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Rocky Linux pros and cons

Vendor: Rocky Linux

4.3 out of 5

15 reviews
100% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Rocky Linux offers stability, compatibility, and community support, enhancing workstation consistency and synchronization. While the OS streamlines setup with custom scripts and aligns its support lifecycle with RHEL, it may need identity clarification and improved integration with Windows and Kubernetes. Though facilitating seamless migration from CentOS and Windows, it may require independent management and reliance on community support. Note potential need for package version upgrades compared to Ubuntu.

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Rocky Linux provides extended maintenance, security patches, and support lifecycle aligned with RHEL, making it highly reliable for critical systems.

Migration from Red Hat to Rocky Linux resulted in significant cost savings, with funds reallocated to other applications like middleware and monitoring.

Rocky Linux has strongly supported their cloud migration strategy by offering a cost-effective solution that maintains excellent consistency with updates.

Low-latency live streaming and content packaging workflows are efficiently managed with Rocky Linux, optimizing compatibility with streaming platforms through networking and driver support.

Rocky Linux offers enterprise-grade stability, substantial community engagement, and strong security, making it ideal for scalability and compatibility with RHEL.

CONS

Rocky Linux requires users to manage certain aspects independently if they do not pay for support, often relying on community assistance.

The identity and target audience of Rocky Linux need clarification for better alignment with users' needs.

Audio integration for virtual machines in Rocky Linux could be enhanced to improve user experience.

The DNS functionality in Rocky Linux presents issues requiring improvement for better performance.

Integration with Windows, especially Active Directory, necessitates additional effort and improvement in Rocky Linux.

Rocky Linux Pros review quotes

Dominique Locksley

Linux System Administrator at Adapt IT

Feb 19, 2024

It's very simple to work with, easy to learn, and know where things are.

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Cloud Infrastructure Services at UST Global

Oct 7, 2025

When we moved from Red Hat to Rocky Linux, we saved around 70% of the cost which was used for subscriptions, and that money is now used for other things such as middleware applications and monitoring applications including DataDog and Dynatrace.

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JW

System Administrator at Maxar Technologies

Sep 22, 2023

It helps us keep our workstations in sync and ensures consistent settings across most of our machines.

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RD

IT / IAM Senior Specialist at SAP

Sep 22, 2025

In my opinion, the best features Rocky Linux offers are stability, compatibility, and community support, all of which I think are extremely necessary and essential for the distribution, and I find that all three pillars are very supported by Rocky Linux.

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reviewer2758479

CloudOps Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

Sep 18, 2025

Rocky Linux provides us with extended maintenance, security patches, and support lifecycle aligned with RHEL, making it highly reliable for critical systems.

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reviewer2758263

Technical Manager at HCLSoftware

Oct 8, 2025

Rocky Linux has been a major driver for our cloud migration strategy and has proven to be one of the most cost-effective solutions for us, allowing us to save huge revenue while maintaining fantastic consistency with updates.

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reviewer2764758

Software Engineer at CommScope

Oct 11, 2025

Rocky Linux is best for someone who wants good scalability, enterprise-grade stability, substantial community engagement, compatibility with RHEL, and strong security.

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DILIP BHARADWAJ

Senior System Engineer at Al Jazeera Media Network

Oct 8, 2025

Rocky Linux performs excellently in low-latency live streaming and content packaging workflows, as we use it for optimizing compatibility with the streaming platforms, utilizing an optimized kernel for networking, tuning profiles, IRQ affinity, security, reliability, and hardware and driver support.

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Massimiliano Adamo

Linux architect at European Commission

Oct 2, 2025

Rocky Linux has impacted my organization very positively because we migrated everything from CentOS and Windows servers to Rocky Linux, everything is clear, with good packaging, and now it's version 9.6, which is very important for us due to security problems since we are in Europe.

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Senior Network Engineer at KLC bvba

May 30, 2025

The experience of working with Rocky Linux is the same as with other Linux distributions; there was no difficulty for me in learning how to work with it.

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Show 4 more reviews (out of 14)

Rocky Linux Cons review quotes

Dominique Locksley

Linux System Administrator at Adapt IT

Feb 19, 2024

The solution's audio integration for virtual machines could be improved.

Read full review

Cloud Infrastructure Services at UST Global

Oct 7, 2025

To improve Rocky Linux, providing releases for each package, firmware, and kernel more quickly would be beneficial.

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JW

System Administrator at Maxar Technologies

Sep 22, 2023

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.

Read full review

Free Report: Rocky Linux Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Rocky Linux. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: September 2025.

869,832 professionals have used our research since 2012.

reviewer2758479

CloudOps Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

Sep 18, 2025

I see some performance-related issues, but we are still checking on that, and we don't know if it is related to the OS or the resource; that is something still to be checked from our end.

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reviewer2758263

Technical Manager at HCLSoftware

Oct 8, 2025

The only drawback we have seen is that even though there are timely deliveries of security patches and vulnerability fixes, the Rocky Linux Security Advisor or RLSA updates via the DNF utilities are broken or delayed.

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reviewer2764758

Software Engineer at CommScope

Oct 11, 2025

Currently, the customer support for Rocky Linux is not fully developed and is in a growing stage; the customer support is also not very responsive.

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DILIP BHARADWAJ

Senior System Engineer at Al Jazeera Media Network

Oct 8, 2025

Rocky Linux could be improved with API-based tools that would help our streaming environment be monitored using DataMiner.

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Massimiliano Adamo

Linux architect at European Commission

Oct 2, 2025

Rocky Linux could be improved by having more integration with Kubernetes.

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Senior Network Engineer at KLC bvba

May 30, 2025

To be honest, Rocky Linux is almost similar to each Linux distribution, so I have no specific reason why it should offer me its features.

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Jetsada Malaisirirat

System Engineer at clusterkit

May 21, 2025

The package versions can be quite older compared to other distributions such as Ubuntu.

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Show 3 more reviews (out of 13)

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Operating Systems (OS) for Business

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Ubuntu Linux vs Rocky Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs Rocky Linux

Oracle Linux vs Rocky Linux

Windows Server vs Rocky Linux

SUSE Linux Enterprise vs Rocky Linux

CentOS vs Rocky Linux

openSUSE Leap vs Rocky Linux

Windows 11 vs Rocky Linux

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See all alternatives

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