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CentOS vs openSUSE Leap comparison

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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
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
openSUSE Leap
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
28th
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 November 2026, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of CentOS is 4.7%, up from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of openSUSE Leap is 4.4%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CentOS4.7%
openSUSE Leap4.4%
Other90.9%
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

AnilKumar13 - PeerSpot reviewer
Devops Engineer at EDAG
Cost-effective platform has enabled extensive test environments with rapid server expansion
The best features CentOS offers in my experience are that it is reliable, cost-effective, and easy to scale. When I mention reliability and cost-effectiveness, I explain that our product-based company uses a performance testing tool, so to generate load using the tool, we use CentOS generators, which are also known as VMs. We spin up a number of VMs in different locations such as Central, East, and West. If we purchase a subscription, it requires a good amount of money, but if we use CentOS, it is free of cost, and we can scale from more than 20 to 100 servers. The biggest benefit of CentOS for my organization is cost saving. CentOS has made a positive difference for my team and company by making scalability easier. For testing, sometimes we require 50 to 200 servers in different locations, and I can easily spin up and scale in and scale down.
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

"The scalability of CentOS is good, and we can deploy the operating system on many types of hardware, laptops, and servers."
"The platform has helped us to keep things simple and yet very secure, allowing us to meet the requirements with surgical precision."
"The solution provides useful information and has good compatibility."
"The solution is very stable and secure."
"CentOS is very efficient and very powerful with many capabilities."
"It's free — it's an open-source solution; it has all the features of Red Hat, but you don't have to pay for the subscription, and otherwise, it's pretty much the same as Red Hat Linux."
"The product is based on Red Hat and very stable."
"We successfully installed MicroStrategy 10, Composer for PSP, Laravel, and many PSP libraries on CentOS."
"Stable - it just runs without the necessity to reboot."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"openSUSE Leap has helped me with using containers in Podman."
"Leap has provided me with the ability to offer what I consider Enterprise class server O/S platforms to my smaller customers who are looking to improve their competitive stances without breaking the bank."
"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."
 

Cons

"When the NFS client becomes overloaded, due to its default queue sizes that are way too small, combined with poor scheduling algorithms, it makes the host unstable."
"The price could be better. They could add more drivers in terms of peripherals and other things. Add more drivers for the Linux specifications in the next release. Right now, they are just pushing to have more drivers for Windows instead of Linux."
"CentOS should provide updates more regularly. Kernel parameters, sysctl config details, tuned profiles, process prioritization, optimized disk, and input scheduler choice are all points for performance optimization."
"Lacks sufficient security and some coding tools."
"I have had a tough time with the product's scalability, making it an area where improvements are required."
"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."
"I'd like to see better integration with Open Stack, because it can be a bit of a struggle."
"CentOS is very close to the end of life."
"It would be helpful if we could easily switch from openSUSE Leap for testing to SUSE Linux Enterprise for production."
"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."
"In the future, the Active Directory could improve."
"Like most Linux-based operating systems, the biggest challenge Leap faces is the GUI."
"There is room for improvement in the console."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using a subscription-based license option for CentOS."
"CentOS is cheaper compared to Windows."
"It's free."
"For the enterprise version of CentOS, there is a license required. However, for personal use, I do not need a license."
"CentOS is an open source that is free of cost."
"There is no price or licensing required — it's open-source."
"CentOS is a free solution."
"There are no licensing costs for CentOS."
"This is an open-source operating system that can be used free of charge."
"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."
"The solution is open-source."
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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
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Comms Service Provider
24%
University
8%
Educational Organization
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise31
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
 

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
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about CentOS vs. openSUSE Leap and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.