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

Kinvolk (acquired by Microsoft) and Red Hat are both solutions in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category. Kinvolk (acquired by Microsoft) is ranked #33, while Red Hat is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8. Kinvolk (acquired by Microsoft) holds a 0.9% mindshare in OSB, compared to Red Hat’s 7.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Kinvolk (acquired by Microsoft) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

Flatcar Container Linux

Read 1 Flatcar Container Linux review

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688 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...

Read 388 Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) reviews

18,064 Views
17,703 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Flatcar Container Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Flatcar Container Linux compete in the Linux ecosystem, with Red Hat Enterprise Linux having the upper hand in enterprise support and reliability, while Flatcar focuses on container-optimized environments.

Features: Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers advanced security, extensive support packages, and a wide range of enterprise-focused tools. Flatcar Container Linux is designed for container-driven infrastructures with lightweight, immutable updates and automatic deployments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a structured deployment process with extensive documentation and robust 24/7 support, benefiting large-scale enterprises. Flatcar's deployment process is straightforward, thanks to its minimalistic design and community-driven assistance, ideal for modern cloud-focused infrastructures.

Pricing and ROI: Red Hat Enterprise Linux involves higher upfront costs due to its subscription model, potentially offering significant ROI for enterprises needing reliable support. Flatcar offers a cost-effective entry due to its open-source nature, prioritizing flexibility and low-cost operations.

To learn more, read our detailed Operating Systems (OS) for Business Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

January 2026

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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

33rd

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

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

7.0

Number of Reviews

388

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 Flatcar Container Linux is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 7.6%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Operating Systems (OS) for Business Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)	7.6%
Flatcar Container Linux	0.9%
Other	91.5%

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

Featured Reviews

Yogesh Deore

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…

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Ray Ortega

Server administrator at Northrop Grumman

Empowers collaboration through streamlined integration and extensive documentation

Improving Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be tough, however, a significant area is collaboration tools. We have many Windows users that use Outlook and Skype or Teams to collaborate on our network. They want Linux desktops due to the fact that they want to use containers. Their biggest complaint is, 'I need two workstations to do my container work and one to collaborate.' If somehow RHEL can start introducing or collaborating with Teams and Outlook so their users can work with their Windows peers, that would be great. But I don't think that's available yet. Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, there needs to be more of an education piece to it. For instance, when purchasing 10 or 100 node licenses, they could suggest, 'We also offer this 1,000 node license instead, and it'll save you specific amounts.' Just more education on their offerings would be helpful, because usually, we're coming out with the requirements, and then they just provide it to us. They could inform us about saving by bundling it differently or using alternative approaches.

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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. The version I am using is stable and allows us to make needed changes."

"For us, its security, management, stability, and hardening are most valuable."

"The deployment process of Red Hat is good."

"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."

"The most valuable feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is its comprehensive ecosystem."

"When it comes to development, it saves time because, unlike Windows, you don't require a lot of different things and licenses."

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux is an enterprise-grade solution where we receive regular security patches and proper support."

"By implementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we wanted to solve some of the reboot problems of Windows. Every patch on Windows affected our applications because the system had to be rebooted. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has improved the uptime of the applications."

"The most valuable features of RHEL are security, performance tuning, storage management, and OS-level automation."

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) pros

Cons

"The development teams could sharpen their skills. They should offer applications on the net."

"I would describe the experience of RHEL migrations as challenging since it's not an easy task to migrate thousands of machines in one major release window."

"Personally, I don't see good benefits from their support and paid licensing compared to completely free and well-documented Linux distributions, as I find RHEL excessively expensive."

"I'm interested in seeing some of the image incorporation with RHEL 10, as that might improve some of our upgrades and help in moving to the newer versions."

"Sometimes, the platform would be very slow, making it difficult to open labs."

"The only issue we have had with it is around the SELinux configuration because the way Ansible installs, it sticks the platform passwords in a flat file. We want that locked down more strongly than what is there currently with SELinux."

"The patching process with Red Hat is disruptive and not very cost-effective."

"One of the pain points we have found is that for Windows systems, it is pretty easy to domain join those in a federated model. It seems we have to either have a third-party product or it is not quite as straightforward to domain join Linux OSs. This would be something that could potentially be smoother in the future."

"Although SELinux is complex as it does a lot. I cannot fully understand it, so that could be simplified."

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"RHEL is expensive."

"We are coming from CentOS, so technically, our total cost of ownership has gone up, but it is still cheaper than Windows for a database server and things like that."

"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 expensive. Everything is. I was happy to get a three-year Red Hat Enterprise Linux contract for our initial rollout."

"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."

"I'm unsure what the standard RHEL license costs for one machine. We pay for premium support that guarantees a response in two hours."

"The licensing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux in Peru is very expensive."

"We use open source. We only have a subscription for support."

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user281973

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…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

16%

Comms Service Provider

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

University

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	87
Midsize Enterprise	49
Large Enterprise	266

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

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...

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What do you like most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?

It is open source. We can customize it as per our requirements.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?

Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, the pricing is good; however, licensing is a bit confusing.

See all answers

Comparisons

Ubuntu Linux vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 36% of the time

Alpine Linux vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 22% of the time

CentOS vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 14% of the time

Debian vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 12% of the time

SUSE Linux Enterprise vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 4% of the time

More Flatcar Container Linux Competitors

SUSE Linux Enterprise vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 15% of the time

Windows Server vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 12% of the time

Rocky Linux vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 11% of the time

Ubuntu Linux vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Linux vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 8% of the time

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

January 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

January 2026

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Also Known As

No data available

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for AWS

Overview

Flatcar Container Linux is a lightweight, secure, and reliable operating system designed for running containers at scale with automatic updates and a minimal attack surface. The solution is easy to use and manage and has a simple and intuitive command-line interface and a powerful set of tools for managing containers and clusters.

It supports various container runtimes, including Docker, Kubernetes, and Mesos. It can be deployed on various infrastructure platforms, including bare metal, virtual machines, and cloud environments. Flatcar Container Linux is an ideal choice for organizations deploying containerized applications in production environments.

Kinvolk (acquired by Microsoft)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers stability, security, and support for mission-critical applications with robust tools and scalable architecture, ideal for diverse environments and hybrid cloud compatibility.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides organizations with a reliable platform ideal for high-performance computing and virtualization. Known for its robust security and seamless network administration, it integrates well with OpenShift and Ansible, ensuring adaptability and scalability. Despite challenges with documentation, upgrade complexity, and cost, RHEL remains a formidable choice thanks to its comprehensive documentation and extensive community support.

What are the key features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

Stability and Security: Maintains high stability and advanced security measures, critical for enterprise environments.
Extensive Support: Offers robust support through community and documentation, assisting with problem-solving and integration.
Automation with Ansible: Simplifies tasks and enhances efficiency, optimizing operations across the infrastructure.
Hybrid Cloud Compatibility: Supports cloud environments, enabling flexibility and strategic deployments.
Scalable Architecture: Adapts to different workloads, making it suitable for growing organizational demands.

What benefits should users look for when evaluating Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

Reliable Performance: Ensures consistent and secure operations across diverse environments, including cloud infrastructure.
Efficient Management: Centralized operations make it easy to manage enterprise workloads effectively.
Community and Documentation: Access to a strong community and comprehensive documentation aids in resolving issues.
Integration Capabilities: Easily integrates with technologies like OpenShift and SAP, enhancing operational versatility.
Adaptability: Supports a wide range of environments and technical requirements, improving strategic deployment.

Organizations across industries like financial services, telecommunications, and application hosting implement Red Hat Enterprise Linux for server and application management. Its compatibility with technologies such as SAP, Oracle, and Ansible supports functions including web, database, and enterprise solutions, ensuring stable and secure performance in high-pressure environments.

Red Hat

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

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January 2026

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