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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs Rocky Linux comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
327
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Rocky Linux
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 9.1%, down from 12.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rocky Linux is 15.6%, up from 10.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

Bruce Lundberg - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Jetsada Malaisirirat - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhancements in package management elevate user experience
I have been using Rocky Linux for three or four years. It is used for HPC, online assessments, and Ceph storage The solution is free and open source. The OS choice in my project is quite specific. It is based on customer requirements, as they might want to use Rocky Linux or Ubuntu, depending on…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Git apps in our closed environment to develop and run scenarios."
"Red Hat Insights is valuable. There is patch and vulnerability management."
"The feature I appreciate the most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is its long lifecycle."
"Errata is the most valuable feature, which is supported by Red Hat."
"The number one thing we like is that it is a very reliable platform. It is a very consistent platform. There is very little that we cannot do with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and there is very little that we worry about when we are running a Red Hat distribution."
"We use this product's built-in tracing and monitoring tools such as syslog and SAR (system activity reporter) to provide us with greater insight and visibility into what's going on."
"The customer service and technical support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is pretty good."
"It is a reliable system that I can depend on more than anything else."
"It helps us keep our workstations in sync and ensures consistent settings across most of our machines."
"The solution is free and open source."
"I haven't needed to use customer service or support, which speaks volumes about their product's reliability and ease of use."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its stability."
"The custom install scripts streamline the setup process, making it straightforward."
"It's very simple to work with, easy to learn, and know where things are."
 

Cons

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved by making it lighter."
"Considering an area where the solution lacks, I think we can look into a lot more automation and integrations with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other products."
"The licensing cost of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is high and could be improved."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux analytics are cryptic."
"The GUI has room for improvement. It needs to be managed by many administrators. It has basic command lines. They could improve it with better automation. We'd like to be able to create a script, and then have the ability to deploy it where we don't need to write everything manually. That part can be useful for automating."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved in terms of applications to interact better with the operating system for monitoring, control, and a better administration interface, though I don't work in the technical department."
"Sometimes, the platform would be very slow, making it difficult to open labs."
"If I can resolve an issue myself, that would be ideal, as it means I wouldn’t need to raise a case at all. The KB articles should contain all the necessary information for reference."
"Improved integration with Windows, particularly Active Directory, would be beneficial for the product. Currently, this aspect requires additional effort."
"In terms of improvement, Rocky Linux needs to clarify its identity and target audience."
"The package versions can be quite older compared to other distributions such as Ubuntu."
"One of the potential issues is that if you don't pay for support, you may need to manage certain aspects on your own and rely on the community for assistance."
"The solution's audio integration for virtual machines could be improved."
"I have certain problems with the tool's DNS part, making it an area where improvements are required."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Most Indians will find RHEL a little costly. It's slightly above average. RHEL's pricing has room for improvement because it's more expensive in the local market due to purchasing power parity in India."
"The pricing is suitable for midsize to large companies, though small enterprises might struggle. It is comparable to Windows licensing."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux is quite expensive, particularly its technical support, which can cost $500 per hour."
"I do not know the overall cost, but I know that Red Hat is cheaper than Windows."
"The setup cost is non-existent. With licensing, there was a little snafu because I misread something. There was a slight learning curve because we use virtual data center licensing. We had to understand how it all maps. We had to understand how that mapping works when the hypervisors are Red Hat or VMware. There is a slight learning curve, but it worked out. It ends up being easy."
"For the basic operating system, its price is fair. It is not cheap, and it is also not expensive. For the OpenShift or OpenStack implementation, the cost is a little higher than what I would expect, but it is doable. For a storage solution, it is almost impossible to pay. In comparison to open-source competitors, RHEL has the most cost-effective open-source subscription model."
"It is more expensive than other vendors in terms of pricing and licensing, but because of its stability, I have to go with it."
"I like my developer account. The free sixteen licenses that they give with the developer account are great because that gives me the ability to keep using it at home instead of trying CentOS or something like that."
"Compared to the market prices of other tools, the solution has a very competitive pricing."
"The product is expensive. I rate the pricing a three."
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Comparison Review

it_user281973 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
University
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Educational Organization
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 do you like most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?
It is open source. We can customize it as per our requirements.
What do you like most about Rocky Linux?
It's very simple to work with, easy to learn, and know where things are.
What needs improvement with Rocky Linux?
The OS choice in my project is quite specific. It is based on customer requirements, as they might want to use Rocky Linux or Ubuntu, depending on their needs. The package versions can be quite old...
What is your primary use case for Rocky Linux?
I have been using Rocky Linux for three or four years. It is used for HPC, online assessments, and Ceph storage.
 

Also Known As

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. Rocky Linux and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.