Skip to main content
TrustRadius
CentOS Linux

CentOS Linux

Overview

What is CentOS Linux?

CentOS Linux is a Linux distribution is an enterprise OS platform compatible with its source RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Its end of life was announced for December 2021.

Read more

Learn from top reviewers

Commonly Discussed Topics

Share Feedback
These are common buyer considerations generated to help you find the best products. While this is a beta feature, it is our mission is to provide you with the best information possible to make confident and trusted technology decisions.

Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing
N/A
Unavailable

What is CentOS Linux?

CentOS Linux is a Linux distribution is an enterprise OS platform compatible with its source RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Its end of life was announced for December 2021.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?

63 people also want pricing

Alternatives Pricing

What is CloudLinux OS?

CloudLinux is an operating system (OS) that is commercially supported and interchangeable with the most popular RPM-based distribution on the market, from the company of the same name in Palo Alto. The vendor states its CloudLinux OS+ version was developed with shared hosting in mind, to give…

Return to navigation

Product Demos

DELL OMSA CentOS 6.4 DEMO 2014

YouTube

demo of free open source CentOS Linux, R, and RStudio for quant

YouTube

CentOS Linux Hot Plug CPU and Hot Plug Memory Demo

YouTube

VMware Tutorial Beginners | Session 14 CentOS Linux Hot Plug CPU and Hot Plug Memory Demo

YouTube

Learning Centos Linux : LVM Management on CentOS XenServer Demo Linux VM

YouTube
Return to navigation

Product Details

What is CentOS Linux?

CentOS Linux is a Linux distribution is an enterprise OS platform compatible with its source RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Its end of life was announced for December 2021.

CentOS Linux Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(136)

Reviews

(1-5 of 5)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why

CentOS: stable, reliable, and secure Linux distribution

Rating: 10 out of 10
December 04, 2019
JS
Vetted Review
Verified User
CentOS Linux
12 years of experience
We use CentOS as the primary Linux distribution across all our instructional and research computing endeavors. It is used across all the IT infrastructure and supports many unique academic projects. The main problem that CentOS solves is that it provides a stable research platform that is easy to manage and most of all has a solid support path that extends well into the future.
  • Excellent "L" in the LAMP server.
  • CentOS is a total workhorse and very stable distribution.
  • Security and other updates are a breeze with YUM.
  • The community support and documentation is as good as it gets.
Cons
  • Sometimes we have to add some esoteric repositories to YUM, and that is a bit of a pain.
  • Sometimes we fight with SE Linux if it is enabled.
  • I wish I could get a CentOS t-shirt.
Here is where CentOS really excels. If you have a shop where there are seasoned Linux administrators who do not need to have their hand held to do this and that, CentOS does really well. Since it is community oriented there are no funny license hoops to jump through or administration to waste your time. CentOS is well suited in our academic environment.
  • CentOS is all positive on return!
  • The more CentOS machines we have around here the better.
  • CentOS is a tight Linux distro, it is conservative and solid where it needs to be.
  • Security options are excellent. You can really make it tight.
Long ago we used to run Red Hat ES. However, the management of the licenses and stupid dashboards just killed us. Too much time was wasted on worthless administration. Support was not good either. Now I used SUSE way back in the 2000's and it was ok. About two years ago I tried to use it again and wow, that was a nightmare. SUSE was just inconvenient to use, total weirdo Linux. It was almost like using BSD or something. Ubuntu, I like that for the desktop.
Again, written documentation is excellent, even on the older versions. The support community is the best. It is comprehensive and I would say that it global because it transcends national boundaries. Also, you find all types of people using CentOS to do all sorts of things so you are bound to find someone to talk to if there are problems.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Ubuntu Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Apache Tomcat

CentOS Free Alternative to Commercial Alternatives

Rating: 10 out of 10
March 17, 2020
KD
Vetted Review
Verified User
CentOS Linux
10 years of experience
We use CentOS currently for our server solutions.
  • Web Server
  • Database Server
Cons
  • Security
  • Hardened OOB
CentOS is well suited for workstations and servers for web/application development.
  • No Cost
  • Free Upgrades
Free no cost, Lower costs for support, and overall doesn't require a per licensing for each install.
Just prompt and easy to use support options.

CentOS - Absolutely the best value for the money

Rating: 8 out of 10
October 24, 2019
BG
Vetted Review
Verified User
CentOS Linux
10 years of experience
We use CentOS for all of our Linux hosts and Linux containers, for webservers as well as application servers, and addresses the need for a solid platform to run generic code, without worrying about licensing or justifying initial cost.
  • As it is derived from the commercial Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution, most instructions for installing enterprise software on Red Hat also work on CentOS, including the package manager.
  • CentOS lags behind Fedora (the other free Red Hat derivative supported by Red Hat), which makes it a solid choice for the enterprise (or even SMBs - stability is universally appreciated!).
Cons
  • CentOS isn't (and may never be) a strong contender for a desktop (GUI) Linux distribution.
If you need a Linux host for running server software, you almost can't go wrong by installing CentOS - the Red Hat ecosystem is one of the most highly-supported Linux distributions.
  • The cost of ownership is debatable, but the purchase price is zero dollars ($0), which is hard to argue with.
When the rubber meets the road, any Linux distribution will do. However, RHEL and distributions that are derived from RHEL have a fantastic ecosystem of users, software packages, and documentation (which is generally compatible between RHEL-derived distributions) that make it easy to jump into CentOS, a derivative specifically designed as a slow-release free distribution.
You can justifiably expect to get your money's worth from the CentOS community, and you paid $0. Sometimes there is a delightful surprise. Sometimes the surprise is less delightful. Either way, the problem you're having is probably well-documented if you just look.

Cheap RPM support, not much else

Rating: 5 out of 10
October 31, 2019
Vetted Review
Verified User
CentOS Linux
1 year of experience
As our organization looked to shift to cloud development, we need to standardize on a cloud-friendly Linux distribution. We evaluated CentOS for this purpose within my development team with the idea being that CentOS offered compatibility with rpm packages, and could largely mirror an expensive Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) server, without the cost. Unfortunately, we found that CentOS 8 was not fit for this purpose.
  • Barebones user-interface - CentOS doesn't aim to be flashy, and takes a no-nonsense approach to the user interface. Unfortunately, this is also one of its downsides.
  • RPM package compatibility - CentOS can readily use most RPMs making it trivially easy to set up a machine for development that you'll want to mirror for production.
  • Command Line Customization - CentOS is easier than other distributions for customizing from the command line, making it easier to automate the deployment of a new instance.
Cons
  • Ugly User Interface - I can deal with a simple and barebones interface, but that doesn't mean it needs to look like it was designed in the early 90s.
  • Smaller user base than other distributions - CentOS, while well established as a viable Linux distribution, lacks as strong of a user base as other distributions, making it more difficult to get support on user forums.
  • Drive compatibility - CentOS lacks as robust driver support as other distributions. For instance, in my most recent install, I still needed to install networking support packages, rather than having in-built support.
CentOS is ideal if you need to replicate a Red Hat Enterprise Linux server setup for cheap/free, as you can use most, if not all, of the same packages you use on your RHEL set-up. It's also ideal if you need something that you can easily customize from the command line (such as in a virtualized environment.) It's less ideal if you want user community support or a user-friendly desktop environment.
  • CentOS's support of RPM packages makes it very easy to replicate RHEL servers for development or testing in cheap / free environments
  • CentOS's minimalistic desktop environment requires additional tweaking / packages if you want to have a usable desktop environment with the niceties of other modern distributions. As a result, if developers want to use CentOS, they'll need to spend more time customizing it than other distros.
  • CentOS's easy customization from the command line lends itself well to our virtualization infrastructure where setup can be easily scripted to modify CentOS's configuration files.
For our development environment, we evaluated CentOS against Ubuntu and SLES, and actually did not end up picking CentOS, as our developers found it primitive compared to the niceties offered out of the box from Ubuntu. In addition, our developers found that Ubuntu had an extensive user community, meaning they could very easily find support if needed from user forums. At that point, CentOS was a non-starter and we didn't move forward.
As I mentioned earlier in my review, I was disappointed by the out-of-the-box hardware support for CentOS, requiring additional support packages to get my networking working. In addition, the extra tweaking and packages I needed to install to get the desktop environment up to a usable state meant the default support out of the box was inadequate.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, .NET, Oracle Java SE

CentOS - the best flavor of Linux out there

Rating: 10 out of 10
October 18, 2019
Vetted Review
Verified User
CentOS Linux
4 years of experience
CentOS is the standard flavor of Linux that we've used for our VMs, throughout the company. Based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you know you are getting a solid Linux distro.
  • Base image for virtual machines
  • Great OS for running Docker
  • Based of solid RedHat enterprise linux, so compatible with pretty much everything
Cons
  • I haven't had a reason to try anything else really
I use CentOS as my flavor of linux, at work and at home. Its supported by many / most cloud providers, so it's my standard base VM image.
  • none!
I like CentOS over other flavors of Linux - mainly because it's widely used, supported, and it's based of RedHat Enterprise Linux. Comparing it to Windows as a server? No comparison - CentOS all the way - unless you want to reboot your windows servers every few days.
Great community around CentOS, tons of resources online. This is partly why I like it so much
Return to navigation