CentOS Linux Reviews & Insights

Score8.6 out of 10

136 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for CentOS Linux are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

High Security and Stability: Many users have expressed their satisfaction with the high level of security and stability provided by CentOS. They value the peace of mind that comes from using a reliable operating system straight out of the box.

Smooth Performance: Users consistently praise the performance of CentOS, even on average hardware. They appreciate its efficiency and optimization, which result in a smooth and responsive user experience.

Versatile Deployment: The ease and speed of deployment in various scenarios make CentOS a versatile choice for different projects. Users find it convenient for their needs, allowing them to quickly set up their development environment or host necessary network services.

CentOS Linux Reviews

5 Reviews

Engineering

CentOS Linux is a stable, mature operating system for rock-solid performance

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

July 2, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use CentOS Linux in almost every capacity except as an end user facing system. I use it as a mail server, web server, router, vpn endpoint, development system, high availability clustering node, virtual machine hypervisor, wireless access point, encryption appliance, and virtually every other kind of system, other than laptop or desktop. It excels at all of the server type roles that it is placed in.

Pros

CentOS Linux works extremely well as a development system. Development packages are readily available and 3rd party compatibility is very high.
CentOS Linux works extremely well for high availability clustering. It has native packages for DRBD which make it easy to provision high availability.
CentOS Linux has very little extra "nonsense" running, it can be slimmed down to a bare minimum system very easily to allow for maximum compute power to be devoted to the application.

Cons

It is extremely stable, however it could use a more robust "experimental" branch where new/different/updated code could be applied
It lacks end-user niceties. As a laptop/desktop system, it's absolutely awful. It would be very nice if there were better developed frontends for it

Likelihood to Recommend

In any role where you need raw server power, CentOS Linux is extremely well suited. It is extremely stable, and in my experience, probably the most stable of the Linux distros available. It has a very wide base of support from 3rd party sources for additional functionality that do not come already in the CentOS Linux distribution itself. It is not as appropriate for situations that are customer facing or end user facing. For those, I recommend Ubuntu Linux. But for everything server & compute related, I recommend CentOS Linux.

Alternatives

Ubuntu Linux

Ubuntu linux is another candidate that we've evaluated. It stacks up well against CentOS Linux, however it does have some quirks we need to deal with such as package management and stability. For the most part, the server version of Ubuntu is stable, but we stick with CentOS Linux because it seems to have a slight edge over Ubuntu in that realm as well. I have colleagues at other firms that are wholesale Ubuntu server infrastructure, and they are very happy with it and Ubuntu is favorable there. With the changes that have occurred or may still yet occur at CentOS Linux, we may go down the path towards Ubuntu. But for now, CentOS Linux is where we are parked and will remain for the foreseeable future.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (Internet company, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

Stay away from CentOS Stream

Rating: 2 out of 10

Incentivized

June 29, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use various CentOS systems in our organization on over two thousand servers all over the world. We write custom software for CentOS and rely on it to be a stable and secure platform for our needs. CentOS needs to be reliable for our business org to function properly and not introduce issues.

Pros

Stable
Reliable
Secure

Cons

Undoing the move to CentOS Stream.
Increasing the lifetime of CentOS.
Provide already tested updates to users.
Don't use the users as guinea pigs for testing.

Likelihood to Recommend

CentOS 7 has a longer support life than CentOS 8, and in that case, should be used in production environments until the support ends. Moving to CentOS 8 now would be a mistake with the switch to CentOS Stream, and the decreased support model for CentOS 8. Because of this, CentOS 8 is not a production stable environment.

Alternatives

Ubuntu Linux

Ubuntu Linux LTS used to be a more bleeding edge and did not provide the reliability and stability compared to CentOS, but with the move to CentOS Stream. This is reversed and we're considering moving to Ubuntu even though that is a lot of work. We simply can't work with CentOS Stream and had to redo planning to use another OS.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (Internet company, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

Server material

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

May 12, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use CentOS as the host OS for MongoDB servers in our analytics service. We also used to have it as the host for the user file Backup Service Front Ends. We use it both on bare metal and in virtual machines. We also have development and testing virtual machines setup with it as a host OS.

Pros

Enterprise ready
Stable packages
Great Online knowledge base

Cons

It's not as intuitive as it could be
Some packages can be quite old compared with other distributions
Breaking changes appear often when packages are obsoleted usually with no supported transition path (this is a general *NIX problem, but it's more accentuated in CentOS)

Likelihood to Recommend

CentOS is well suited as a server host OS, for web servers, databases and even container host. We found that NFS performance was better inside physical machines than in virtual ones, so for some critical IOPS bounded applications we used physical servers that ran CentOS and some of them were even Docker hosts with no noticeable performance degradation.

Alternatives

Ubuntu Linux

CentOS has a better reputation than Ubuntu Server. In the past some of the packages were quite old compared to Ubuntu Server. CentOS 7 had longer support cycle than the 4 year Ubuntu LTS. And CentOS Stream promises even longer support.
It is harder to manage than Ubuntu Server, and less intuitive in some areas (like networking).

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (Computer Software company, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

15 years of experience

CentOS - the best flavor of Linux out there

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 18, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

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

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Alternatives

Ubuntu Linux and Windows Server

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.

Verified User

Manager in Engineering (Marketing and Advertising company, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

CentOS: The Reliable, Lightweight and Secure Server

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

April 29, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In IT, CentOS is used by our organization to host many of the service's organization-wide services. It is a great cost-free alternative to the commercial Red Hat Enterprise Linux product. It is built using the same source code as RHEL with just cosmetic modifications made due to licensing/trademarks. It delivers robust services on a free platform. CentOS is well-supported with regular security and operating system updates. It is well-suited for all network services, including as a network file share. Also run FreeSWITCH for the entire organization-wide phone system, which is also based on CentOS.

Pros

Easy installation process with sensible and secure defaults.
Its very stable and reliable.
Good package management.
Fast security patching.

Cons

CentOS is community-supported, so some software vendors will not officially support it because it isn't Red Hat.
CentOS is not a great desktop platform, only for servers.

Likelihood to Recommend

Very well suited for cloud-based infrastructure and installations, very well suited for server infrastructure, especially if it's a public facing service. Great for VoIP apps.

Alternatives

Ubuntu Linux, Windows Server and VMware ESXi

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 maintained, but licensing costs.
VMWare ESXi only if you compare CentOS as VM host, would go with ESXi.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (Aviation & Aerospace company, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

15 years of experience

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CentOS Linux is a stable, mature operating system for rock-solid performance

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

July 2, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

CentOS Linux works extremely well as a development system. Development packages are readily available and 3rd party compatibility is very high.
CentOS Linux works extremely well for high availability clustering. It has native packages for DRBD which make it easy to provision high availability.
CentOS Linux has very little extra "nonsense" running, it can be slimmed down to a bare minimum system very easily to allow for maximum compute power to be devoted to the application.

Cons

It is extremely stable, however it could use a more robust "experimental" branch where new/different/updated code could be applied
It lacks end-user niceties. As a laptop/desktop system, it's absolutely awful. It would be very nice if there were better developed frontends for it

Likelihood to Recommend

Alternatives

Ubuntu Linux

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (Internet company, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience