Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

My main use case for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is for all the tasks, which can be utility services or web services, DNS, NTP, or identity service as well as mail service in my day-to-day work.

The best features Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) offers are that it's a well-managed operating system, and I can use anything regarding the system and other features.

It is good for performance, reliability, and updates.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has positively impacted my organization because its improved security helped our team to maintain compliance issues, even though it's a bit complex.

It's acceptable to work with the current system and current initiation regarding how Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) could be improved; I don't have significant frustrations.

The GUI operation needs to be improved, especially for day-to-day desktop operations.

I'm working about 10 years in my current field.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is stable in my experience.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a highly scalable solution, and it can handle growth and increased demand well.

The customer support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is exceptional; I have interacted with their support team, and it's awesome.

I rate the customer support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a 9 out of 10.

We used Oracle Linux before Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but I prefer RHEL now.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) saved our money and is good, which indicates we've seen a return on investment.

We have evaluated Ubuntu before choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

I absolutely give others looking into using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) the advice to adopt RHEL for their other production systems. On a scale of 1-10, I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a 10.

My main use case for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is running virtual machines. That's probably the most important use case for us.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps us solve pain points related to security. We want security, so it is hardened, and just supports us. As a financial institution we take security very seriously.

The feature I appreciate the most from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is support and simplicity. 

The knowledge base is good; they have a lot of documentation. 

We manage our Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems when it comes to provisioning and patching through Ansible. Everything's straightforward and efficient.

Adding more relevant features to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) would be great. I have seen some issues on GitHub where people are suggesting things, such as Ansible. There are many community issues that could be implemented into Red Hat.

We try to stay two versions below the latest one just to make sure that we have security checked there and to avoid running into any bugs or issues with the latest release. We just try to apply patches as much as we can.

The stability and reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are smooth as we have not encountered any problems or issues.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales perfectly with the growing needs of my company. It's easy to scale up with the tools we have.

My experience with the customer service and technical support of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has been amazing; they are very helpful. We open up a ticket, and we get someone to help right away.

Positive

The deployment is a smooth process. Some of the issues we have are just related to multiple vulnerabilities, and that's on our side to fix, however, everything else is smooth. We have no complaints.

The biggest return on investment for me when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is how they have their foundation set. They have everything organized, documentation's there, it's globally used everywhere, and it's good software with good tools.

I'm not in the pricing conversation. I can't speak to costs.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped me mitigate downtime and lower risks. They specifically thrive on criticism, and they don't take it lightly. They mentioned earlier in the panel that they wanted to prioritize the big CVs and any vulnerability that's important. Although some don't get exploited, it's good to have fewer of those numbers. 

We try to stay two versions below the latest one.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) overall an eight out of ten.

I have used Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for most of my career. It is primarily used as the base operating system on which various applications run. Currently, I am attempting to transition away from RHEL due to changes in the organization following IBM's acquisition.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is still considered better than Microsoft's offerings due to its superior handling of virtualization and faster performance. Microsoft often incorporates parts of RHEL's code, such as the networking stack, into its own products. The LEAP functionality for upgrades between versions is well-written and satisfactory.

RHEL has experienced a change in approach after being acquired by IBM, and the company has shifted away from open-source principles. The knowledge base is now outdated and lacks documentation for features in RHEL 9, relying instead on old documentation from RHEL 7. The introduction of unstable and undocumented products also detracts from the product's reliability.

I have used RHEL since it existed, so since 1991 or 1992.

RHEL has become less reliable due to undocumented updates and the release of unstable packages, which detracts from the product's stability.

Within the same vendor, moving workloads is easy. However, switching between vendors requires a significant migration effort.

The quality of Red Hat's support has declined in the past five to six years after outsourcing support to India. Complex issues are difficult to resolve due to communication challenges.

Negative

I have not switched from RHEL, but I am exploring alternatives such as Rocky Linux and Debian, which offer similar features without the high costs.

Setting up RHEL is quite straightforward, especially for someone familiar with it. The software asks the necessary questions for configuration, and the documentation generally explains these well.

The return on investment with RHEL is challenging to calculate but involves paying more upfront compared to Microsoft solutions for better reliability and stability, avoiding potential downtime costs.

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 Tower, which can deter companies from using their products.

Other solutions evaluated include Ubuntu, Rocky Linux, and Debian. These alternatives offer similar functionality at a lower cost, especially concerning support.

Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a seven out of ten. People are now turning to other Linux distributions due to RHEL's declining quality and high costs. I suggest caution when considering Red Hat due to the divergence from its original open-source model.

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) at this company include the development environment, where the dev environment is all in Linux. It's a server where you connect to via PuTTY, and it's currently running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.

My favorite feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is that it's a Linux server with Linux commands. These features have benefited my company by making it feel lightweight. If you know Linux commands, you can connect to it and still be able to navigate within that Linux environment. The benefit is that if you onboard a new developer and they know Linux commands, they could just jump on it immediately.

From a user standpoint, every time they do an upgrade or they bring down the Linux server, I have to re-clone all my repositories. Perhaps they could just migrate them over so I don't have to do all that cloning again, because I have three different repos that I have to clone. This has happened twice. I am uncertain how Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved beyond this.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) at my company for two and a half years, ever since I started.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped mitigate downtime and lower risk for what we use it for because we use it to host a Docker container and for the development environment. From my standpoint, it has been beneficial because we're using it as a development environment to test out new features, which helps mitigate unwanted bugs.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales with the growing needs of my company because there have not been any issues with deploying different servers.

I have worked with Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, and they all use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for their Linux servers. I haven't heard of any other solutions being used, though I haven't worked on the DevOps side to set up these systems. In all the environments I've used that are Linux-based, it has been Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps solve pain points by being very easy to connect to, and it has an easy setup, though I didn't set it up as the DevOps people handled that.

I don't manage the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems when it comes to provisioning and patching; there's a DevOps team that handles that. When there is an upgrade, they handle all that after work hours. They bring everything down and then bring up the new servers.

My advice to a company that's thinking of getting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is, as a user, go for it. I don't know any other product besides Linux and Ubuntu, but I think Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is good. 

On a scale of 1-10, I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a 9 out of 10.

As an end user and a trained engineer working on field development, I am required to use a Linux-based system for all aspects of our work. This includes everything from logical design to design verification, and physical design, all the way to integrating data into the silicon database at the foundry. Since all of this occurs in a Linux environment, I must ensure we have the right platform in place. The performance we achieve with the tools we use can vary significantly across different platforms. Additionally, the support provided by these platforms is crucial. In the field of silicon design, we rely heavily on electronic design automation (EDA) tools, which are continuously being enhanced. As this area evolves, it’s essential for our operating systems to keep pace with the migration of the latest tool versions. If I become stuck with an outdated version of the OS, it can adversely affect my productivity and the quality of my designs. Therefore, I need to be reasonably familiar with various operating system providers and understand the pros and cons of each. This includes comparisons between Red Hat, SUSE, and Ubuntu, which is essential for meeting my requirements.

Since it is widely used, I believe the knowledge base is fairly good. In my own organization, which has three vertical companies, two others were already using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for production. They were asking me to go with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) unless I had a compelling reason to go to SUSE or Ubuntu. This indicates that the IT team within my company preferred Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for support and documentation purposes. The company has been around for more than a decade, so familiarity might be one reason, or resistance to change may have been another reason to stick with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). In my role as the design manager, I have not heard anything negative about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

My decision to go with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) was influenced by three main factors:

1. The IT team’s familiarity with Red Hat due to its previous deployment in other units.

2. Competitive pricing, which was 25 to 30 percent lower than other options.

3. The perception that Red Hat offered long-term service pack support for an additional fee; something that other providers like SUSE may not have offered.

Ultimately, the first two reasons were strong enough for me to lean towards Red Hat.

To some extent, I am speculating, but at the end of the day, the main thing we care about is how the resources are getting scheduled and utilized. Without an external load-sharing application, the number of cores in our servers and the memory should all be utilized effectively. If they can do very good dynamic resource allocation, maximizing the number of cores and the memory without external applications, that would be beneficial

Additionally, this is not just for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but for any OS - I would really love to make sure that their security features are robust and getting updated regularly. I believe at a given point of time, they may be very good, but hackers are also improving their techniques. I would definitely expect Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or any OS provider to constantly monitor, understand if there are any new vulnerabilities in their OS, and provide patches or fixes so that we are always guarded from any security threat because what we are developing consists of very important IPs that have to be protected from malware attacks.

The most important thing is that it has to be stable. If it is not stable and we have to reboot it because of something, that would be problematic. The kind of tools it provides natively is important. For example, if I am doing development, I want to have a checkout process. If they have well-developed documentation and the ability to work with the code itself, along with good support for developing, then the performance of the OS would improve. If I see that one of my runs for any workload is taking five days, I immediately question why it is not completing within a day. If the load sharing is not happening correctly, there might be switches or features that the OS provides that can help use more memory or similar resources. Being developer-friendly would be beneficial. One thing managers hate is nasty surprises, so even if something is not working in the OS, it should provide some ability for IT to observe potential issues three or four weeks in advance.

I have only been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for a short duration of time, about six to eight months because the migration happened very recently.

I am working for a startup company. We used to use open source SUSE because that was kind of easy to use and we did not have to spend many dollars. When we reached the point where we had to go to production, we needed to ensure we were using something more reliable because open source is open source. When I go to a newer version or a production version of the OS, some of the designs we are developing will be around because our startup is focusing on accelerators for the cloud. Some of these can be around for seven years, 10 years, and beyond. Hypothetically, even after 10 years, somebody who is using our silicon can find a bug, and we are obligated to fix it through software or other means. If we do not have the OS support at that point in time, because 10 years is a long time, it becomes problematic. When we go towards production, the kind of analysis that I do involves determining how many years this OS is supported and whether they will support it for an extended period, provided I pay them extension money. I am an end user, and I try to look at the facets of the OS based on my current business needs.

When we were using Ubuntu, I initially found it sufficient for my EDA tools under the evaluation licenses I had. However, as I progressed into silicon design and needed to purchase production licenses, I realized that the older version of Ubuntu wasn’t adequate. The question arose: if we were to upgrade to a paid version of the operating system, which one should we choose? I conducted some research comparing Ubuntu and Red Hat, and ultimately decided to go with Red Hat. Once I made that decision, I simply needed to explain my reasoning to my IT team, stating that I wanted to upgrade the twenty or so servers I was using to Red Hat 9.1, or whatever the current version was at that time. They took over from there.

We experienced some initial challenges when we moved to Red Hat, mainly due to the tools' versions. At first, we struggled to navigate these issues, but once I contacted support, they were able to resolve them quickly.

The maintenance is handled by the IT team.

Most of the studies that I did were between Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). I did not check extensively on SUSE Enterprise.

I was inclined to choose Red Hat for a couple of reasons. First, the IT team’s familiarity with Red Hat was crucial since it had already been deployed in other areas of the organization. This existing knowledge made the transition smoother.

Additionally, I did not inquire about pricing immediately because, ultimately, my business unit would be responsible for the costs. I recall that the price for Red Hat Enterprise Linux was less than one lakh rupees per license per year. The annual cost might be around 1.2 lakh or slightly more, but it was certainly under that threshold. Furthermore, I believe that if we were to negotiate for a larger number of licenses, we might have received a better rate. Regarding the initial pricing I received, I remember it being about twenty-five percent lower per license per year compared to other options. 

For my use case with EDA tools, Synopsys EDA tools' local AE team said that support in India is better for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Additionally, Ubuntu and SUSE support for 10 years, whereas Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) supports for 10 years plus an extended two to four year period for a cost. Since our chips will be in the cloud market for at least a decade or more, this long-term support influenced my decision.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) an eight out of ten.

In the banking industry, we provide software for banking, from our development infrastructure to deployment infrastructure for the banks. We generally use Linux RHEL. It is only for on-premises, but what we did was try out Red Hat OpenShift, basically on top of Linux platforms to run it on the Kubernetes enabled architecture to see how it would perform.

For us, the best features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are that running it in a containerized environment makes setting up multiple Linux environments much easier than any other high-end or risk-based machines like AIX or Sun Solaris. Having more Linux boxes and setting up RHEL was much faster.

In terms of security, the most important feature in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is that it has a good sandbox with policies and features that are very effective. Whatever we could do in terms of hardening the Linux software, it was much easier for us.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve the pain point of having a huge monolith of big AIX boxes because I could have smaller Linux boxes with Red Hat, and I was able to do both vertical and horizontal scaling much faster.

One area that could be improved with Red Hat is probably pricing. Discounts that are slightly cheaper would be better.

In Enterprise Linux, I have dealt with it for probably more than five years.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is definitely stable.

In my opinion, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is absolutely a scalable solution. That is why I was able to do both vertical scaling and horizontal scaling very seamlessly.

Regarding their support, we did not reach out to support too much, but I thought it was good. I would rate it a nine.

Positive

Before using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), we used Windows, basically, and then moved everything to Linux.

We switched to Linux from Windows because there were a lot of server hangs happening on Windows, with antivirus and virus problems. Basically, it was a nightmare managing Windows, so we moved to Linux.

With the initial setup, it is very straightforward and much easier to set up.

On a scale of one to ten, if ten was the easiest, I place it at a nine.

We also do Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) with Red Hat. I would rate this review a nine overall.

I am currently working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as I administer a lot of Kubernetes clusters installed on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

For Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I use it as an operating system for our platform which powers all our company's software, mostly for Kubernetes or for IBM BPM or IBM PEL.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a robust operating system, and I believe it is much better than Windows. I work with Windows and Ubuntu, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the best distribution I have worked with.

The knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is excellent. Red Hat documentation is the most valuable documentation in the market.

For Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I think the most time-saving aspects come from Red Hat Ansible because we use Ansible to automate many tasks and repetitive tasks on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Windows. Ansible automation and the Ansible automation platform are the most valuable products that save us time and money.

Overall, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me save time through automation using Ansible. For OpenShift, the core of containers saves time by automating the DevOps processes using the Red Hat pipeline built into OpenShift, Tekton, and source-to-image build. All of this saves us time.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps to mitigate downtime and lower risks for me, as most of my work is with OpenShift which enables us to do a zero downtime deployment. The deployment is done without any downtime. Red Hat OpenShift is a stable system. Red Hat OpenShift and Linux are very stable and the downtimes are very minimal.

I think Red Hat needs to implement more AI features in the operating system or Red Hat OpenShift.

I have been working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for about 14 years.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is very stable. The product is very stable and very mature. All issues are documented in documentation or in the support portal and support knowledge base. When I have an issue, I primarily search the knowledge base and the support portal and find the solution. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a very secure operating system, and they provide security patching every month.

I find Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scalable.

We have many cases where Red Hat helped us with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or OpenShift, and their support is great. On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the best, I would rate the tech support a nine.

Positive

Most enterprises work on Linux, and as I am a DevOps and platform engineer, most of our systems run Linux, including Kubernetes, OpenShift, and the DevOps pipeline, all working on Linux. This is why I switched to Linux.

For Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), the setup is very straightforward. OpenShift is a little complex, but once you do it once, you will master it.

I performed the deployment all by myself.

When it comes to our business value, most of our customers are enterprise-grade customers from banking and government sectors, and they prefer to use an enterprise-grade operating system, not Ubuntu or CentOS. Additionally, in many cases, we need enterprise support from Red Hat as Ubuntu does not provide this.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) on and off for at least 10 years, as I've changed many companies. My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are mostly on the server-side for deployment.

The features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that I most appreciate are the inbuilt commands and the packages that come with it, which are pretty helpful for us, as we usually deal with a lot of shell scripting. These features benefit my organization by allowing us to write cron jobs and related tasks.

I don't have much to say about how Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved.

I have been working in my current field for 20 years.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve the pain point of periodically needing to keep it updated, but apart from that, it's very stable, which is one of the best things about it. We have already expanded usage.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales very well with the growing needs of my organization, and within on-prem, it's very easy to scale it, so we've never had any problems. The process has been smooth; even on-prem, it's all automated, and we are using OpenShift, so using that software makes it very easy to scale.

I evaluate customer service and technical support from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as very good; I have personally called customer support and was surprised at how easy it is to get a hold of someone. It was easy for them to come to a solution.

Positive

Prior to adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), my company was using different Linux environments before moving to RHEL, although mostly the companies that I've worked in have always used Linux for deployment.

The deployment model for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) includes both on-premise and cloud, as we are using OpenShift for on-prem and cloud also.

We have our migration and upgrade team which manages Linux; as soon as the new, stable version of Linux becomes available, we try to update our Linux version to the latest.

I have seen a return on investment with the solution; in our team, we have noticed that the cost doesn't increase drastically, and it's a very stable product, although this is not my domain since mine is very specific, mostly development.

Before selecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), my company considered different Linux environments, as I have worked in Fedora, Red Hat, and Ubuntu, but I feel most companies now are adopting or going with RHEL due to its stability and better pricing; again, this is not my domain, I can just surmise.

My advice to other organizations considering Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is to go for it, as it's a pretty stable product. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) overall around an 8.