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AlmaLinux vs openSUSE Leap comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 5, 2026

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

AlmaLinux
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
12th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.9
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
openSUSE Leap
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
15th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of AlmaLinux is 3.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of openSUSE Leap is 5.2%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AlmaLinux3.8%
openSUSE Leap5.2%
Other91.0%
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

Naim Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at SMC Labs, LLC
Private cloud practice has become seamless and deployments run smoothly for my projects
I follow the documentation for AlmaLinux, which I believe could be more extensive for enterprise setups. My primary use case remains deploying private cloud infrastructure using OpenStack Yoga, thus suggesting improvements to cater to specific cloud instances like AWS Graviton or Azure NVMe. Driver or kernel updates for new hardware or cloud instances like AWS Graviton or Azure NVMe tend to arrive a little later in AlmaLinux than they do in the Red Hat distribution. Therefore, I suggest that faster releases of cloud-optimized images and updated hardware drivers could enhance AlmaLinux's competitiveness. Additionally, I find it sometimes difficult to find answers on forums due to the community not being as large as that of Red Hat or CentOS. My suggestion is to create an active forum or Q&A session where developers can directly address user problems, growing the community and providing optional enterprise support tiers for large organizations. Additionally, I have continued to consider improvements. For server administration and language runtime management, I encountered conflicts on production servers with older and newer versions of tools such as Python and Node.js. Simplifying the application space management would reduce the friction in multi-language development environments. Moreover, including more pre-configured or auto-remediation scripts like CIS Benchmark or STIG compliance would be immensely helpful for enterprise security hardening.
NK
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.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"AlmaLinux offers the best features in that it is freeware for RHEL, and it is really reliable."
"Positively, I can say that AlmaLinux has brought a sense of stability, and besides the security patches, we also noticed better virtualization for our use cases."
"Moreover, stable OVS networking and floating IP configuration is very easy for me when using AlmaLinux, making it a reliable and highly recommended option for teams needing an enterprise-grade Red Hat compatible workflow without the subscription cost."
"The long-term support provided by AlmaLinux helps my business by ensuring that we do not have to renew our servers every four to five years."
"AlmaLinux provides free updates and security, unlike Red Hat, where support must be purchased separately."
"Overall, AlmaLinux is really good, easier as well, and I do not see much difference between CentOS and AlmaLinux."
"AlmaLinux has positively impacted our organization because our goal was to generalize our entire fleet into one operating system, which earlier was not the case as we were using around seven to eight different operating systems."
"The most valuable feature I find in AlmaLinux is the binary compatibility with RHEL and the long-term stability, which makes it a predictable, rock-solid system behavior, while also having small and safe packaging for subsystems or systems that run twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the BTRFS file system, which allows you to take snapshots."
"The most valuable feature by far has been the virtualization capabilities of the operating system."
"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."
"This solution has helped my organization's security from the use of its firewall, and the features for blocking or allowing traffic are very effective and have worked well for us."
"openSUSE Leap has helped me with using containers in Podman."
"Stable - it just runs without the necessity to reboot."
"Stable - it just runs without the necessity to reboot."
"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."
 

Cons

"One area for improvement with AlmaLinux is the use of SELinux to secure and harden my server, which I find to be a complicated beast."
"AlmaLinux could be improved by addressing the slow adoption of new software and the dependency on Red Hat Enterprise Linux."
"If AlmaLinux could provide ten to twenty years of fixes, that would be an improvement because I do not want to update the system all the time, as it becomes more challenging for me as a system administrator to track all the patches and everything I should patch on the system."
"Regarding my experience today, I installed AlmaLinux 8, and everything is okay, but the significant problem is that AlmaLinux does not ship with Wi-Fi drivers."
"We feel they are not taking ownership of addressing a lot of vulnerabilities in some operating systems that are not patched even though fixes are available in open sources."
"AlmaLinux could be improved by having some basic components, such as ifconfig and netstat, pre-installed on the container image, as that would be really helpful for us."
"In terms of resource allocation, AlmaLinux requires you to have at least ten gigabytes of RAM storage and four gigabytes of CPU allocation."
"To improve AlmaLinux, some commands could be automated, such as expanding the repository of AlmaLinux or improving the shell experience."
"There is room for improvement in the console."
"Like most Linux-based operating systems, the biggest challenge Leap faces is the GUI."
"Like most Linux-based operating systems, the biggest challenge Leap faces is the GUI."
"I would like openSUSE Leap to have better link integration with Windows."
"Somehow the change from OS12.x via 13.x to Leap was a bit bumpy and some old issues seemed to reappear."
"Somehow the change from OS12.x via 13.x to Leap was a bit bumpy and some old issues seemed to reappear."
"In the future, the Active Directory could improve."
"It would be helpful if we could easily switch from openSUSE Leap for testing to SUSE Linux Enterprise for production."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"This is an open-source operating system that can be used free of charge."
"The solution is open-source."
"The cost of this solution was reasonable and it was within our budget."
"openSUSE Leap is an open-source solution that is free of cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
9%
Comms Service Provider
20%
Educational Organization
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AlmaLinux?
Currently, we have not experienced pricing with AlmaLinux, as I have used the free version so far. However, when we move to the production environment, I am suggesting that we implement AlmaLinux t...
What needs improvement with AlmaLinux?
In terms of how AlmaLinux can be improved, while I praise the patching part, the support provided by TuxCare needs to be more prompt and responsive. We feel they are not taking ownership of address...
What is your primary use case for AlmaLinux?
My main use case for AlmaLinux is to build a custom image on top of the AlmaLinux image provided by TuxCare. I use that custom image to supply it through all the stakeholders, for example, differen...
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...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for openSUSE Leap?
openSUSE Leap is an open-source solution that is free of cost.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

AlmaLinux OS 8 (x86_64), AlmaLinux OS 10 (x86_64)
No data available
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about AlmaLinux vs. openSUSE Leap and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.