No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

AlmaLinux vs SUSE Linux Enterprise comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
4.7
Organizations saved costs and time with AlmaLinux due to its free RHEL compatibility, stability, and reduced vendor lock-in.
Sentiment score
4.9
SUSE Linux Enterprise provides better ROI and cost savings for SAP deployment than Red Hat, enhancing revenue by 10-15%.
The clearest measurable benefit is avoiding operating system subscription costs while maintaining enterprise Linux compatibility and stability.
Associate Systems Engineer at Dhanyaayai Enterprises Pvt Ltd
We saved approximately 70% of our budget with AlmaLinux, and the system is stable and reliable.
Systems Engineer at SARL Rajafood
Moving over to AlmaLinux saves a lot of time because of the long-term support, meaning I do not have to support the latest version every couple of years.
I have seen a return on investment by switching our clusters from on-prem to Azure public cloud, using our same Bring Your Own Licenses, which saved costs on licensing.
Senior Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.5
AlmaLinux offers strong community support and third-party assistance, differing from RHEL, with variable response times and effective solutions.
Sentiment score
5.6
SUSE Linux Enterprise support is generally praised for expertise, though experiences vary, with high costs for certain interactions.
For technical issues, the community is very useful for installation, configuration, migration, and troubleshooting.
Technical Solution Development Engineer at Ericsson
AlmaLinux offers strong community support and excellent documentation.
Associate Systems Engineer at Dhanyaayai Enterprises Pvt Ltd
The best features AlmaLinux offers include its support, which is outstanding from TuxCare, as we are getting the fixes and patch sets for the OS very fast.
Cloud Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
SUSE Linux Enterprise provides a stable, secure, and well-supported platform for enterprise workloads, with powerful management tools and robust support for clustering, cloud, and containers.
Senior Lead DevOps Engineer at Kyndryl
The customer support is good; whenever we have opened a case, they have provided detailed explanations of the issues and resolutions.
Senior Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
I rate the customer service 10 out of 10 because SUSE has 24/7 availability support, extended support, security, multi-Linux distribution support, upgradation, and everything is user-friendly.
Devops MAnager at DXC Technology
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.0
AlmaLinux is scalable and compatible with major platforms, offering reliable performance, flexible deployment, and effortless scaling for enterprises.
Sentiment score
6.0
SUSE Linux Enterprise is praised for its strong scalability, ease of maintenance, cloud compatibility, but faces some kernel issues.
It is very scalable and performs well both on small deployments and large-scale infrastructure with many servers.
Ingénieur Systéme at Groupe Open SA
AlmaLinux scales very well and can support everything from a small virtual machine to large enterprise deployments.
Associate Systems Engineer at Dhanyaayai Enterprises Pvt Ltd
AlmaLinux has good scalability and is well-suited for both small deployments and large enterprise environments.
Technical Solution Development Engineer at Ericsson
Its scalability is quite good since we are using Azure, which allows us to easily scale up or down our resources as needed.
Senior Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
SUSE Linux Enterprise is widely recognized for its strong scalability, making it suitable for organizations of all sizes, from small businesses to global enterprises.
Senior Lead DevOps Engineer at Kyndryl
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
AlmaLinux offers stable, reliable enterprise compatibility, ensuring minimal disruptions and security with consistent performance for production and research environments.
Sentiment score
7.9
SUSE Linux Enterprise is praised for its stability and reliability, with occasional minor issues in newer versions and Hyper-V.
Its security is another highlight, providing minimal disruptions, timely security patches, bug fixes, and a reduced attack surface.
system administration | DevOps | Softrware Developer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
AlmaLinux is a reliable and stable version of Linux.
Systems Engineer at SARL Rajafood
It is designed for enterprise workloads and follows a long-term support model, making it suitable for production servers, databases, web applications, virtualization platforms, and cloud environments.
Associate Systems Engineer at Dhanyaayai Enterprises Pvt Ltd
When HANA is utilized by many applications, I notice that while utilization does increase, we have never faced lagging or server unresponsiveness.
Senior Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
I would rate stability for SUSE Linux Enterprise an eight out of ten.
Solution specialist Data and AI at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

AlmaLinux needs better host access control, documentation, enterprise tools, hardware compatibility, support, updates, integration, and community resources.
SUSE Linux Enterprise requires improvements in package management, security policies, cloud integration, UI, documentation, licensing, and support services.
The AlmaLinux team can look into this and see what they can improve in terms of resource consumption and monitoring tools that can actually help the users of AlmaLinux pinpoint the exact processes or services that are causing that amount of resource consumption.
DevOps at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees
If something is added to AlmaLinux that allows for some subscription or makes it exactly equal to RHEL, it would be perfect.
Devops Engineer at EDAG
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.
system administration | DevOps | Softrware Developer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
Security is a top concern, and further strengthening default security policies, simplifying compliance management, and integrating advanced vulnerability management tools would be a valuable improvement.
Senior Lead DevOps Engineer at Kyndryl
The software manager was different, making it challenging to install certain applications.
Lead Desktop Support Technician at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
The license we subscribed to should carry over within the same instance family.
IT Manager at a wellness & fitness company with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

AlmaLinux offers enterprises a cost-effective, stable, and RHEL-compatible platform with free updates and no licensing fees.
SUSE Linux Enterprise provides flexible pricing, emphasizing support over licensing, with mixed affordability perceptions but justified by scalability and support.
In the open-source environment, I believe a Linux distribution is always free of cost.
Junior Software Test Automation Engineer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
AlmaLinux itself is free and open-source, so there is no OS licensing fee.
Technical Solution Development Engineer at Ericsson
AlmaLinux is free, so there are no costs there.
Upgrading an instance results in overlapping or double subscription fees.
IT Manager at a wellness & fitness company with 5,001-10,000 employees
I would rate pricing for SUSE Linux Enterprise considering one is a high price and ten is a low price.
Solution specialist Data and AI at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The licensing cost is a bit high.
Senior Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
 

Valuable Features

AlmaLinux offers enterprise-grade stability, security, and cost savings with RHEL compatibility, enhanced by TuxCare support and KernelCare integration.
SUSE Linux Enterprise excels in stability, security, easy administration, cost-effectiveness, and adaptability, ideal for enterprise workloads.
The tooling stability for DevOps is also significant, allowing easy use of infrastructure as code with Ansible or scripting playbooks that remain valid for years, making it especially important for the CI/CD pipelines.
system administration | DevOps | Softrware Developer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
Because AlmaLinux is binary compatible with Red Hat, it provides a very stable and reliable operating system suitable for production environments.
Ingénieur Systéme at Groupe Open SA
At this moment, AlmaLinux is a very open platform. It not only includes the latest security patches but also integrates very recent AI technologies alongside the direct patches that help harden the server.
DevOps Engineer at SMC Labs, LLC
SUSE Linux had a clean user interface, which was a valuable feature for me.
Lead Desktop Support Technician at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
It has a stable and reliable OS.
IT Manager at a wellness & fitness company with 5,001-10,000 employees
The LVM is very easy to configure, along with simple disk scanning compared to other systems.
Senior Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

AlmaLinux
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SUSE Linux Enterprise
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
13th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of AlmaLinux is 4.1%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SUSE Linux Enterprise is 4.1%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AlmaLinux4.1%
SUSE Linux Enterprise4.1%
Other91.8%
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

Arka A - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Solution Development Engineer at Ericsson
Enterprise workloads have run reliably while operations have reduced costs and simplified patching
AlmaLinux is already very strong, but it could be improved in a few areas. Better centralized management and monitoring, easier major version upgrades, and more enterprise-focused automation tools would make administration simpler. Having more integrated tools for patch management, compliance, configuration management, and troubleshooting could reduce manual work for system administrators. The main area for improvement is enterprise management. Better centralized patching, monitoring, compliance, and automation would make it easier to manage large-scale deployments. I would also like to see smoother and more predictable major version upgrades, especially for systems with third-party dependencies. AlmaLinux is already improving in this area through ELEvate and its migration tools.
MoezCHEBBI - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Lead DevOps Engineer at Kyndryl
Has delivered expert training and enabled smooth migrations using automated deployment tools
SUSE Linux Enterprise is a mature and reliable platform, but there are areas where it can be improved. Modernizing the system management tools is important as many users appreciate YaST for its centralized management, but there is a growing demand for more modern, web-based, and modular tools. The introduction of tools such as Agama, a web-based installer, and Cockpit in newer releases is a step in the right direction.SUSE has made progress with multi-Linux support, allowing organizations to manage and support not just SUSE systems but also other distributions such as Red Hat and CentOS; continuing to expand these capabilities, especially for hybrid and multi-cloud environments, will help organizations manage diverse infrastructure more effectively. Security is a top concern, and further strengthening default security policies, simplifying compliance management, and integrating advanced vulnerability management tools would be a valuable improvement.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Operating Systems (OS) for Business solutions are best for your needs.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
9%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise23
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AlmaLinux?
AlmaLinux has helped mainly in reducing OS licensing cost while maintaining a stable RHEL compatible platform. From an operational perspective, the familiar RHEL ecosystem makes it very easy for ou...
What needs improvement with AlmaLinux?
AlmaLinux is already very strong, but it could be improved in a few areas. Better centralized management and monitoring, easier major version upgrades, and more enterprise-focused automation tools ...
What is your primary use case for AlmaLinux?
My main use case for AlmaLinux is enterprise server environments, hosting different applications, databases, and our charging workloads. I use it where I need a stable, secure, RHEL compatible OS w...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SUSE Linux Enterprise?
I would rate pricing for SUSE Linux Enterprise considering one is a high price and ten is a low price.
What needs improvement with SUSE Linux Enterprise?
SUSE can make improvements to SUSE Linux Enterprise. I have suggestions about what they can add to the product to simplify users' lives. They need to intensely work on their marketing strategy.
What is your primary use case for SUSE Linux Enterprise?
I understand your point regarding my current use case for SUSE Linux Enterprise. I want to know if the purchase process is mostly directly from SUSE or through the AWS Marketplace, and what ways I ...
 

Also Known As

AlmaLinux OS 8 (x86_64), AlmaLinux OS 10 (x86_64)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 12 SP3
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Air India, Akademicki Szpital Kliniczny (ASK), Allone, Altran, Apollo, ARCHIVA, Asia Innovatory Management School, ATLAS ELEKTRONIK GmbH, AutoData Norge AS, Baldor Electric, Business Connexion, CASIO, Ciclum Farma, Delta Lloyd, Edumate , HPE,  SAP SE,  Lenovo, BMW, T-Systems, UCX, Turners & Growers, Shenzhen Development Bank, Bosch Group, JK Tyres & Industries, IOCL, European Space Agency, Daimler AG, China Minsheng Banking Corp, Café Coffee Day, Unisys,  Petrochina Company Ltd, Fitch Ratings, ABeam Consulting Co Ltd, Tyro Payments, Rackspace, Pacific Textiles, ...
Find out what your peers are saying about AlmaLinux vs. SUSE Linux Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.