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CentOS vs Flatcar Container Linux comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 15, 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

CentOS
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Flatcar Container Linux
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
41st
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of CentOS is 5.0%, up from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Flatcar Container Linux is 0.9%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CentOS5.0%
Flatcar Container Linux0.9%
Other94.1%
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammad Wasif - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Infrastructure Engineer at Trigyn Technology
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.
YD
Senior Consultant at Capgemini
The solution is stable and allows us to make needed changes
The development teams could sharpen their skills.  They should offer applications on the net I have eight years of experience with Flatcar Container Linux. The version of Flatcar Container Linux that I am using is stable. The scalability of this product is fine. It allows us to make the needed…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The platform has helped us to keep things simple and yet very secure, allowing us to meet the requirements with surgical precision."
"We successfully installed MicroStrategy 10, Composer for PSP, Laravel, and many PSP libraries on CentOS."
"It is a scalable and cost-effective product compared to public cloud solutions."
"CentOS is a good and stable system, providing everything you need for web servers and database servers."
"The solution is extremely stable."
"I'm satisfied with the product; it fulfills our desired needs, we haven't had any issues with performance, the stability is good, the initial setup is easy, you can work with the UI or in command line if you prefer, and it is scalable."
"The product is free to use."
"CentOS was one of the best Linux distributions out there."
"Flatcar's support is good, and the version I am using is stable and allows us to make needed changes."
 

Cons

"CentOS is an expensive solution. There are other solutions that are rated at the top that are not expensive, such as Red Hat or Oracle Linux."
"It would be ideal if Red Hat would continue the CentOS versions in an open-source format. They seem to be moving away from that. Now only paid versions are available."
"Previous versions were unstable."
"If a proper GUI-based tool was connected remotely or on the machine, it could be a great addition to CentOS."
"If you are an IT technician or an apprentice, I would recommend this solution, however, if you are a regular user, I cannot recommend it because I find it confusing and difficult to use."
"This solution is no longer suited to our business following the change they have made to the release process. It is no longer an enterprise solution."
"Often, the solution doesn't scale as you expect."
"I was using CentOS because it was very stable, and now it's not."
"The development teams could sharpen their skills. They should offer applications on the net."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is free."
"There are no licensing fees. CentOS is a free solution."
"We don’t have to pay for the system’s licenses."
"CentOS is cheaper compared to Windows."
"We have a CentOS license that we pay for on a yearly basis."
"For the enterprise version of CentOS, there is a license required. However, for personal use, I do not need a license."
"We use the free, open-source solution because we cannot afford the price for Linux."
"It's free."
Information not available
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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
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
19%
University
11%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise30
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CentOS?
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing for CentOS, there is no cost for licensing or setup pricing, so it is easy to set up and scale up the server.
What needs improvement with CentOS?
CentOS can be improved, but I have not yet faced any kind of issue or hectic problem.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
CISCO, mettle, Microsoft, Upguard, GMX
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Canonical, Rocky Linux and others in Operating Systems (OS) for Business. Updated: July 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.