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

Kinvolk and Red Hat are both solutions in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category. Kinvolk is ranked #17, while Red Hat is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8. Kinvolk holds a 0.5% mindshare in OSB, compared to Red Hat’s 9.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Kinvolk users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

Flatcar Container Linux

Read 1 Flatcar Container Linux review

663 Views
521 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...

Read 273 Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) reviews

32,560 Views
12,986 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Flatcar Container Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Flatcar Container Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Canonical, Oracle and others in Operating Systems (OS) for Business.

To learn more, read our detailed Operating Systems (OS) for Business Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

March 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 845,040 peers since 2012

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

17th

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

7.3

Number of Reviews

273

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of Flatcar Container Linux is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 9.9%, down from 12.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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…

Read full review

Bruce Lundberg

Linux HPC Systems Administrator at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Reliable patch management, high uptime, and incredible knowledge base

In terms of security, it does a lot of things that most people still turn off. SELinux is turned on by default. They have pretty good firewall rules in their defaults. The audit rules always take tweaking, but, overall, it comes out of the box not too bad. I used to write scripts to harden them from there. There are multiple ways to provision and patch. You have everything from local repositories to doing it by hand. Their knowledge base is incredible. There is so much information out there. It has never taken me longer than 30 minutes to find an answer to anything, even very tough ones. One company I worked for was a security company, and we did a lot of patching on everything. It was designed around security and email hosting, and uptime was pretty much whatever we wanted it to be. I have had a couple of times when the uptime was bad, but it was caused by a third-party solution. In fact, the Norton antivirus was definitely the worst. Red Hat had nothing to do with it.

Read full review

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."

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a stable and supported platform with valuable built-in security features that help reduce risk and maintain compliance."

"I like RHEL's clustering capabilities and high-level architecture. It has high availability, built-in disaster recovery, SSH features, and scripting."

"Red Hat support is pretty good. They're online, so you can look up things once you have support. Their AB integration has improved. It's easy to manage storage for moving, syncing LBM, etc."

"We also use Ansible. Ansible is a wonderful tool for automation. We use it to automate our patching. We use Ansible to get playbooks to take care of anything that's manual."

"There are millions of commands you can use, although we use only five or ten."

"We run Satellite on a lot of these, so having a central repository that we can use for patch management and remote execution is huge. That's something that is very difficult in a Windows environment. We're very compliance driven, so to have that built into Red Hat is easy. We don't need an agent or anything like that to get a lot of work done, so Satellite and centralized automation are the most valuable features for us."

"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."

"With Red Hat, the community is so robust. Most of the time, while waiting for a Red Hat engineer to call us back, the solution to the issue is already provided."

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) pros

Cons

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

"The default settings are confusing."

"A feature that I would like to see in the image builder is the ability to open the image in live mode and access a command line interface."

"After installation, the initial setup can be simplified or improved a little bit for new users coming from a distribution like Ubuntu or Windows."

"The solution should provide demos so that users can learn to use it and improve their environments."

"The organization moved away from Red Hat because IBM introduced paywalls and additional barriers that did not exist before, which made everything a lot harder."

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux has ongoing potential for improved integration with hosting solutions and VPNs as the demand for these technologies grows."

"Red Hat has several areas ripe for improvement. In the Asia Pacific region, where cost-optimization is highly valued, Red Hat's support and subscription costs are perceived as high and could be reduced."

"They could become the most sufficient solution by focusing on improving areas where there is always room for enhancement."

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux is expensive, particularly for governments operating with limited budgets."

"We get our licenses directly through Red Hat."

"While expensive, Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers efficiency and performance."

"We have moved to the Simple Content Access (SCA) model. It is much easier to do renewals and see how I am using my licenses. I used to have to do it all by hand. It would take me a good couple of hours every few months to make sure that we were up to snuff on everything. However, with the new model that they have, this is very easy. I just go to cloud.redhat.com to look and see how I am utilizing my licenses. If I am running out of bounds, I can find out why. If it is simply that we have images that need to be removed, we remove those images. If we need to buy more licenses, then we can start the process of purchasing more licenses."

"I do not know the overall cost, but I know that Red Hat is cheaper than Windows."

"It seems to be fair. It is not overpriced."

"It is cost-efficient."

"Switching to Red Hat Enterprise Linux due to subscription costs can be a significant financial step."

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

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Operating Systems (OS) for Business solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

23%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

University

10%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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...

See all answers

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

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

See all answers

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

The setup and licensing costs for RHEL are high, especially concerning support and associated applications. Red Hat charges high prices for support solutions like Ansible ( /products/red-hat-ansibl...

See all answers

Comparisons

Ubuntu Linux vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 59% of the time

Alpine Linux vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 12% of the time

SUSE Linux Enterprise vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 9% of the time

CentOS vs Flatcar Container Linux

Compared 7% of the time

More Flatcar Container Linux Competitors

SUSE Linux Enterprise vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 22% of the time

Windows Server vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 16% of the time

Rocky Linux vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 15% of the time

Oracle Linux vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Compared 9% of the time

More Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

March 2025

Download Flatcar Container Linux product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

March 2025

Download Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) product report

Also Known As

No data available

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is recognized for its stability, security, and performance, serving diverse industries with its robust support and seamless cloud deployment capabilities.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides comprehensive server applications across cloud environments, featuring tools like Ansible for enhanced user experience. It integrates OpenShift, Identity Management, and automation, supported by extensive documentation. Users seek easier upgrades, enhanced network virtualization support, and improved live patching.

What are the key features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

Stability and Security: RHEL is designed to provide a stable and secure environment, backed by consistent updates.
Cloud Deployment: Easily deployable across cloud platforms, enhancing flexibility.
Integration with Ansible: Enhances operational efficiency with powerful automation tools.
OpenShift and Containerization: Supports modern app development with integrated OpenShift features.
Extensive Documentation: Offers comprehensive resources for users to troubleshoot and optimize.

What are the benefits of using Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

Reliable Support: Benefit from extensive support options for seamless operation.
Enhanced Security: Built-in features ensure data integrity and protection.
Increased Flexibility: Suitable for diverse deployment environments, including on-premises and cloud.
Operational Efficiency: Tools like automation and cloud navigation improve productivity.
Training and Resources: Access to comprehensive training contributes to smoother implementations.

In sectors like finance, telecommunications, and education, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is crucial for running stable, secure systems. Its application spans web servers, data management, and containerization through tools like Kubernetes. Organizations adopt it for on-premises, virtualized, and cloud environments, ensuring robust infrastructure management.

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

Buyer's Guide

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

March 2025

Download Free Report

Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Canonical, Oracle and others in Operating Systems (OS) for Business. Updated: March 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our list of best Operating Systems (OS) for Business vendors.

We monitor all Operating Systems (OS) for Business reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.