CentOS Linux is a Linux distribution is an enterprise OS platform compatible with its source RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Its end of life was announced for December 2021.
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openSUSE Leap
Score 10.0 out of 10
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German company SUSE supports the Linux distribution, openSUSE. Leap is the stable and regular release option for installing openSUSE. New and experienced Linux users get the most usable Linux distribution and stabilized operating system with openSUSE’s regular release. Receive updates and harden the OS with openSUSE’s latest major distribution. Presented as the platform of choice for Linux developers, administrators and software vendors.
I have been a CentOS user for over 10 years and remain loyal to the core OS. When it comes to stability and speed, there's no other OS I'd recommend over it. I base this recommendation on my personal experience, as I have multiple development and production servers running the CentOS software today. It's running on newer and older hardware with ease, and the price is right!
It is a great system for running applications that are not "Windows only". It works very well with application servers like Tomcat or Glassfish. In the development environment, it can run many IDEs like Netbeans for Java or VS Code for Python. It is a great platform for running Docker or Kubernetes. It supports also full virtualization so Windows can be running inside a virtual environment to share the hardware cost.
Some packages can be quite old compared with other distributions
Breaking changes appear often when packages are obsoleted usually with no supported transition path (this is a general *NIX problem, but it's more accentuated in CentOS)
Again, written documentation is excellent, even on the older versions. The support community is the best. It is comprehensive and I would say that it global because it transcends national boundaries. Also, you find all types of people using CentOS to do all sorts of things so you are bound to find someone to talk to if there are problems.
Ubuntu Linux is another candidate that we've evaluated. It stacks up well against CentOS Linux, however it does have some quirks we need to deal with such as package management and stability. For the most part, the server version of Ubuntu is stable, but we stick with CentOS Linux because it seems to have a slight edge over Ubuntu in that realm as well. I have colleagues at other firms that are wholesale Ubuntu server infrastructure, and they are very happy with it and Ubuntu is favorable there. With the changes that have occurred or may still yet occur at CentOS Linux, we may go down the path towards Ubuntu. But for now, CentOS Linux is where we are parked and will remain for the foreseeable future.
openSUSE Leap has wide variety of already precompiled software packages in default repositories. It even has some specific packages in official repositories that are not available in other Linux distribution repositories. It is also very stable and reliable distro - we can predict when new versions will be released and when we should make system upgrades.
Since CentOS is free, our developers and engineers can use it without regard for dipping into project budgets.
We can spin up a CentOS VM, use it and then destroy it without having to worry about licensing headaches.
CentOS can run on just about any hardware platform: server, laptop, old hardware, etc. so that makes it less expensive in that we don't have to buy specialized hardware for it.
