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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs SUSE Linux Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 3, 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
7.1
Number of Reviews
337
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SUSE Linux Enterprise
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 9.2%, down from 12.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SUSE Linux Enterprise is 6.9%, down from 8.6% 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.
Naveen Venugopal - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient IT management with crucial automatic updates but needs developer-friendly configuration
Sometimes it is a bit of work for developers to change the configurations. Some kernels will not fit with some packages, and this aspect could be improved. Furthermore, the system's rigidity when updating packages and services needs improvement. Additionally, there should be more loosely bound functionalities to improve developer experience.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool is simple and easy to use. It has good support and doesn't have many outages due to the OS."
"The most valuable features of the solution are in the areas of stability and scalability."
"Among all Linux flavors in the market, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has a very high-level support developer team, which is important for our critical systems."
"The knowledge base they offer has proven to be quite efficient and we haven't encountered any significant challenges."
"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"
"I find Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to be super stable and super reliable."
"Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) an eight or nine out of ten."
"My favourite feature is Ansible."
"I have not experienced any issues with this operating system."
"SUSE Linux Enterprise is scalable."
"It's easy to set up."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"The solution offers a secure operation system."
"I like how the tool handles kernel modules and upgrades - we rarely have issues after upgrades, unlike with other Linux distributions like Oracle Linux or Ubuntu. The kernel module management is excellent. Changes made in one version typically work the same in other versions too, which isn't always the case with other distributions. There's also lots of information and community support available if you run into any problems, both on the official website and in forums and user groups. I know many people who use it specifically, so it's easy to get independent support if needed. I've been working with the tool for a long time, since 2003, before they became SUSE Linux Enterprise. It's always been one of the most admin-friendly Linux versions."
"SUSE Linux had a clean user interface, which was a valuable feature for me."
"It also was very easy to setup, and offered an easy to use advanced setup option as well. This helped to create special configurations for different use cases."
 

Cons

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is already good and perfect. They can continue to improve the AI features."
"Could include additional security fefatures."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) did not help much with our uptime or security."
"The biggest thing that is crushing RHEL is documentation. Their documentation is haphazard at best. The man pages that you can use locally are pretty good, they've been fleshed out pretty well, but the documentation from Red Hat itself really needs somebody to go through it and review it."
"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.'"
"The adoption was slightly slow because the knowledge in the market is slightly less available. It's hard to find resources to actually support the product."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved by providing more support for on-prem. As you go by industry by industry, the more regulation and control you need over your data, the more precious data sovereignty becomes, and being able to work in a hybrid environment with a push in that direction would be better."
"If I had to suggest one improvement for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), it would be clearer licensing information."
"If you want to do something simple like changing an IP number, you have to be quite aware of all the configuration files where you will change that."
"Red Hat has more packages that are available than SUSE does. I'd love to see more projects based on SUSE."
"The solution is expensive."
"The only stability issues that I can recall encountering with SUSE would be with KDE. However, that is limited to just the desktop environment as I have not had stability issues with ​most server functions."
"They should provide chatbot support for customers to open the troubleshooting cases directly."
"The interface could improve."
"The free version sometimes has security holes."
"The solution could be more stable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are good as of now. We do not have any concerns about licensing. Its price is still good for us."
"The product is on the expensive side."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a more cost-effective solution than Windows Servers."
"We purchased the Red Hat Enterprise Linux license via Azure and the vendor."
"When you are running your infrastructure on this, you can always find some discounts with local support, etc. There are always some discounts to match your budget. It is definitely affordable."
"I do not know the overall cost, but I know that Red Hat is cheaper than Windows."
"I find the cost of this solution expensive."
"If you don't buy the Red Hat subscription, you don't get technical support, and you don't have all the updates. To have everything working like a charm, the cost that you pay for it is worth it. In Bolivia, we don't have the best internet connection. Therefore, we have a local service with all the packages, repositories, etc. We manage them locally, and because we have a subscription, we can update them. So, we have local repositories with all the packages and other things to make it easy for us to update all the servers. Without the Red Hat subscription, we cannot update anything."
"The price of SUSE Linux Enterprise could be cheaper. Other solutions, such as"
"Anyone can use Linux because it is open-source."
"I rate the product price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"Regarding pricing, everybody would want it to be cheaper."
"The price is reasonable."
"SUSE Linux Enterprise is reasonably priced compared to other operating systems. I find it's a much better option for us than Oracle, for example, because of the pricing structure. The pricing is easier to explain to clients and makes it easier to get clients' commitment. The licensing is also simpler to manage and keep track of. Their responsiveness is great - they give feedback very quickly when we ask questions about licensing or other aspects. This helps ensure we're always at the gold standard regarding licensing and everything related to SUSE Linux Enterprise."
"There is a free tier and a paid support tier. If you do not need support, then the solution is free to use. If you need support then there is an option for that as well."
"As far as licensing goes, there is nothing unusual here. The price and model have worked fine for my organization."
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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
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?
The licensing cost for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is comparable to SUSE for premium support. For approximately $2,000 per year, you can get premium support for one subscription which allows yo...
What do you like most about SUSE Linux Enterprise?
The initial setup is simple and takes five minutes for deployment and if you have automation in place, it will take four minutes.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SUSE Linux Enterprise?
I used the open-source version, so there were no setup costs.
What needs improvement with SUSE Linux Enterprise?
The software management side was a bit difficult, especially compared to Ubuntu. The software manager was different, making it challenging to install certain applications. Additionally, I encounter...
 

Also Known As

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 12 SP3
 

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
Air India, Akademicki Szpital Kliniczny (ASK), Allone, Altran, Apollo, ARCHIVA, Asia Innovatory Management School, ATLAS ELEKTRONIK GmbH, AutoData Norge AS, Baldor Electric, Business Connexion, CASIO, Ciclum Farma, Delta Lloyd, Edumate , HPE,  SAP SE,  Lenovo, BMW, T-Systems, UCX, Turners & Growers, Shenzhen Development Bank, Bosch Group, JK Tyres & Industries, IOCL, European Space Agency, Daimler AG, China Minsheng Banking Corp, Café Coffee Day, Unisys,  Petrochina Company Ltd, Fitch Ratings, ABeam Consulting Co Ltd, Tyro Payments, Rackspace, Pacific Textiles, ...
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. SUSE Linux Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.