With the advent of Linux, many popular Linux based distributions became popular and earned their name. CentOS vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux are such examples.
Red Hat became popular in the commercial world, where big organisations highly prefer it because of its paid support and service. When it comes to servers organisations love it. On other hand, one such popular derivative CentOS also became popular because of its Red Hat like similarities.
In this article, we will differentiate both CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux and also highlight some of their cons and some really interesting facts you must be aware of.
Differences between CentOS vs Red Hat
| CentOS | Red Hat |
|---|---|
| Based on Red Hat distribution. | Based on Fedora. |
| Is freely available. | Commercially available, which means it is not free. |
| Maintained by the Open Source community. | Maintained by the Red Hat organization. |
| Provides late or slow updates, as it relies on Red Hat. | Provides faster updates. |
| CentOS administration is less recognized in the commercial world | Red Hat administration is popular and recognized by large organizations. |
| There are fewer resources for learning and certifications of CentOS. | Its certifications are internationally recognized and available. |
| Preferred for personal use. | Preferred for organizational use. |
| Similar to Red Hat, but with no cost and no official support. | Red Hat provides subscription-based services and provides official support. |
What is CentOS?
CentOS, abbreviated for Community Enterprise Operating System. CentOS is open source and comes under the family of Red Hat-based distributions, and was also derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
CentOS is really popular among developers, as it mimics the original Red Hat Enterprise Linux and is free. CentOS provides its supports through public mailing lists.
Some interesting facts about CentOS
- CentOS is recreated version of Red Hat and is not Red Hat.
- CentOS is open source and solely maintained by the community.
Limitations of CentOS
- It is derived from Red Hat, so it always lacks behind Red Hat in one thing or another.
- It has no renowned certifications in the market.
- There is no official support provided, only Google will help you.
What is Red Hat?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a distribution developed by Red Hat for commercial purposes. It is highly recommended by professionals for organisational servers and other uses, even though it is paid as the support provided by Red Hat is truly amazing.
Red Hat also has its own training and certification programs recognised internationally. Even though it is paid, Red Hat contributes alot to the open source world.
Some interesting facts about Red Hat
- Red Hat is the organisation, name of the Linux distribution we refer to as Red Hat is Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
- Red Hat has more than 250 open source projects from all types of tech stacks.
- Red Hat was the first open source organisation to earn 1 billion dollars.
Limitations of Red Hat
- It is pretty expensive.
- It rolls out updates way less than any other Linux distribution, which makes you wait.
- As it is aimed more on servers, Linux users choose Ubuntu over it as Red Hat’s GUI isn’t much appealing.
Conclusion
After knowing the differences between CentOS vs Red Hat, you might still be confused on which one to pick, as both of them have their own pros and cons. It solely depends on your need and use cases.
Still, we suggest that if you are an individual looking for distribution for just personal use, go for CentOS, And if you’re an individual looking for job opportunities, go for Red Hat and keep exploring as it has wider use in the enterprise market. Also, if your need is organisational, highly prefer Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Hope you liked the article!