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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
7.4
Number of Reviews
327
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 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 SUSE Linux Enterprise is 6.9%, down from 8.8% 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

"It is generally easy to initiate a support case with Red Hat, and there are clear escalation paths if needed. The support team responds based on the contract level."
"The robust networking capabilities offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux were highly valuable. They have numerous partnerships and dedicated efforts in low-latency technologies, which are particularly beneficial for trading firms. They possess extensive expertise in external tuning and similar aspects."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers many features I appreciate, especially the increasing maturity of the operating system and its automation platform."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux has a vast set of features."
"The most valuable aspects of Red Hat Enterprise Linux are its flexibility and security."
"It eases the burden by restricting the use of open-source Linux and preventing the development community from obtaining their own images. This is crucial for maintaining a secure supply chain and ensuring the lockdown of live Linux packages."
"It is a good operating system. It is very stable. It does not take a lot of maintenance. You set it up well and it runs."
"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."
"SUSE Linux Enterprise is scalable."
"The initial setup for most modern Linux distributions is normally straightforward. Most of the common distributions use an ncurses or GUI install."
"The most important feature is the automatic kernel lifecycle subscription, which is critical for us because the server cannot go down once we start offering any services on the cluster."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"The solution is easy to use, secure and allows for simple manipulation."
"SUSE Linux Enterprise is stable."
"I have not experienced any issues with this operating system."
"SUSE Linux had a clean user interface, which was a valuable feature for me."
 

Cons

"I don't see anything that needs improvement with RHEL itself, but there is room for improvement of the support infrastructure for it. The management and updates to Satellite, which is the support update, have been cumbersome at best, including releases and changes to a release. Communication on how that will work going forward has not been great."
"I don't prefer Red Hat Enterprise Linux for desktop over other options."
"Adding more relevant features to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) would be great."
"The solution could provide more APIs and GUI interfaces."
"Network management can be easier. It is getting more complex."
"The only thing that I really have difficulty with is SELinux, so perhaps there is room to make it more accessible."
"If the migration process was seamless without backing up data and restoring data, that would probably be the biggest improvement, as managing over 3,400 servers manually is quite substantial."
"With Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), there's a lot of fragmentation in the documentation across different versions, and ensuring that the right version is being read can be challenging."
"The solution is expensive."
"I would appreciate the product's future releases being lighter and operating more efficiently on smaller systems."
"We have had trouble integrating Autodesk with the SUSE manager."
"They should provide chatbot support for customers to open the troubleshooting cases directly."
"The solution has to be fine-tuned with better documentation."
"When working in a Department of Defense environment, Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs) have to be followed. SLES is not really addressed directly here. It did make following security policy difficult."
"Additionally, error handling needs improvement. The system should be more transparent when there's an error, rather than just declaring a generic error. It would be helpful if it could provide more specific information about the problem on that particular system. As it stands, you can waste a lot of time trying to troubleshoot these vague errors."
"The software management side was a bit difficult, especially compared to Ubuntu."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of pricing, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has been quite okay in general."
"While expensive, Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers efficiency and performance."
"The cost of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is reasonable."
"When I started using it, Red Hat Enterprise Linux was free for all and open-source. It is now paid with access to many features to upgrade and use their services."
"They knew we would buy tons of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so they were a little bit more relaxed. We wanted a thousand licenses, and we could pick those up. We true up. Our license experience has been positive with the exception of having to deal with all of the broken-up accounts, which is as much our fault as anybody's."
"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's been good, but I don't really get involved with that."
"Their licensing is quite okay. It isn't expensive, and it's slightly cheaper than Microsoft. Taking into account its features, its price is okay."
"The price is reasonable."
"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."
"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."
"The platform is affordable."
"The product is expensive. We purchase its yearly license."
"The product's licensing options align well with the evolving landscape of Linux variants."
"I would advise others to download the free or strictly open source versions, then test them in their environment before committing to a purchase. This will allow for testing suitability for applications that they want to run."
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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%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
 

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 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: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.