--- title: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Reviews meta_title: 'Red Hat Enterprise Linux Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 977 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Red Hat Enterprise Linux works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.6 review_count: 977 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-09' parent_category: name: IT Infrastructure url: https://www.g2.com/categories/it-infrastructure --- # Red Hat Enterprise Linux Reviews **Vendor:** Red Hat **Category:** [Operating Systems](https://www.g2.com/categories/operating-system) **Average Rating:** 4.6/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 977 ## About Red Hat Enterprise Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a enterprise operating system designed to provide a secure, stable, and high-performance environment for modern IT infrastructures. It supports a wide range of applications across physical, virtual, and cloud environments, making it a versatile choice for businesses of all sizes. Key Features and Functionality: - Security: RHEL offers live kernel patching, security profiles, and adheres to security standards certifications, ensuring a robust defense against vulnerabilities. - Consistent Lifecycle: The operating system follows a predictable lifecycle with three phases: full support, maintenance support, and an extended life phase, providing long-term stability and planning capabilities. - Cloud Integration: RHEL is optimized for cloud environments and collaborates with major cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, facilitating seamless workload migration and management. - Developer Access: Red Hat provides developers with free access to RHEL through the "Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Business Developers" platform, allowing up to 25 instances for development purposes. Primary Value and Solutions: RHEL addresses the need for a reliable and secure operating system that can handle diverse workloads across various environments. Its comprehensive security features mitigate risks, while the consistent lifecycle ensures long-term support and stability. The integration with leading cloud providers simplifies cloud adoption and management, and the provision of free developer access fosters innovation and accelerates application development. Overall, RHEL empowers organizations to build, deploy, and manage applications efficiently, aligning with business demands for production-readiness and operational excellence. ## Red Hat Enterprise Linux Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users value the **unmatched stability** of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, creating a reliable foundation for critical workloads. (58 reviews) - Users value the **security features** of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which enhance system safety and resilience. (57 reviews) - Users value the **reliability** of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, recognizing it as essential for business operations and support. (52 reviews) - Users value the **exceptional customer support** from Red Hat, enhancing their experience in enterprise environments. (48 reviews) - Users find Red Hat Enterprise Linux to be **easy to use** , making management and integration in professional environments straightforward. (43 reviews) - Security/Safety (39 reviews) - Users value the **RHEL compatibility** that facilitates seamless integration with various services and strong community support. (38 reviews) - Regular Updates (29 reviews) - Community Support (27 reviews) - Documentation (23 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users find the **high cost** of Red Hat Enterprise Linux limits accessibility, especially for small businesses. (33 reviews) - Users find Red Hat Enterprise Linux **expensive** , making it less accessible for small businesses due to high subscription fees. (21 reviews) - Users express frustration with the **locked subscription model** of RHEL, complicating security testing and automation. (15 reviews) - Users find **usage difficulty** due to complex configurations and subscription requirements, posing challenges for beginners and smaller teams. (15 reviews) - Users express frustration over **outdated software tools** in RHEL, hindering their workflow and causing installation problems. (14 reviews) - Users face a **lack of support** for consumer applications, especially for offline environments and limited package availability. (11 reviews) - Users find the **steep learning curve** for transitioning from Windows to RHEL challenging and less user-friendly. (11 reviews) - Update Issues (10 reviews) - Complexity (9 reviews) - Security Issues (9 reviews) ## Red Hat Enterprise Linux Reviews ### 1. RHEL Review **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kislev M. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 19, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Red Hat Enterprise Linux has a lot of cool features. The first and foremost being the support that Red Hat provides and the documentation. I've been able to find all my issues with Red Hat's documentation, which has been easy to navigate. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** As far as the dislikes, there are not many that come to mind. I've had a longer history with debian based systems, and only recently started using RHEL. The dislikes were more of a lack of experience than dislikes of the actual product itself. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Red Hat has benefited my company by enabling our team to upgrade our existing RHEL 6 ,and even RHEL 7 machines to RHEL 8, and now RHEL 9 efficiently as well as migrate the CentOS servers to RHEL with minor to no issues, that weren't hard to resolve. ### 2. Senior Telco Cloud Architect **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mustafa Abdel Hady R. | Telco Cloud and Networks Manager , Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 29, 2024 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** It is a stable and secure operating system where you get updates very frequently to address security vulnerabilities. It is simply the core of all technologies. Releases life cycles are very good and not short. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Maybe as end user, more GUI user friendly applications need to be added. More ease of use for important security features like data encryption at rest. Major Upgrade procedures need to be more straight forward and easier. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Stable and secure OS which receives regular patches for CVE's very quickly. It is the main OS for all critical applications that requires stability and security. Red Hat Core OS is a very stable and secure environment to run OpenShift nodes. Excellent for Virtualization and Containerization. By tuning its performance, you get exactly the predicted performance you need to achieve. **Official Response from Brianna Gault:** > Hi Mustafa, Thank you for sharing your experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We're thrilled to hear how satisfied you are with RHEL! We value your feedback and appreciate you sharing the value of receiving regular updates. If you have any questions or additional thoughts to share, please reach out to us at experience-advocacy@redhat.com. Thanks, Red Hat Experience & Advocacy Team ### 3. Patching and Vulnerability Issues Undermine an Otherwise Strong OS **Rating:** 2.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rajesh M. | System Administrator, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 26, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** It is better as compared to Windows Operating systems. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Had issues with patching and vulnerability management. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Helps me with hosting applications. ### 4. Security of Red hat **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 03, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** There are many operating systems available in the market, but the way Red Hat approaches security and administration is truly impressive. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** With the security it brings the licence and subscription, which i personally don't like and its restrictions to source code. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Since our application is deployed on a Red Hat server, it provides an excellent approach to both security and user management. ### 5. RHEL: The Ultimate Enterprise OS **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ashok kumar K. | Digital Engineering DevOps & SRE (AVP II), Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 26, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** RHEL, is the best OS for enterprise use, **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** log level, easy upgradeation like green/blue **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** OS and vertialisation ### 6. RHEL: The Best Multitool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jacob O. | Cyber Security Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 21, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** What I like best about RHEL 8 is its stability and enterprise-grade performance. It offers consistent security updates, system-wide cryptographic policies, and powerful tools like Cockpit, System Roles, and Podman. These features streamline administration, enhance automation, and support modern workloads efficiently. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** What I dislike about RHEL 8 is the complexity of subscription management and entitlements, which can be frustrating during initial setup. Additionally, certain packages are locked behind specific repositories, requiring additional configuration. The learning curve for beginners can also be steep. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** RHEL makes my job easier by giving me a stable, secure system I can count on. It handles updates, security, and compliance stuff smoothly, so I can focus more on automation and less on fixing random issues all the time. ### 7. RHEL Experience **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Luis P. | Cert Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 23, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** a lot of information and support about red hat **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** we need knowleds obut the operation system for manages **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** resource optimization ### 8. Great, stable and well documented product **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Aviation & Aerospace | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 21, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** From operations point of view the KB articles provided by Red Hat when troubleshooting issues is a huge plus that the completion is lacking. Very stable distro with lots of customization options and almost unlimited customizability for making a custom ISO using anaconda and kickstart files. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Pricing is probably a bit on the high end compared to the completion causing our users to seek a cheaper alternative (rpm based distro). Support wise we are not really in need of TAC level assistance very often but on the few times we did I would say that got a bit of mixed feelings with the response time and approach of resolving the issue. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our users require to spin up Windows and Linux VMs within our internal cloud, Red Hat enterprise Linux is one of the offered solutions. Upon deployment of the system their application is being installed. Some DB based systems are also running on RHEL and of course Satellite and capsules on our infra ### 9. Rock-Solid Stability and Enterprise-Grade Performance **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** David F. | Developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 04, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is an outstanding operating system for enterprise environments, delivering unmatched stability, security, and long-term support. Its robust performance makes it ideal for mission-critical workloads, and the seamless integration with Red Hat’s ecosystem ensures reliability at every level. The extensive documentation, excellent customer support, and frequent security updates provide peace of mind for IT teams. Additionally, RHEL’s compatibility with a vast range of enterprise applications and cloud platforms makes it a top choice for businesses looking for a scalable and efficient Linux solution. Highly recommended for organizations that prioritize security, performance, and support. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a fantastic choice for businesses that need a stable, secure, and well-supported operating system. It offers top-notch reliability, excellent security features, and seamless integration with enterprise tools. However, one downside is the cost—RHEL’s subscription model can be expensive, especially for small businesses or individuals who need enterprise features but have budget constraints. Additionally, some users may find the strict licensing and lack of access to the latest cutting-edge software a bit limiting compared to community-driven distributions like Fedora or Ubuntu. Despite this, RHEL remains a solid investment for companies that prioritize long-term stability and professional support. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Nothing ### 10. The Only Linux Platform for the Enterprise **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** dave k. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 19, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Support! Utilizing RHEL with Red Hat support means that you never more than two or three degrees of separation from the folks that create the thing. Having this availability to the maintainers and writers of the code gives access to bug fixes and features faster than any other Linux distribution out there. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** I can not think of anything that is worth writing here. DNF started off pretty garbage, but that's getting better. Maybe the identifying which repos you need to get things working? But even that has advanced light-years. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Red Hat Enterprise Linux solves all of our Linux needs. If it's production and it needs support RHEL is where it's at. ### 11. Reliable and easy to get support **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 21, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** This is the de-facto standard for running Linux on the enterprise. There really isn't a second thought on what server Linux you should go with. Most products will work on Red Hat Linux. Saves a lot of time. Support is available on the internet and paid support is pretty good too. For a developer who doesn't get to use Linux all of the time, it's a great time saver. There is readily available documentation. Easy to install as it is the de-facto standard. Doesn't take long to get it up and working. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** There is a lot of complexity to RHEL. Light speed should help. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Red Hat is a full package suite that goes beyond the operating system. It runs all of our virtual machines now. It's also our container environment with Openshift. Let's us grow and adopt new technology on our pace in one technology stack. ### 12. Linux: The Powerhouse Behind Seamless Open-Source Computing **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mohammad M. | Senior Manager - PMO, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 30, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** It's Enterprise-Grade Stability and Reliability along with the Robust Security. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** High Cost for Licensing and Support and the slower adoption of New Features. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a stable, secure, and enterprise-grade platform for running our critical applications. Its built-in security features, long-term support, and automation tools like Ansible significantly reduce operational overhead and compliance risks. As a result, we’ve improved system reliability, streamlined management, and scaled our infrastructure with confidence ### 13. Stable and Secure OS **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jitendra G. | System Admin, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 07, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides long-term support and reliable updates that are well-managed, ensuring minimal disruption to operations. Its stability and strong security features make it a trusted choice for enterprise environments. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** The user interface feels outdated and could benefit from modernization which make administration tasks more difficult for those who prefer streamlined graphical experience. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Red Hat Enterprise Linux solves key challenges of stability and security by providing a reliable, secure, and scalable platform for enterprise use. It ensures high availability, reduces downtime, and help to meet compliance standards, all while supporting our growing infrastructure needs. ### 14. Easy to deploy and maintain **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Charles B. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 19, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** I enjoy how easy the distribution is to install on various platforms, physical and virtual, and I appreciate the support from Red Hat, via knowledge base posts and direct ticket support. Red Hat is a great company with a great support team. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Some of the licensing options can be confusing depending on your customer. E.g, private, defense, medical. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Red Hat solves our problem of picking a unified operating system across multiple systems and customers. By using RHEL, we're able to hire support engineers with various backgrounds and use them to support multiple customers because RHEL offers a predictable and standard environment to work in. ### 15. It's better than Ubuntu **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Broadcast Media | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 19, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Consistency across minor releases, excellent vendor support, easy of installation and patch management. The knowledge base is very, very good and makes it easy to self-solve issues. The consistency across releases makes it easy for newer administrators and engineers to use. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** There are a lot of vendors who ship their products for free Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, forcing us as an enterprise to offer Ubuntu support to our internal customers. If there were a solution for this situation, specifically in the broadcast media space that I work in, it would make my life a lot easier. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** It powers the majority of our Enterprise, financial and broadcast applications. It is well supported by most of these vendors (see my earlier comment about some broadcast vendors shipping with Ubuntu because they don't want to pay for an included RHEL subscription). ### 16. You can do so much **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Luke B. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 27, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** What I like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is its unmatched stability, security, and support for enterprise environments. RHEL provides a robust and consistent foundation for running critical workloads, whether on physical servers, virtual machines, or in the cloud. Its comprehensive lifecycle support, predictable release cadence, and proactive security updates help reduce downtime and improve system reliability. Additionally, the strong ecosystem of tools, documentation, and certified hardware/software partners makes RHEL a trusted platform for building and managing enterprise-grade applications with confidence. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** It’s hard to find admins with experience. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** It’s a flexible OS ### 17. Good customer support and OS works well with our product **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Megan A. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 19, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** It provides a secure OS for my company's product. Keeps up with industry trends to stay ahead of the curve and work toward security and innovative solutions. Customer portal is very intuitive with many tutorials allowing me to fully understand how to use the product for my needs. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** I would like to see more support on how to transition products on RHEL to a Wayland compositor with using Xwayland for x11 native window managers. More conversation and support around this transition specifically would be very helpful to our needs with our upcoming RHEL10 transition **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Security and adaptability ### 18. I love Red Hat Enterprise Linux! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Joseph S. | Infrastructure Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 20, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** I love that RHEL is consistent, patches security updates quickly, and provides Red Had Insights for getting real time suggestions on how to optimize my systems. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** The security provided does limit systems from using the newest and shiniest software, but that is the price I am willing to pay for security and stability. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Red Hat Insights is included in the license. That gives me real time information about configuration errors, available optimizations, and active vulnerabilities. It also provides Ansible playbooks to automatically remediate these things. This is what separates RHEL from other Enterprise Linux distros. ### 19. RHEL - Good For Security And Enterprise VM Management **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Josh A. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 20, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** In terms of security, all of the innovation Red Hat does with linux is very compelling. I like how it is a widely know and supported platform and you are able to use tools like Red Hat Satellite as a go-between for package management. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** I dislike the cost per VM and that some of the tools like subscription-manager can be complicated. There can be some ramp-up time in learning the tools and feature. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is solving the problem of datacenter-wide or company wide deployment, easy VM provisioning and package management. ### 20. Best enterprise linux in industry **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Shiva Kumar P. | Sr DevOps Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 11, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** RHEL is what you go for when you need your systems to “just work” — securely, consistently, and with help when you need it. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** RHEL isn’t free — you need a subscription for updates, patches, and support. **Recommendations to others considering Red Hat Enterprise Linux:** Please update your software on regular basis. Apply the patches as soon as released **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** RedHat Linux is a production-ready operating system that is reliable and robust performance. ### 21. Its great to learn Operating System deeply. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jay P. | Data Annotator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 29, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Its very lightweight and fast. which is the top priority for me. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Its UI is too simple, i mean it can be more good looking while keeping it simple too. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Nothing, i am just using it thats all. ### 22. Red Hat Enterprise Linux Rocks! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Chris M. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 21, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** The stability is amazing, we moved workloads over from Windows to Linux and it has been so much more stable than it was on Windows. Customer Support is awesome as well. Ease of Use makes it great for some of my beginner admins. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** I need more customization on the desktop GNOME and better printer drivers. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's helping us move into the containers and AI worlds, by giving us a stable environment on which to run our services and workloads on. ### 23. Effortless to Use with Top-Notch Security **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 10, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Easy to use and more security purpose we use **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Operational license is more when compared **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Best operation ### 24. RHEL is simple but powerful **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Carson M. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 20, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** I like the ever advancing features that are available. Also, the constant push to improve upon what is there to make it simpler to use. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** I honestly don't know if I can say there is much about a downside. I wish docker was still native and that I didn't feel forced into using podman. But that is not world ending. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Red Hat Linux is simplifying the process of using pre-vetted packages. Makes applying updates with confidence much smoother. ### 25. Red Hat Enterprise Linux: A Rock-Solid Foundation **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 05, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** RHEL is a the best solution for real-life enterprise application. Its stability and security are unmatched, making it my go-to for mission-critical systems. I's really easy to use once you’re familiar with RPM-based ecosystems—tools like YUM/DNF simplify package management. The subscription model ensures timely updates and access to Red Hat’s stellar support, which has saved me hours of troubleshooting. Integration with enterprise tools (think OpenShift, Ansible, or cloud platforms) feels seamless, and SELinux’s granular security controls are a lifesaver. For daily use, it’s reliable enough that I rarely second-guess its performance. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** The learning curve is steep for people new to RPM distributions. While powerful, SELinux and firewall-cmd can feel overwhelming without Red Hat’s training. The UI feels dated compared to Ubuntu or Fedora, which might deter people used to polished GUIs. Licensing costs add up quickly for small businesses, and the subscription activation process is clunky—I’ve lost time untangling portal issues. Out-of-the-box software is often older for stability’s sake, which means manually adding repos for newer apps. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Mostly the integration with Ansible and containerized platforms. ### 26. RHEL Review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** David W. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 19, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** I have been using Red Hat since the days I purchased on CD. Very stable and great support through out the years. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** For RHEL I would like to see more new features. However I understand it is necessary for stability to not always use latest a greatest. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** ALlowing us to host security applications on a stable environment. We install, run, and patch. This helps to keep applications running with out much work. ### 27. Premier Enterprise Linux operating system **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Patrick K. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 20, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** RHEL has a massive feature set, great patch release cycle, easy to manage, and is very easy to implement. RHEL's comprehensive FIPS compatibility is essential to our deployments, and is many software installs work perfectly. Red Hat's support team is incredible as well. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Our team has no problems with RHEL, it's used for the vast majority of our core infrastructure. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easy management, automation tools allow for consistent deployments ### 28. Industrial OS **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ameya T. | Support engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 20, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Stability, security, enterprise support,open source, scratch proof,virus proof **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Cost, limited driver support,case sensitive **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easy to use and manage industrial critical problems. ### 29. RHEL daily driver **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** William W. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 19, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** RPM packaging. Creating my own RPMs is far easier than creating my own DEB packages. The idea just makes sense. Stability of RHEL is also big. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** I dislike that RHEL locks answers to questions that people have asked behind a login screen. It feels against the spirit of open source. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** It has an expansive array of government accreditations that I need to perform my daily role ### 30. Comprehensive review of RHEL **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** VIVEK KUMAR D. | cloud presales consultant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 03, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Its enterprise grade stability , long term lifecycle suppport **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Requires paid subscription , accessing updates , slower adoption of new packages **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Enterprise grade stability and long term support ### 31. Provide secure and easy to configure environment for software development **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Defense & Space | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 21, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** I like RHEL for the flexibility that it provides with using other open source tools. It also provides great security using SELinux contexts and firewall configurations. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** It may not be friendly for first time users. There is a lot of configurations that are handled through command line and knowing the file system structure. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** RHEL is providing the base operating system needed for running our applications. We are able to secure the system with firewalld policies, SELinux contexts. The capability of running as read only on the file system adds another extra layer to security to prevent malicious changes to configuration files. ### 32. This is one of the best products I’ve used in my entire career **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Adalberto D. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 21, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** It’s too easy to use and you can find a lot of documentation **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** I love all about this product, is really interesting. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps solve issues related to system stability, security, and scalability. It benefits us by providing a reliable and consistent platform for deploying and managing enterprise applications, reducing downtime and improving overall operational efficiency ### 33. RedHat is the industry standard **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Defense & Space | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 19, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** RedHat, for the most part, just works. If it needs to run, and it needs to run reliably, it's the only platform in the game, particularly in offline environments. I use it for both my workstations and servers, and it performs as needed in both use cases. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Support for disconnected systems could improve. Much of RedHat documentation presumes internet access, and doesn't always have easy-to-find implementations for environments that do not have, and cannot have, internet access. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** RedHat provides a platform that can be reliably secured to DoD standards and, importantly, still work without too much fuss. ### 34. Good work Red Hat! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Paper & Forest Products | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 20, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** RHEL is a straight forward distribution, conceived for the enterprise environment. It may not have the latest improvements from the cutting edge of open source development, but it's reliable and predictable, which, at the end of the day, this is what one wants for the enterprise. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** It can be a little dry at times, and the EPEL could have more packages. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** A solid and reliable platform to run mission critical business applications like SAP. By being predictable and stable, it provides the administration team with more peace of mind and time to work on future projects. ### 35. RedHat Summit Review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Frank S. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 20, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** I like the ease of use as well as the exceptional Support provided when I open a case with Red hat. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Hard to find information about product end of life or installed package end of life when doing searches online. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** We rely heavily on Red Hat Linux for Cost savings as well as reliability and ease of implementation. ### 36. Great, stable platform **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jeff D. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 19, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** First and foremost, stability. Support is top notch as well. Love the fact that all major releases have a 10 year lifecycle **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** I wish they had a broader range of native packages available in their repository. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** A supported platform for container images utilizing podman. Also, a server OS that can run applications and databases. ### 37. Trusted Base for Creating Deployable Applications **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Daniel C. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 19, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Wide user base. Good packaging and a wide selection of packages available in the broader ecosystem. Solid documentation. Also stable to build on. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** The same thing that makes it stable can make it hard to use the latest tooling in the later releases. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Having a system that is Deployable in high security environments. ### 38. Smooth and stable **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Joshua S. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 19, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Red Hat has in our experience always been smooth with very predictable outcomes, and has proven itself to be a stable platform to build our applications on. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Sometimes patching can be problematic, and the kernel feature set can lag behind other distros **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** We uses it as the basis for our Percona Database Cluster ### 39. Life long RHEL user **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jared M. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 19, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Very stable, great support easy to find solutions for a widely used platform. Also, it is the one I know best! **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Past version upgrades were not simple. This is much improved. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is a solid platform for my company to run Redhat IPA as well as total platform management using Ansible. ### 40. Easy to use, and very stable with satellite **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mathia H. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 19, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Versatile and stable. Like how easy it is to manage 400+ linux vm servers. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** A bit locked in with tools like libreswan and strongswan no being compiled with options for msChap for example. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have many third party tools running on Linux. Also hosting many Oracle Database instances on premissis ### 41. Rock solid! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lucas W. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 19, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Stable and secure while also providing great KB articles/solutions for common issues. Open Source and great community. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** I cant think of anything other than steep learning curve but that is for all Linux distributions. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Allows us to provide a open Source stable solution for our developers to create great software. ### 42. overall fairly good. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** joshua g. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 20, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** stable and reliable, it often just works in most cases. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Selinux is not the most intuitive. it can break the "it just works" feel when you have to do something custom to deal with it. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** consistent stable Environment, that works across versions well most of the time. ### 43. 20 years of Linux deployment **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Matthew D. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 19, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Stability and import of key upstream features. The ability to rapidly deploy and manage large number of servers. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** I wish the workstation version repo's moved to newer repos for dev tools. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** The ability to bring in a wide range of dev tools and production ready security tools. ### 44. An OS that just works **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tim H. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 20, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** We can upgrade and patch the OS without having to re-do the entire server **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** The hardest part is staying up to date while keeping vulnerabilities down, which it seems like RHEL 10 is tackling **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our application server as well as a basis for our container images ### 45. Linux is a popular OS which is backbone for running almost all the applications **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Arshad A. | Director of Information Security, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 17, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** It has wide range of support available and wide community to help you with it. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Patching frequency and compatibility with gps **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Its core of many of the products we build or use ### 46. RHEL has been solid in the five years I have experience using it in an Enterprise environment. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 21, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** The stability and compatibility with updates and not having to wonder of my server will come back up after an update. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Access to RHEL when not a customer could be improved to promote learning and familiarization with the platform as a whole. Developer access to RHEL could use some more exposure and/or publicity. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** RHEL provides a stable and supported OS for our Enterprise servers and forms about 80% of our install base. It's stable and support is a call away when needed, ### 47. Red Hat have continued to provide leading services around RHEL. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Clive G. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 19, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** The support and speed of addressing support issues. We are looking forward to leveraging RHEL AI. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** The version of support management continues to cause a number of customer environments issues as they are no longer supported **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Providing a consistent and reliable environment for Production systems ### 48. Great product **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** dustin m. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 20, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Ease of deploying it in our cloud environments, they also allow us to harden and have built in security controls we utilize. The customer support is also great **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Nothing it's my favorite Linux OS I don't have a negative **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Ease of use and deployment ### 49. RHEL experience **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Heath O. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 27, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** How simple management is, and how effective rhel works in a professional environment. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** I have not ran into any downsides yet, but RHEL's training courses are too expensive i think. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** How to automate day to day admin tasks. ### 50. I am a RedHat user. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dave O. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 20, 2025 **What do you like best about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** Industry standard. Strong compatibility between versions. **What do you dislike about Red Hat Enterprise Linux?** The cost. Forks are fun and all but when you want the real thing at Enterprise scale it would be easier to convince my boss when the cost is lower. **What problems is Red Hat Enterprise Linux solving and how is that benefiting you?** Repeatable, customizable deployments. ## Red Hat Enterprise Linux Discussions - [What in RHEL you guys love?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/35917-what-in-rhel-you-guys-love) - 4 comments, 2 upvotes - [How do i tourn on firewall using RHEL](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-do-i-tourn-on-firewall-using-rhel) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [make user experience better](https://www.g2.com/discussions/make-user-experience-better-0b93ab56-1b69-4c7b-9302-fcbea790b5f5) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [How Poweshell Differ From Bash ??](https://www.g2.com/discussions/36253-how-poweshell-differ-from-bash) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [How we can get training for new Red Hat product including latest OS with cost effective way?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/35861-how-we-can-get-training-for-new-red-hat-product-including-latest-os-with-cost-effective-way) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [View Red Hat Enterprise Linux pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/red-hat-enterprise-linux/reviews?page=2&qs=pros-and-cons§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-13+12%3A25%3A56+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=7b47002a-f9d8-4f76-abfb-7993b5af67dd&secure%5Btoken%5D=88c0210feb3cdfc8cd052417bf35a594d96231421c5c987fe2b1b386eb9271bc&format=llm_user) ## Red Hat Enterprise Linux Integrations - [Apache Tomcat](https://www.g2.com/products/apache-tomcat/reviews) - [AWS CodeCommit](https://www.g2.com/products/aws-codecommit/reviews) - [Azure Virtual Machines](https://www.g2.com/products/azure-virtual-machines/reviews) - [CrowdStrike Falcon Shield](https://www.g2.com/products/crowdstrike-falcon-shield/reviews) - [Docker](https://www.g2.com/products/docker-inc-docker/reviews) - [Elasticsearch](https://www.g2.com/products/elastic-elasticsearch/reviews) - [Focus SIS](https://www.g2.com/products/focus-sis/reviews) - [Git](https://www.g2.com/products/git/reviews) - [GitLab](https://www.g2.com/products/gitlab/reviews) - [Grafana Labs](https://www.g2.com/products/grafana-labs/reviews) - [IBM webMethods Hybrid Integration](https://www.g2.com/products/ibm-webmethods-hybrid-integration-2025-12-05/reviews) - [IBM webMethods Managed File Transfer (MFT)](https://www.g2.com/products/ibm-webmethods-managed-file-transfer-mft/reviews) - [Kubernetes](https://www.g2.com/products/kubernetes/reviews) - [LogRhythm SIEM](https://www.g2.com/products/exabeam-logrhythm-siem/reviews) - [Metasploit](https://www.g2.com/products/metasploit/reviews) - [Microsoft Defender for Endpoint](https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-defender-for-endpoint/reviews) - [NGINX Plus Standard - RHEL 8](https://www.g2.com/products/nginx-plus-standard-rhel-8/reviews) - [Tanium](https://www.g2.com/products/tanium/reviews) - [Trend Micro Endpoint Encryption](https://www.g2.com/products/trend-micro-endpoint-encryption/reviews) - [Ubuntu](https://www.g2.com/products/ubuntu/reviews) - [Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS](https://www.g2.com/products/ubuntu-pro-18-04-lts/reviews) - [Zscaler Internet Access](https://www.g2.com/products/zscaler-internet-access/reviews) - [Zscaler Zero Trust Cloud](https://www.g2.com/products/zscaler-zero-trust-cloud/reviews) ## Red Hat Enterprise Linux Features **Performance** - Scalability - Portability - Data Recovery - Disaster Recovery **Application Support** - Deployment - Interface support - Processor support - Application Support **Memory Management - Operating System** - RAM management - App Management - File Management **Security** - Access Controls - Network Security - Compliance - Cryptography **Functionality** - OS Integration - Resource Saving - Performance Management - Security - Third-Party Integrations - User Management - Compliance Management - Task Management **System Capability** - Self Healing High Availability - Orchestration - Scalability **Device Management - Operating System** - I/O management **Security** - Automatic Security Updates - Security updates **Backup and Recovery - Operating System** - Data backup **Agentic AI - Server Virtualization** - Autonomous Task Execution - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration - Adaptive Learning - Proactive Assistance - Decision Making - File Transfer **Additional Functionality** - Cloud Computing - Archiving & Retention - Issue Tracking - Virtual Machine Migration - Server Monitoring - Status Tracking - Secure Login - Activity Dashboard - API - Graphical User Interface - Secure Data Storage - Alerts/Escalation - Generative AI - Virtual Server - Remote Update/Installation - Data Verification - AI Copilot - Reporting & Statistics - VDI - Database Support - Data Synchronization - Data Replication - Virtual Machine Monitoring **Error Detection - Operating System** - System operations monitoring **Additional Functionality** - Generative AI - Data Security - User Interface - Resource Allocation - System Updates - For Developers - AI Copilot - Desktop Interface ## Top Red Hat Enterprise Linux Alternatives - [Ubuntu](https://www.g2.com/products/ubuntu/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (2,347 reviews) - [Apple iOS](https://www.g2.com/products/apple-ios/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (1,546 reviews) - [Windows 7](https://www.g2.com/products/windows-7/reviews) - 4.2/5.0 (874 reviews)