, including drivetrain simulations, design processes, crash simulations, and driving simulations. Additionally, RHEL is used in the healthcare industry, particularly by highly regulated pharmaceutical organizations, to manage healthcare licenses.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has provided significant value to our organization through its robust support, extended lifecycle, and valuable insights through the analytics tool that helps to identify and remediate potential issues before they impact the organization. We haven't encountered any Windows operating system that offers a comparable lifecycle length. By analyzing incidents in our management tracker, we were able to realize the benefits of implementing RHEL. For example, we conduct monthly reviews where we examine reports to identify any incidents that have occurred. Following the implementation, we utilized the ticketing tool to analyze incident data and observed a 15 percent reduction in incidents.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers several valuable features, including robust security, a subscription-based model that offers comprehensive support for development and distribution, and an extended lifecycle for stable operation.

One area for improvement in RHEL is compatibility with some third-party tools, like those offered by Intel.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for over 15 years.

RHEL is a stable solution. The maturity of the OS helps with the stability.

RHEL is a scalable solution.

The technical support team is knowledgeable and meets their SLAs. If the first level cannot resolve our issue, they will escalate the ticket to the next level until it is resolved. They take ownership of the ticket until it is resolved.

Positive

In addition to Windows and Linux, we also utilize Ubuntu depending on the specific product and industry. While any operating system may be suitable for the manufacturing and automotive sectors, regulatory environments like banking, finance, and healthcare require heightened security, encompassing the operating system itself.

Deploying RHEL directly is straightforward, but integrating it with third-party tools requires expertise in both the OS and the specific tools being integrated.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux can be deployed quickly on individual machines.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a golden image builder. This tool allows us to deploy the same image across all compute nodes in the cluster, ensuring uniformity. While we may encounter occasional compatibility issues with specific hardware, we have workarounds in place to address them.

The implementation was completed in-house.

The operating system serves as the foundation for our hardware interaction, contributing to a strong return on investment.

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.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of ten.

Organizations seeking to reduce costs associated with RHEL support or those with internal teams capable of managing and supporting the operating system can leverage the open-source version.

Our system administrators handle maintenance, and we additionally cover annual maintenance costs.

I recommend adhering to best practices and maintaining the system regularly for optimal stability.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux across different versions, from six to nine, to run various applications. Our main area of focus involves using Satellite support to manage and patch both the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OS and specific applications like OpenShift and other products supported by Red Hat. We have multiple environments, including Azure, AWS, and a standalone eXs host. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's patching process needs improvement, particularly in achieving consistency. Currently, when you patch, you might not have control over the timing, leading to different software packages ending up at different patch levels. This lack of consistency can make it challenging to manage and control the various components effectively. My background is in IBM AIX, so the patching is based on the technology level and the service pack level, so all the related patches stay at the same level.  

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ten years.

I would rate the knowledge base offered by Red Hat as average. I would rate their support as a three out of ten.

Negative

We also use IBM AIX. I prefer AIX, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux is cheaper. However, IBM has real technical support. You can call a 1-800 number and get a technician on the line. That's real technical support. Red Hat requires you to email them and schedule a call. 

Overall, I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a five out of 10. 

I don't see Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features as effectively simplifying risk reduction and compliance. We use AIX, but still, we face a lot of vulnerabilities from Red Hat that need frequent patching, often monthly. This frequent need for updates, along with the rapid changes in Red Hat Enterprise Linux releases, can be frustrating and lead to instability. In the banking industry, where we take vulnerabilities seriously, these frequent releases and lack of stability can be problematic. 

We have general use cases.

It's a well-supported OS. I don't know what we'd use if we didn't have it.

Moreover, the last time I had an issue flagged with the vulnerability, I was able to go to the Red Hat website and find a patch. It worked pretty well.

The built-in security worked well when it came to solidifying risk production and maintaining compliance. The uptime or security of our systems has been pretty solid.

It helps us maintain our security standards and keeps us up to date on security. 

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

The package compatibility between different releases is a little confusing sometimes.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for 10 years. 

We've also used Ubuntu. 

It's a matter of certain servers that need to be kept secure, so we chose Red Hat. 

When I order a server in our organization, it comes installed, and then they spin it up.

I am involved in the upgrade processes. The upgrades weren't complex but required some downtime. We don't normally upgrade until a particular OS version becomes end-of-life and the new one starts.

Our in-house IT department did the deployment. We have a separate IT department that leverages the training provided by Red Hat.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten because most of the information I need I could find on the Red Hat website.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux as an operating system for hosting Oracle databases.

Compared to Windows as a server operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux seems more secure, and we've had fewer intrusions onto our systems. That one, for us, is the single most important thing. In a few instances where we've had intrusions, we've been able to detect them very quickly and get patches that fix those security holes very quickly, thus preventing further intrusions.

In the cases of clients I've worked for, I've never been involved in a ransomware attack or a significant reportable data loss. That is why we continue using either Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Oracle Linux.

The most valuable features are its stability and resilience in that we rarely have to take down the systems completely to patch them.

The operating system configuration and function selection could be improved. Configuring the operating system and selection of options takes a lot of expertise. I'm now going to retire, and I've been doing this for many years. Trying to train people to make those choices is proving to be difficult. However, to get applications to run efficiently in those environments, those selections are absolutely crucial.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux should include simpler storage management.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for 20 years.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten for stability.

No system is infinitely scalable in a linear manner. As you scale up anything, the fact that you're scaling adds overheads. If I were to compare Red Hat Enterprise Linux to Windows, I would give Windows a seven because you run out of scalability much faster on the Windows side.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten for scalability.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's technical support team is not that great.

Negative

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is expensive, but it's hard to quantify. Oracle doesn't have a license. You just download Oracle software and use it, but their support is way more expensive. So they're about the same. With these types of operating systems, you need to have some support. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you need to pay a massive upfront licensing fee in order to get support. You don't have to pay a licensing fee for Oracle, but then you pay a massive support fee to get the support.

They're about the same overall. I don't really make that choice for my clients. I ask them to ensure that they do have some support from someplace. If they suffer a breach and need someone to help fix the problem, they should have something up and running when it happens instead of running around trying to arrange it.

Most of my clients have particularly sensitive information. We tend to run on-premises rather than the cloud because of security issues for those highly sensitive databases. We disconnect those databases from the internet so they are ultimately secure. That is something that you cannot do in the cloud.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux doesn't have any particular standout security features, which the other Linux tools don't have. I've also used the Oracle version of Linux, which seems very similar to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Both seem to be as secure as the other. If I have to give a score in relation to stability, Oracle's version of Linux might be slightly more stable than Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

All the customers I've worked for have been using those operating systems for a long time. For instance, one of our customers has been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since it was first available over 20 years ago. A return from that is difficult. They were using Unix rather than Linux. The applications they ran were ported from those environments, and migrating them to Red Hat Enterprise Linux was relatively painless. We did those migrations back in 1995 to 1997.

We tend to use the environment for running databases. So, we have very few real users directly connecting to the system. The people who connect to the system do so by applications.

We haven't needed any maintenance for a long time. My last company was a large organization, and we had the internal expertise to provide support. Some net contributors have fixed bugs themselves and contributed those bug fixes back into the Linux open-source community. It was a huge organization, and its IT department was as big as some software consultancies.

Overall, I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a six out of ten.