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Flatcar Container Linux vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 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

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
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
434
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 Flatcar Container Linux is 0.9%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 6.7%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)6.7%
Flatcar Container Linux0.9%
Other92.4%
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

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…
CC
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Automation has transformed daily operations and supports secure, continuous infrastructure
When considering improvements to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I see one primary area. Within your portal, if you provided more study material along with demonstrations similar to the sessions we are attending, which feature a user-friendly guide, you could incorporate this into your Red Hat console. When I want to install an agent or something else, typing in the console should provide me with clear step-by-step instructions. Throughout the years, installation steps have been available, but regarding AI agents or Ansible automation, I need to verify whether clear information exists. Including this information would be beneficial. Additionally, if you add the sessions that have occurred to your portal or another location, this would help us review them multiple times to gain better understanding. Time is limited, and many sessions occur simultaneously, making it impossible to attend everything. Making these sessions available on your website would be very helpful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Flatcar's support is good, and the version I am using is stable and allows us to make needed changes."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has positively impacted our organization by allowing us to standardize a lot, and the enterprise-level support that we get from Red Hat is really helpful."
"The support for OpenShift and CoreOS is valuable, as we frequently use support services and rely heavily on Red Hat support for assistance."
"The GUI is really interactive, and it's really easy to build from scratch."
"Things like packaging and the stability you get from things being downstream are valuable. A lot of times, upgrades are more security-based and not feature-based, so things do not break API-wise as we go forward a lot of times"
"The most valuable thing about Red Hat is its stability, uptime, and support for various hardware vendors. Linux servers, in general, are relatively secure and they are more secure than Windows and other products."
"RHEL been stable, and we could do anything we wanted with it. OpenShift is a concise environment, and RHEL is one of the most stable Linux distros on the market."
"I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a ten out of ten."
"Technical support is pretty good. It's one of the main reasons we chose Red Hat over competitors."
 

Cons

"The development teams could sharpen their skills. They should offer applications on the net."
"When we tried it last week, we found it challenging to automate things using Ansible."
"The solution could provide more APIs and GUI interfaces."
"Red Hat should provide a way to mirror repositories or at least provide a solution for us to bubble up packages throughout the entire process."
"In the past and with older versions, you couldn't expand the root file system without rebooting the server or restarting the operating system. That is something that they have actually corrected now, which is great. They corrected that issue somewhere around RHEL 7."
"From a Red Hat 8 perspective, I think perhaps better container support for running them as services would be beneficial."
"The product should be made available on Oracle Cloud."
"When considering ways Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) could improve, I often hear from the SUSE side that Red Hat isn't certified quickly enough with the SAP workloads. This is something Red Hat should start considering."
"We have encountered compatibility issues with certain hypervisors, mainly with RHEL six hosts on the newer versions of FoxMox."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It is cost-effective."
"That has been mostly handled by Red Hat. As we are a Red Hat shop, we have a lot of people around that already."
"It is not fairly priced. If they can reduce the price, it would be nice."
"While expensive, Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers efficiency and performance."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux is suitably priced with various support tiers to match organizational needs and environments."
"We have to pay for the support and features."
"It seems to be fair. It is not overpriced."
"The pricing and licensing are a bit higher for Red Hat Enterprise because we're able to get 70% of its features with the CentOS version. For the 30% of features that Red Hat provides, I think they need to reduce the licensing fee."
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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
Comms Service Provider
23%
University
11%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business93
Midsize Enterprise49
Large Enterprise312
 

Questions from the Community

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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 Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?
From my perspective, the licensing of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is well-suited for enterprise environments because it includes access to updates, security patches, and Red Hat support. The in...
What needs improvement with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a very mature platform, but I think it could improve in a few areas. The subscription and licensing model can be a bit complex for new users, and some enterprise ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for AWS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CISCO, mettle, Microsoft, Upguard, GMX
Travel Channel, Mohawk Industries, Hilti, Molecular Health, Exolgan, Hotelplan Group, Emory University, BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina, HCA Healthcare, Paychex, UPS, Intermountain Healthcare, Brinker International, TransUnion, Union Bank, CA Technologies
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Canonical, Rocky Linux and others in Operating Systems (OS) for Business. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.