CentOS Linux vs. Windows Server

CentOS Linux

136 Reviews and Ratings

Windows Server

839 Reviews and Ratings

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
CentOS Linux	Score8.6 out of 10	N/A	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.	N/A
Windows Server	Score8.2 out of 10	N/A	N/A	N/A

Pricing

CentOS Linux

Windows Server

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

Pricing Offerings
CentOS Linux	Windows Server
Free Trial
No	No
Free/Freemium Version
No	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

No setup fee

No setup fee

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Community Pulse
Key User Insights
	CentOS Linux	Windows Server
Considered Both Products	Open Source Verified User Chose CentOS Linux CentOS is based on RHEL, so it really came down to the costs when making the selection between our options. RHEL offered more support and features, but nothing that we specifically needed. CentOS is fully customizable, something Windows Server was also lacking in many ways. The … Incentivized Helpful? David Wilson Senior System Analyst in Information Technology at Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (Transportation/Trucking/Railroad, 201-500 employees) Chose CentOS Linux CentOS is lightweight. I can run it fine on virtual machines with as little as 512Mb RAM; that's impossible using Windows Server. Incentivized Helpful? Aaron Smith Information Technology Manager in Information Technology at TimeTrak Systems, Inc. (Computer Software, 11-50 employees) Chose CentOS Linux While Ubuntu Server has a lot of the same pros as CentOS, it can sometimes take a little more work to get the same level of hardening that you can get out of the box with CentOS. However, Ubuntu offers a much better desktop experience than CentOS. Windows Server is also very … Incentivized Helpful? Kaitlyn Delacruz CEO (Chief Executive Officer) in Corporate at Yokai Sakura Limited (Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees) Chose CentOS Linux Free no cost, Lower costs for support, and overall doesn't require a per licensing for each install. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose CentOS Linux 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. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose CentOS Linux CentOs is the standard in the hosting industry when it comes to different versions of Linux OSs, it's almost an exact clone of Redhat so it fits in with every need pretty well as well as it being free to use as it is opensource. Ubuntu is a great desktop OS. Incentivized Helpful? Valery Mezentsau IT Department Manager in Information Technology at Acceptance Solutions Group (Financial Services, 51-200 employees) Chose CentOS Linux Comparing to Ubuntu Server OS, CentOS is better from the security hardening side. RHEL: from my hands-on experience it is pretty much the same as CentOS, but in lots of cases, costs money. However, RHEL has better internal, community and software vendors support. Windows … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose CentOS Linux Ubuntu Server has a lot of the same pros as CentOS, it can sometimes take a little more work to get the same level of security that you can get out of the box with CentOS. However, Ubuntu has a much better desktop than CentOS. Windows Servers is also reliable and secure well … Incentivized Helpful? Olumayowa Mosuro Systems Admin in Information Technology at MultiChoice (Broadcast Media, 1001-5000 employees) Chose CentOS Linux It is more robust and easy to use, troubleshooting tips can be found online. You can also get community help as well. It is prone to security as compared to other OS. Updates are downloaded and installed in which an admin user can see the progress via the Command line interface. Incentivized Helpful?	Microsoft Verified User Chose Windows Server More user friendly and Graphical user interface is extreme compared to linux Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Windows Server These are just very different products. They can all have the same functionality but the specific product knowledge with Linux is much higher. This slows down troubleshooting and can leave you with limited options for high end support. There are absolutely good use cases for … Incentivized Helpful? Irfan Ahmed Staff Manager - Network Infrastructure in Information Technology at Pak Suzuki Motor Company Limited (Automotive, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Windows Server We have been using Microsoft products for the last 15+ years and following are key point for choosing this solution: Trust & reliability of products. Customer support. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Windows Server We have various servers or appliances that run on various flavors of Linux that do their jobs well, but we configure and manage them very lightly at the OS level. Most of the admin on these devices is sone inside the applications themselves. We don't shy away from new … Incentivized Helpful? Phillip Templeton IT Support Analyst in Information Technology at Guy Brown (Consumer Goods, 51-200 employees) Chose Windows Server I have used/administered several servers using systems like Ubuntu, Debian, and CentOS. While these systems are great in their own rights, you are typically using a command-line interface or shell in order to administrate the system. This requires a lot of commands to be … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Windows Server For our purposes it came down to picking between Windows and Linux and at the end of the day we picked both. We use Windows for 80% of our server needs to run our Web, File, Print, DHCP, Internal DNS, Active Directory, SQL, Web and other windows based servers. We use linux … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Windows Server Windows Server is the only one that has an upfront cost for licensing before hardware is considered. Windows Server is generally better suited for multi-faceted approaches; however, for just backups, TrueNAS and Synology are cheaper and just as good. For standalone services … Incentivized Helpful? Kaitlyn Delacruz CEO (Chief Executive Officer) in Corporate at Yokai Sakura Limited (Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees) Chose Windows Server When using a Linux system such as CentOS in a server situation to get certain features like Windows Server, it can take a lot of jerry-rigging and configuration to get the same results that can be set up with Windows Server in a lower amount of time. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Windows Server Windows has functions that are available to it that Linux does not as there are a lot more applications available that run on the Windows platform. Windows is widely used and is familiar to admins that don't have the experience needed for Linux. It is still a staple in … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Windows Server Windows Server offers more stability when using solutions that require domain services. It also offers more stability than third-party solutions for file services using SMB. I find third-party alternatives on Linux feature rich, however, very lacking in stability and usually … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Windows Server The clear advantage is that Windows Server is less intimidating to the uninitiated novice being that it has a GUI, well-documented process that you can see and follow rather than just executing commands in a terminal. At the same time, the growth and scope of Powershell allow … Incentivized Helpful?
	Would buy again
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Delivers good value for the price
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	Happy with the feature set
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	Lived up to sales and marketing promises
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Implementation went as expected
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User Ratings
	CentOS Linux	Windows Server
Likelihood to Recommend	7.0 (21 ratings)	8.2 (63 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	- (0 ratings)	9.1 (6 ratings)
Usability	- (0 ratings)	8.2 (7 ratings)
Availability	- (0 ratings)	7.3 (1 ratings)
Performance	- (0 ratings)	5.5 (1 ratings)
Support Rating	8.6 (5 ratings)	6.4 (19 ratings)
Implementation Rating	- (0 ratings)	9.1 (4 ratings)
Configurability	- (0 ratings)	9.1 (2 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model	- (0 ratings)	4.5 (1 ratings)
Ease of integration	- (0 ratings)	9.1 (1 ratings)
Product Scalability	- (0 ratings)	9.1 (1 ratings)
Professional Services	- (0 ratings)	6.4 (1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale	- (0 ratings)	7.3 (1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale	- (0 ratings)	8.2 (1 ratings)