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CentOS vs Fedora Linux comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 9, 2025

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

CentOS
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fedora Linux
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
13th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of CentOS is 4.4%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fedora Linux is 5.3%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
CentOS4.4%
Fedora Linux5.3%
Other90.3%
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammad Wasif - PeerSpot reviewer
IT infrastructure executive at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Has supported reliable deployments and simplified issue resolution in complex environments
The most suitable feature of CentOS is its exceptional stability, security, and long-term support, which make it a popular choice for enterprise and server environments. CentOS is widely recognized for providing a stable and secure platform, especially suited for server and mission-critical workloads. Whenever we face critical work, it is easy for our team to handle. For long-term support, each CentOS release generally guarantees long-term updates, ensuring reliability for extended periods. For package management, we use YUM and DNF in the new version for flexible and efficient software management. It depends on our users' requirements for installing CentOS. Licensing for CentOS is above my management details, so I am not aware of this information. CentOS always provides good feedback, is easy to handle, and easy to troubleshoot. The experience with CentOS OS has been very good over the last two months. I rate CentOS nine out of ten.
VishalSingh15 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Business at Variyas Labs Pvt Ltd
A developer-friendly and highly customizable operating system that offers cost savings
The tool's setup can be done in two ways: with a GUI and without a GUI. You can install the GUI. You download the base image, and during installation, it will ask you whether you want just a plain server or a server with a GUI. It will give you all the options, including whether you want a non-graphical user interface normally used in enterprise environments. You don't need any GUI in enterprise settings because those servers are installed and managed without it. If you use the GUI, it will consume more RAM and CPU. However, if you use just the simple non-GUI version, it will use fewer resources. On the server side, people typically don't use the GUI; they only use the non-graphical user interface because it is sufficient for running the server. On the desktop or workstation end, you can have the GUI installed. If a system is the latest one, with a high-end CPU, a good amount of RAM, and SSD drives, it should not take more than ten minutes.
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Comparison Review

it_user281973 - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage and VMware Expert at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Aug 24, 2017
It's improved our company's system environments that run Oracle databases.
Red Hat is mission critical to our environment Red Hat has improved the mission critical environments running Oracle databases, while CentOS has improved our web environment and MySQL. Oracle and SAP Environment and all HPC environments. 10 years No issues Very stable i don´t find any problem…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Educational Organization
7%
Comms Service Provider
18%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
9%
University
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise28
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which would you choose - RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) or CentOS?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is fantastic. It is an inexpensive solution that has excellent security, performance, and stability, and also lots of features. I specifically like that the solution has fe...
What do you like most about CentOS?
CentOS is very easy to use, and all the commands are user-friendly.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CentOS?
I am not entirely sure about the license I purchased for my local machine, but I assume it is the community version, while for the AWS one, I do not entirely remember the pricing.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fedora Linux?
If you want to buy a monthly license from Fedora Linux, you can do so. But nobody does that. Most of the people who use it are technical users, either developers or infrastructure administrators. T...
What advice do you have for others considering Fedora Linux?
I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten. AI is a buzzword these days. AI is an application that uses several technologies to create something called AI. To run those technologies, we need ser...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

CentOS 7 (x86_64) - with Updates HVM
No data available
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Rocky Linux, Canonical and others in Operating Systems (OS) for Business. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.