---
title: CentOS Reviews
meta_title: 'CentOS Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2'
meta_description: Filter 424 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry
  to find out how CentOS works for a business like yours.
aggregate_rating:
  rating_value: 4.4
  review_count: 424
  scale: '5'
date_modified: '2026-07-12'
parent_category:
  name: IT Infrastructure
  url: https://www.g2.com/categories/it-infrastructure
---

# CentOS Reviews
**Vendor:** CentOS  
**Category:** [Operating Systems](https://www.g2.com/categories/operating-system)  
**Average Rating:** 4.4/5.0  
**Total Reviews:** 424
## About CentOS
CentOS is a community-driven, free software project that provides a robust and reliable Linux distribution, serving as a foundational platform for open-source communities, cloud providers, hosting services, and scientific data processing. Derived from Fedora Linux, CentOS Stream offers a continuously delivered distribution that tracks just ahead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), with major releases every three years and each maintained for five years. This structure allows CentOS Stream to function as a production operating system, a development environment, or a preview of upcoming RHEL releases. Key Features and Functionality: - Continuous Delivery: CentOS Stream provides a rolling-release model, delivering updates that precede RHEL&#39;s official releases, ensuring users have access to the latest features and improvements. - Community Collaboration: The project fosters a collaborative environment where Special Interest Groups (SIGs) develop and package software tailored to specific needs, such as cloud infrastructure, storage solutions, and virtualization technologies. - Enterprise Compatibility: By closely tracking RHEL, CentOS Stream ensures compatibility and stability, making it suitable for enterprise deployments and development environments. Primary Value and User Solutions: CentOS Stream addresses the need for a stable yet forward-looking Linux distribution that bridges the gap between development and production environments. It offers a reliable platform for developers to test and deploy applications that will be compatible with future RHEL releases, thereby reducing the time and effort required for migration and ensuring smoother transitions. Additionally, the active community and SIGs provide specialized solutions and support, enhancing the overall ecosystem and catering to diverse user requirements.



## CentOS Pros & Cons
**What users like:**

- Users value the **enterprise-grade reliability** of CentOS, enjoying its stability and performance for long-term server use. (16 reviews)
- Users appreciate the **long-term stability** of CentOS, enjoying its reliable performance for production servers and critical services. (14 reviews)
- Users value the **ease of use** in CentOS, appreciating its straightforward setup and reliable performance for servers. (8 reviews)
- Users value CentOS for its **RHEL compatibility** , ensuring a stable and reliable environment for long-term infrastructure. (8 reviews)
- Users value the **strong community support** of CentOS, enhancing stability and ease of integration in production environments. (6 reviews)
- Security (5 reviews)
- Easy Setup (4 reviews)
- Implementation Ease (4 reviews)
- Long-Term Support (4 reviews)
- Users appreciate the **compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux** , enhancing stability and performance in production environments. (3 reviews)

**What users dislike:**

- Users criticize CentOS for **outdated technology** , citing slow software adoption and lack of support for new features. (7 reviews)
- Users often face **lack of support** , as CentOS struggles with slow updates and limited documentation for troubleshooting. (5 reviews)
- Users note the **slow updates** in CentOS, leading to difficulties in planning and accessing newer software versions. (5 reviews)
- Users note a **lack of features** in CentOS due to slow updates and limited software availability, impacting usability. (4 reviews)
- Users express concern over **limited availability** of updates and packages for CentOS, impacting their software experience. (4 reviews)
- System Instability (4 reviews)
- Apple Limitations (2 reviews)
- Users experience **compatibility issues** with CentOS, struggling with software support and outdated packages affecting modern applications. (2 reviews)
- Users find a **steep learning curve** when transitioning from Windows or Ubuntu to CentOS, requiring basic training. (2 reviews)
- Slow Performance (2 reviews)

## CentOS Reviews
  ### 1. The former Gold Standard in Red Hat compatible Linux distributions

**Rating:** 2.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Dan O. | Senior Information Technology Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** December 14, 2016

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

It used to be a free copy Red Hat Enterprise Edition, but without the support contract or the big license fee. Now, it's more like a pre-release test version.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

The lack of official help desk support from Red Hat. But when it comes to CentOS troubleshooting, Google is your friend.

**Recommendations to others considering CentOS:**

Take a look at the LTS versions of Ubuntu as well.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

This product used to allow me to deploy a large number of Linux systems globally without incurring a huge license fee.

  ### 2. Best OpenSource Linux OS for Students and Small Businesses

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Pooja M. | Software Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** August 24, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

It's open-source and freely available on market and runs on my old Intel-based Core2Duo laptop.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

UI can be improved and some new features can be added into the system to help for daily uses.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

It's good for those who don't have much money to purchase a paid Operating system like MAC and Windows. As a student and employee, I enjoyed it a lot and I am using it now for coding.

  ### 3. Alternative to Proprietary OS - CentOS

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Devarishi M. | Consultant, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** July 28, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

Easy to install and use. No cost. Different setups are available to meet specific requirements.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

Need to spend some time learning it and specifically the CLI where the real power is.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Using it at work and for making technical videos for my youtube channel.

  ### 4. Using CentOS

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** December 17, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

Open Source, lightweight and easy to customize

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

So far, nothing to dislike. I really like the simplicity of the OS

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

It is a open source that is available for any one to use. There are a lot of Virtual Appliances built by vendors that are based on CentOS.

  ### 5. Best Opensource Operating system

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Sunny C. | Github Campus Expert , Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** March 08, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

The best thing about CentOS is that :
1)  It is open-source, and everyone can download it free.
2) The user interface is better than Unix and Ubuntu.
3) Usability and Edibility are also straightforward.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

There is nothing to dislike about CentOS, to be honest.
But there is one thing that if you want something more like Mac interface, Toggle window, better Terminal, you have to purchase the Red hat premium version of centos

**Recommendations to others considering CentOS:**

It is easy to use.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

In my organization, all the laptops and computers are running on CentOS operating system.
The reason is that there is no chance of virus attack and lagging that mainly occurs in windows.

  ### 6. CentOs review

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Aditya K. | Lead Software Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

centos is one of the widely used Os in development and there are many providers for centos. The ease of use, memorable commands and connectivity with various other services makes it a go to Os

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

Sometimes debugging the Os related issues as well as memory related issues(especially kernel objects allocation) is hard

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

hadoop installation
java installation
python installation
telegraf installation
database installation
systemctl service installation
and many more services can be added to this OS

  ### 7. CentOS is a wonderful OS

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** priyanshu b. | Senior Technical Lead, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** March 29, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

It is Linux based OS. Recently i used CentOS to setup open source Hadoop cluster and I found all help related to CentOS over the internet. The OS is very stable. Also we find support for all softwares explicitly for CentOS. Also in thrid party tools, we find documentation explicitly for CentOS.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

Some release of CentOS would have some known problems, because of that our product deployment docs would fail, so I would request the community to do more thorough testing before providing a new release.

**Recommendations to others considering CentOS:**

People who wants to work on Linux based OS can go for it.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

I am able to deploy my applications more smoothly on CentOS compared to windows based operating system and the boot up time is also very fast. I can schedule my jobs also to run at a specific time.

  ### 8. good opensource  enterprise solution

**Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Sagar P. | R & D Engineer (Dev lead), Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 26, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

oper source, compatiple with RHEL and good community

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

small user base as compared with other players

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

as its opensource and compatible with RHEL quite easy to integrate with existing solution  and migration

  ### 9. One of the best os for linux server

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 20, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

The stability and open community support and wide usage in the indestry

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

some of the drivers not working out of the box specifically if you are using hardware that is not common

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

servers os

  ### 10. The most secured Operating System.

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Chamal Ayesh W. | Data Scientist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** December 09, 2021

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

The best pat of CentOS it is free and community-driven. It is highly secure and reliable for any servers such as file server, mail server, web server, database server, etc. With correct configuration CentOS is the most hard break OS in the world.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

Like other Linux distributions, CentOs need terminal expertise, such as remembering all the commands you need to run to accomplish any tasks. All the Linux systems key feature is correct configuration, CentOS also follow the same path. The wrong configuration make the server vulnarable, so it is upto user to make the server secure that is not very good approach.

**Recommendations to others considering CentOS:**

I am highly recommending CentOS to anyone who is looking for affordable server solutions for any level and any size of the organization.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

I use CentOS to host all the web applications written with Laravel. CentOs saves thousands of dollars by providing a free operating system for my infrastructure. CentOS has wide verity of software repositories. CentOS equipt with many adavanced features such as firewalls, file management, process management and networ monitoring than makes system admin life easier.

  ### 11. Cent OS Base

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Ahmed S. | Senior Solution Architect , Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** July 18, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

we can implement Platforms easily on it.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

it is not easy for many people that only vendors using it for its applications

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

One of our customers asked us to reconfigure the interfaces to be bundled for HA performance

  ### 12. Best OS for hosting Application Developed On Angular Framework

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** SAURABH B. | Software Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** August 03, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

I have used centos feature for hosting my application and it's really light-weight and friendly platform for me

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

the community support is not that great. i found problem while first time using this platform because of less amount of blogs but the help support from centos is pretty fast.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

It is giving me Ready-made platform for using for developement of Application like Entreprise-level

  ### 13. CentOS, it was great.

**Rating:** 0.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Eric M. | IT Specialist/Network Admin, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** February 28, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

The fact that CentOS was the standard production Linux distro for years. Ease of use for those with a Linux background. Every organization I worked at that had Linux production servers used CentOS.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

The direction the company has taken in the past 2 years. Removing support for major release updates and changing their support model. I don't think CentOS 8 could be improved on, but that OS is now dead.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

None. CentOS is causing problems. We are now having to choose a different distro for our production servers. We are not more productive.

  ### 14. Great alternative for redhat users

**Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** April 19, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

CentOS has been the free option for many users around the world, without any license requirements can be used by anyone and with similar CLI commands to Redhat Linux.

The CentOS has been receiving updates to support newer technologies but be aware that there is not a complete support program like redhat does.

Compatible with the yum commands I have found many customers using this OS on any client or enterprise environment.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

CentOS is really intuitive for anyone who has used other Linux distributions but for new users or people that want to make the first try into a Linux environment is not recommended, there are not as many forums with a lot of information on how to use it and there is also not direct support for it from a  lot of vendors so is more like "you can try to use it but if anything happens if up to you to fix it"

**Recommendations to others considering CentOS:**

Try to familiarize with other linux distributions before using this one.
If you are a red hat user you will feel this OS  has almost no difference besides the support in how to use it.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

CentOS helps to save some money in licenses to the companies, also the constant kernel updates allow some enterprise environments to keep upgrading their hardware and making it compatible work with the newer releases of CentOS.

It has become a handy option for any user who is experienced with other Linux distributions as one free option on the market that could be used on production environments.

  ### 15. Cent OS is the most dependable OS for any Enterprise Software Installations

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Punit S. | Senior Product Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** July 13, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

First it's free and every time we want to install our software we pick CENT OS since its easy to install, upgrade and lot of our customers/team members are expert on it. The community is also helpful.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

Nothing as of today, it has all the required features we need in an OS. I love the OS.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Easy Software installation - QMetry Test Management on docker, very easy to maintain.

  ### 16. CentOS is the best Linux distro available for users. Powerful and Reliable.

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Kr. G. | Database Developer (PA-III), Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** January 23, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

It is based on Red hat based Linux distribution and we can easily deploy any activity of the RHEL platform in CentOS.  Its GUI is best and the installation process is very smooth. we normally use Linux for Security and Open source and both benchmarks are best in this Linux.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

Its support is almost ending by the CentOS but updates are there and earlier it comes with auto-update features but nowadays we have to update it with the package manager. Also, only YUM package manager is active in this OS and sometimes it doesn't work.

**Recommendations to others considering CentOS:**

It is the best free and secure alternative of RHEL based Linux distribution.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We have a large database size on PostgreSQL database and on our virtualized environment on private cloud and we don't have the budget to Buy secure Linux like Redhat and then someone suggests about CentOS and belive us, It's working very good and all our applications are running with the best service in CentOS-based server.

  ### 17. Secure OS

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Mrugesh V. | Technical Lead, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** September 27, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

Security provided by centos is the best.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

The user interface could be better and tools integration.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We are using it mostly for managing production deployments.

  ### 18. Centos 7 Review

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Ravish S. | Lead Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** June 27, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

Highly Reliable.
It is you can say a free variant of RHEL.
Installation of yum files is quite easy.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

Updates are not that frequent.
Moreover, most of the users have been shifted to Ubuntu, thus its community is small

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

It supports the installation of various development and testing tools such as,

Python,
Jenkins,
Java.

One can easily use this Linux Distribution for their POC work.

  ### 19. Awesome!!

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Ahmed M. | Oracle Database Administrator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** April 20, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

The centos are good for learning & practicing for operating system. software management and virtualization the tools i used in yum, vim, vi etc., compare to any other operating system in Linux centos is user friendly and helpful.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

there is no reason to dislike Centos Linux but in some Scenarios, i dislike rpm packages it could be difficult if they improve packages in rpm which could be helpful for others.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

the problem I faced in Centos and solved the yum repository while installing the software and packages. the productivity of the software has increased the performance of business

  ### 20. One of the fast, Secure and Reliable Operating System

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Nitesh K. | Project Associate(II), Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** February 14, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

CentOs can be used as mail servers, web servers, development systems, and other types of systems with high availability, Security, and Reliability. CentOs  Installation is easy and user-friendly. We can use the RedHat package manager(RPM) in CentOs.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

Now CentOs is rolling to CentOS Stream. It is a little bit difficult for the new user as compared to another operating system. Need frequent updates so that new drivers and applications will not face any problems.

**Recommendations to others considering CentOS:**

CentOs can be used in multiple ways like Web Server and Development servers without any cost. Highly recommended for CentOs

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

I'm using CentOs as a web server, as I haven't paid so it saves the cost of the organization. I can quickly install and set up as per the requirement, which saves time and effort.

  ### 21. Feel like Ubuntu but Powerful!

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Sujeeth K. | Testing Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** December 21, 2021

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

centOS stream has overcome most of the bugs present in CentOS 7 and earlier versions. Open source projects with vulnerabilities can be easily identified with native security tools on the server edition. In addition, workstations can be parallelly installed for low-level server tasks. Recent announcements from the community have led this OS to regain its power because the developers have promised to bring regular updates. Being lightweight, it costs much less when spun up into a Cloud Provider. Enterprise tools and Java Developer Kit works smoothly with centOS, where we can host out Enterprise Java Applets to run on a virtual machine.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

There are several drawbacks that developers have to bear with CentOS. Primarily it does not support sockets and programs that could help you directly to connect with the virtual machine via virtual connection adapters. Hence while installation, you have to engineer the wifi and LAN adapters to connect OS to the internet. In addition, most of the time, you will be facing problems with updates being unsupportive to the previous version of the OS.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Enterprise Java Applets run in the background where our client's whole infrastructure resides on CentOS. CentOS helps to reduce the billing cost of AWS and efficiently utilize the resources on the cloud for our clients. Being old school os, it has good support with old technology required by our client hence CentOS has to be the priority.

  ### 22. Centos

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Naved  S. | storage Admin, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** July 26, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

Probably one of the best flavour of Linux that i have used so far.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

There isnt much to dislike as this is the os which i used when i started my career.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

While installing any package through YUM. there was absolutely no delay.

  ### 23. A Candid CentOS Review

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Swarup A. | Project Manager, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** April 23, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

As an enterprise-grade Operating system, Centos is truly a phenomenal experience for engineers and developers. I have been actively using it as part of software  projects

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

Can be made more user-friendly for users who are not from a technical background. The configuration and performance metrics can be improvised by at least 20% so that they can be scaled for a wider user base.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Semiconductors deployment, IoT and AI-based solutions. Innovating use-cases on cloud computing, SAAS applications and edge computing. In summary, serving needs for compute, storage and networking.

  ### 24. Best and most hassle free secured OS

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** August 07, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

Ease of use, faster and most effeciently handles multi tasking.
I love it's security

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

UI is something that needs to be improved to make it more user friendly

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

High end servers and security, efficient computation

  ### 25. CentOS is the most secured and fast

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Human Resources | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** March 24, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

I used CentOS servers for one of the projects where we were using nodeJS and Angular applications, we hosted these applications on CentOS servers. Performance was outstanding and minimal support was required from the admin side to setup, installation, deployment etc. I am completely happy with this operating system.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

We used the CentOS operating system even in today's era, there is a lot of cloud infrastructure is there which provides easy management and implementation of applications over cloud-hosted servers. I am expecting to have something like the same.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

I used CentOS for hosting various applications based on Angular, NodeJS and Python. It was more secure and more interactive if you have prior experience in operating systems. I will recommend it if you are using this for small use cases because of its easy setup and high security.

  ### 26. Best Linux operating System

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Ankit J. | CyberSecurity specialist, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** April 19, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

It is very Easy to use and we can get use cases very easily. Suitable for any kind of environemt.
This is very compatible with KVM (Virtual environment). Inbuild FW is very useful and secure.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

to be very honest there is nothing bad in this OS. But yeah it is aquired by IBM so they may commercialise it.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We are using it for KVM and SAP Development systems are hosted on it.
It is open source and SAP compatible libraries are available.

  ### 27. Mirror of RedHat

**Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Showrya K. | Senior DevOps Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** April 18, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

It is free and the security patches are available as good as in redhat

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

I heard its going to get decomm soon. This would be disappointment.

**Recommendations to others considering CentOS:**

Nothing as of now

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Was using it to host one of our jump servers. Security is awesome.

  ### 28. Great distro with the promising future!

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Ihor Z. | Cloud Infrastructure Engineer & Developer, Computer Software, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** February 17, 2021

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

Stability, good compatibility with different software and hardware, good support of Virtualization & Different VMs (VMware ESXi, Citrix Xen Server, Microsoft Hyper-V etc.), huge repository, compatibility with RHEL & Fedora packages & repositories, free license. The main positive sides of this distro are its scalability, free of charge, compatibility with the whole family of RPM-like distributions (RHEL, Fedora, Mageia, SUSE, OpenSUSE and its derivations).

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

Moving to the rolling release model by RedHat decision:  https://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2020-December/048208.html
Complicated migrations between major releases (e.g. some issues might appear while migrating or updating the distribution from version 7.x to 8.x, or 8 to 8.3).
Unexpected early end of support for CentOS 8.3
Difficulties with the usage of Microsoft technologies ASP, ASP.NET, Access, etc. If your project contains, for example, ASP.NET scripts, then certain problems may arise in the operation of the system on CentOS. Although this problem can be solved by fine-tuning and installing packages of additional, and often proprietary, software, this method is undesirable when running servers with increased stability requirements.
Another minor problem is the rather low update rate with help of YUM.

**Recommendations to others considering CentOS:**

This distro is tailor-made for busyness projects & large-scale applications, it is worth trying and create your own opinion and your own unique way of its usage.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

CentOS Linux is indeed a very stable & reliable system for server & workstations usage - it's free and despite that, has good scalability, perfect stability & low consumption of the hardware-resources. With the help of CentOS, we have successively deployed several testing & reporting platforms, such as ManageEngine ServiceDeskPlus and OTRS for internal usage between our colleagues & virtualized these solutions with the help of VMware ESXI & Citrix Xen Server.

  ### 29. CentOS Linux manageable platform

**Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 13, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

Suite for various deployments for open source community.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

No certified platform for security and support.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Open source project and open platform. I used to help learning.

  ### 30. CentOs - Run your enterprise workloads!

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** June 28, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

It's highly reliable and stable , a free variant of popular RHEL distribution!
An apt OS for the web hosting and running development/production workloads.
It's user friendly and easy to adapt for newbies!

A secured OS with an efficient package managementused for applications installation.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

It's not very easy to get support from user forums , lacks a strong user community base) .

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We have used CentOs for performing devops related work and hosted databases on it.

  ### 31. Easy to use for small business website

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Zhuye C. | Technician, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** May 09, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

All the commands are same or very similar to Debian, I can use it easily if you were a previous Debian user.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

Sometimes the package manager yum is not up to date. Also there was a time, a version mismatch issue happened when I tried to install application

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

I set up several small websites using CentOs for students for education purposes.

  ### 32. Best lightweight Linxu based Operating System.

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

I like it for being lightweight yet feature rich operating system. Its very suitable for using on the application server machines.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

I don't like the package manager or the software installation process of the os. It could have app store for easy access to apps.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

I used it for software development and application deployment.

  ### 33. CentOS Review

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Vaibhav W. | Senior Data Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** June 20, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

Centos is best to use for development work, very handy.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

Hard to remember the commands each time while working.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

being a open source gives a good control to the developers while developing a software.

  ### 34. One of the best server distro ever , complete.

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Maximo L. | Information Technology Security Specialist, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** January 04, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

What I like best: CentOS distribution includes so many helpful tools from the installation which make it easy to follow up the needs you are having at the first moment.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

So far works great. excellent. no complaints at all.

**Recommendations to others considering CentOS:**

Install package patches and upgrades , Install network and system utilities. Disable SELinux if you don’t know how to configure it yet. Automatic system update

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Web servers , VoIP servers , DNS servers. Email server.

  ### 35. Works well - but CentOS Stream is Replacing CentOS

**Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Sun K. | President, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2021

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

I really liked how easy CentOS was to install and use. It has a built in graphical interface, it is almost as easy to use as Windows. It is easy to install other packages, it is very compatible (it runs RedHat packages). You can open up terminal windows, work directly from command line, and it keeps track of updates that you can apply whenever you would like.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

CentOS is a great package but it has been discontinued as of version 8 and will be replaced with CentOS Stream. This means that rather than having a stable build, the operating system will be updated on a regular basis. This is good in some ways - you will have the latest updates and security patches, but bad in other ways - if you have customized your setup new releases could be incompatible, and could also remove or impact your customizations.  Also, if you deploy more than one system at a time, it is quite likely that they will end up running different versions of CentOS - and not on a time schedule that you control, but randomly, which could cause all sorts of havoc in heavily customized systems.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We are using it to run accounting systems, web servers.  Benefits: Stable operating system, very high reliability, very few issues. Low cost, enterprise grade operating system, it's a win win all around.

  ### 36. CentOS review

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** February 04, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

*It is a Stable OS,  robust
*Easy to install
*Minimal cost
*Not much updates are required unlike windows it does not require multiple reboots
*Command line utility

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

It lacks feature richness., functionality is much smaller than other Linux system 
Sometimes high consumption of resources

**Recommendations to others considering CentOS:**

It is a best OS when comes to setting up as Web server. 
You can easily manage it through command line 
Can access from anywhere using Shell access 
It is also compatible with hosting control panel such as cPanel, Plesk which makes to more easy to manage.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We use Cloud servers with CentOS.  We use the servers as Mail server,  Web servers and other internal Application are implemented using servers with centOS. 
It is also compatible with one of the best control panel cPanel.

  ### 37. CentOS Worthy and trusted

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Vishnu T. | Engineer-Network management, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** March 02, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

CentOS is more stable and secure Operating system and provide excellent platform for computing.
It also serves time to time security updates which makes it more reliable.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

No down side of this product as far as I know some improvement can be made with time.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

The main problem if virtualisation is solved with the help of CentOS.
dedicated servers built with CentOS gives more stable and secure environment for the business.

  ### 38. I’ve used CentOS and I am sharing my bit of using it.

**Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** July 20, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

Only thing I liked about CenOS that it is fast.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

I don't like its minimal support of user interface. Everything requires a lot of effort.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

I used only because it is required to support centos on our application. We used it to install Database.

  ### 39. Best for stability

**Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Nicolas B. | Founder & CEO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** November 16, 2021

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

I like the stability, speed and reliability of the operating system, it is a very easy to use operating system offering many very useful tools such as cockpit.socket

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

Everything is fine with CentOS, I have nothing bad to say about this operating system.

**Recommendations to others considering CentOS:**

Unfortunately, CentOS will be shutting down soon, consider switching to another similar operating system such as Fedora or RedHat

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

I use CentOS to do virtualization, the cockpit.socket tools allow me to know everything about the server and locate the problems of my servers more quickly.....

  ### 40. Very good for use

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Pravin G. | Software Engineer, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** February 01, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

The CentOs is very good and you can use for you web application and as well as on any type of servers

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

Nothing, it is perfect and no need to change anything

**Recommendations to others considering CentOS:**

It's very and secure os to use on AWS for your applications.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

For security and server side work

  ### 41. CentOS is a very stable Linux distro

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Adedamola T. | Senior Dynamics 365 Developer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** June 08, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

It is open-source and alternative to RedHat

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

CentOS has a smaller user based community

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

CentOS is very reliable and stable for enterprise use

  ### 42. Senior DevOps Engineer

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Praveen K. | SDE-3, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

This is an open-source Linux based OS, very easy to set up and implementation is very easy

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

I have been using centos for more than five years, but still, I don't have any issues.

**Recommendations to others considering CentOS:**

If anyone is still using the windows system, then i will recommend them to move their application to Linux based OS that is centOS which will reduce their server cost also by three times

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

I deployed all my applications to CentOS, also installed many open-source tools that are used by my application without any extra charge.

  ### 43. Centos review

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** arun kumar g. | Software developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** April 13, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

OS architecture.
Best for college graduates, interns and freshers who are curious about learning OS concepts.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

Since it is CLI OS graphics is less.
Anyway it's okay

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Solved library dependencies and security related issues. 

Learning about linux kernel, terminal commands.

Building a software product to  executable .rpm files.

  ### 44. Great OS, sad to see support discontinued

**Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Online Media | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** April 26, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

It has the Red Hat Linux Enterprise features and functionality with a stable server release.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

Support has been discontinued and they are shifting course to CentOS Stream which is not meant for production servers but test builds which are less stable.

**Recommendations to others considering CentOS:**

Since support for CentOS has been discontinued, I'd research an alternative to meet your needs.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

It used to have a long lifecycle of 10 years which provided a stable release without having to do any major upgrades.

  ### 45. CentOS

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** May 10, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

I am working with centos for the last couple of years and the best part of centOS is 

It and open source and easy to install.
Awsome GUI experience.
Easily get documentation on the internet for centOS.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

To be honest, I didn't find anything odd in centOS.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

I used CentOS as a server in our production environment, I can easily deploy applications on centOS as it's highly secure.

  ### 46. CentOS Overview

**Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** April 19, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

It open Source and stable and the best in the market for OS Performance

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

It is diffficult to operate for People from a windows background and also the customer support is NIL

**Recommendations to others considering CentOS:**

It is the best option if you are looking for Open Source OS

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We are using it as an Application Deployment server. The main benefit of  Centos that is has very good compatibility with 3rd party Apps also it is very cost-effective

  ### 47. Best Linux OS so far

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Shivam C. | Product Specialist, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** January 04, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

I like how CentOS has been open source from the beginning, you can contribute to the source code and it is easier to use for enterprise applications

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

Centos lacks community support, and it also does not get updated frequently and therefore no support for the latest drivers and other packages

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We have been using centos for enterprise applications and since it is open-source and free to use we have developed our application across it and distributed a ready to use image to our customers

  ### 48. Lightweight Linux based distro for office works!!

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** ALTHAF A. | Student Intern, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** August 23, 2021

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

CentOS is a free operating system, it is very easy to use and has a simple UI. We can easily install many free office softwares and also supports browsers like chrome firefox etc. We can manage user  access very easily and also it does not have any frequent annoying updates.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

I don't dislike anything but I have experienced some difficulties while installing some drivers.

**Recommendations to others considering CentOS:**

CentOs has proved to be a very useful OS for managing my business needs as well as for programming. Our System does not require much processing capabilities for running. Since it is a opensource operating system it is free from viruse attacks and malware threats. It also has a good command line interface. Programmers can Code,run and execute their programms very easily

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

It is a very reliable Operating System. I dont have to take premium subscriptions and paid plans for using my essential office applications as  free and opensource alternatives  are available on CentOS.It has a good community support also.

  ### 49. CentOS is good is for community version

**Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Chamnes P. | Database Administrator, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** April 21, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

It has a lot of package to install and customize

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

Now centos is no longer supported by RedHat.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

I use to run test project with DNS server install on CenOS 6

  ### 50. Best Free and open source server management tool

**Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** dev a. | software developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** January 06, 2022

**What do you like best about CentOS?**

Its Rich gui look incomparison to other server tool like ubuntu or linux.
Easy to setup and host thus by saving time.
with its package manager all the reuired dependencies are installed at a time.

**What do you dislike about CentOS?**

Its security can be upgraded which is lacking now.
unistalling the packages sometimes creates the headache and may create the problem.

**What problems is CentOS solving and how is that benefiting you?**

My web applications with laravel framework are hosted in centos server since it is fast,reliable and secured.Being an open source tool i dont need to pay.


## CentOS Discussions
  - [how can I install and use CentOS](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-can-i-install-and-use-centos) - 1 comment, 1 upvote
  - [How to install package?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-to-install-package) - 1 comment, 1 upvote
  - [Bolehkah ini digunakan untuk acara pembelajaran?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/can-this-be-used-for-learning-events) - 1 comment, 1 upvote
  - [Where did you go to learn how to use CentOS?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/51381-where-did-you-go-to-learn-how-to-use-centos) - 1 comment, 1 upvote
  - [How can I acheive client isolation ?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-can-i-acheive-client-isolation) - 1 comment, 1 upvote

- [View CentOS pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/centos/reviews?page=3&section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-12+22%3A36%3A11+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=124dea87-3faf-4d79-9959-b29ecff355ed&secure%5Btoken%5D=270c7a1b30301ef4f53056c831470a88c59b4626d5d109698f8258b55581ad0b&format=llm_user)
## CentOS Integrations
  - [ActiveDirectory Domain Controller for Windows 2016](https://www.g2.com/products/activedirectory-domain-controller-for-windows-2016/reviews)
  - [Apache Maven](https://www.g2.com/products/apache-maven/reviews)
  - [Chrome OS](https://www.g2.com/products/chrome-os/reviews)
  - [cPanel](https://www.g2.com/products/cpanel/reviews)
  - [Kubernetes](https://www.g2.com/products/kubernetes/reviews)
  - [Magento Open Source](https://www.g2.com/products/magento-open-source/reviews)
  - [Make](https://www.g2.com/products/integromat-by-celonis-make/reviews)
  - [MySQL](https://www.g2.com/products/mysql/reviews)
  - [ownCloud](https://www.g2.com/products/owncloud/reviews)
  - [Splunk Enterprise](https://www.g2.com/products/splunk-enterprise/reviews)
  - [WordPress.org](https://www.g2.com/products/wordpress-org/reviews)
  - [Zammad](https://www.g2.com/products/zammad/reviews)
  - [Zimbra Collaboration Enterprise Collaboration](https://www.g2.com/products/zimbra-collaboration-enterprise-collaboration/reviews)

## CentOS Features
**Memory Management - Operating System**
- RAM management

**Agentic AI - AWS Marketplace**
- Autonomous Task Execution
- Multi-step Planning
- Cross-system Integration

**Device Management - Operating System**
- I/O management

**Backup and Recovery - Operating System**
- Data backup

**Error Detection - Operating System**
- System operations monitoring

## Top CentOS Alternatives
  - [Ubuntu](https://www.g2.com/products/ubuntu/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (2,341 reviews)
  - [Red Hat Enterprise Linux](https://www.g2.com/products/red-hat-enterprise-linux/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (931 reviews)
  - [Windows 7](https://www.g2.com/products/windows-7/reviews) - 4.2/5.0 (871 reviews)

