Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs Ubuntu

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

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Ubuntu

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux vs Ubuntu: What are the differences?

# Introduction

1. **Package Management**: Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses the YUM package manager while Ubuntu uses APT-Advanced Package Tool. 
2. **Support and Security Updates**: Red Hat Enterprise Linux comes with long-term support (up to 10 years) with security updates provided by the Red Hat Security Response Team. Ubuntu, on the other hand, offers shorter support cycles with regular updates and security patches.
3. **Licensing and Costs**: Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a commercial distribution requiring a subscription for access to updates and support. Ubuntu, in contrast, is free to use and distribute.
4. **Desktop Environment**: Red Hat Enterprise Linux focuses more on server environments and thus may not offer as many options for desktop environments compared to Ubuntu, which is popular for desktop usage.
5. **Community and Support**: Ubuntu has a larger and more active community which can be beneficial for troubleshooting and getting help compared to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
6. **Target Audience**: Red Hat Enterprise Linux is primarily designed for enterprise users and businesses seeking a stable and secure platform, while Ubuntu caters to a wider range of users from beginners to advanced users including developers and enthusiasts.

In Summary, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu differ in package management, support models, costs, desktop environment focus, community size, and target audience.
Decisions about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Ubuntu

Ubuntu is much more faster over Windows and helps to get software and other utilities easier and within a short span of time compared to Windows.

Ubuntu helps to get robustness and resiliency over Windows. Ubuntu runs faster than Windows on every computer that I have ever tested. LibreOffice (Ubuntu's default office suite) runs much faster than Microsoft Office on every computer that I have ever tested.

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Jerome/Zen Quah
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UbuntuUbuntu
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CentOSCentOS

Global familiarity, free, widely used, and as a debian distro feels more comfortable when rapidly switching between local macOS and remote command lines.

CentOS does boast quite a few security/stability improvements, however as a RHEL-based distro, differs quite significantly in the command line and suffers from slightly less frequent package updates. (Could be a good or bad thing depending on your use-case and if it is public facing)

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Simon Aronsson
Developer Advocate at k6 / Load Impact · | 7 upvotes · 263.7K views

At the moment of the decision, my desktop was the primary place I did work. Due to this, I can't have it blow up on me while I work. While Arch is interesting and powerful, Ubuntu offers (at least for me) a lot more stability and lets me focus on other things than maintaining my own OS installation.

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Pros of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Pros of Ubuntu
  • 1
    Well known
  • 1
    Paid sense of security
  • 1
    Learning curve
  • 230
    Free to use
  • 96
    Easy setup for testing discord bot
  • 57
    Gateway Linux Distro
  • 54
    Simple interface
  • 9
    Don't need driver installation in most cases
  • 6
    Open Source
  • 6
    Many active communities
  • 3
    Software Availability
  • 3
    Easy to custom
  • 2
    Many flavors/distros based on ubuntu
  • 1
    Lightweight container base OS
  • 1
    Great OotB Linux Shell Experience

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Cons of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Cons of Ubuntu
  • 1
    Tools and package manager change over time
  • 1
    Subcription fees
  • 1
    Glibc based with many complicated hacks
  • 1
    Packages have huge dependency trees
  • 1
    Default Install is lvm
  • 1
    Anaconda
  • 5
    Demanding system requirements
  • 4
    Adds overhead and unnecessary complexity over Debian
  • 2
    Snapd installed by default
  • 1
    Systemd

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What is Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the industry-leading Linux that provides the foundation for next-generation architectures, with support for all major hardware platforms and thousands of commercial and custom applications.

What is Ubuntu?

Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It also means ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. The Ubuntu operating system brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers.

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What companies use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?
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See which teams inside your own company are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or Ubuntu.
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What are some alternatives to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Ubuntu?
CentOS
The CentOS Project is a community-driven free software effort focused on delivering a robust open source ecosystem. For users, we offer a consistent manageable platform that suits a wide variety of deployments. For open source communities, we offer a solid, predictable base to build upon, along with extensive resources to build, test, release, and maintain their code.
Oracle Linux
The Oracle Cloud offers complete SaaS application suites for ERP, HCM and CX, plus best-in-class database Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) from data centers throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more informati...
Fedora
Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that provides users with access to the latest free and open source software, in a stable, secure and easy to manage form. Fedora is the largest of many free software creations of the Fedora Project. Because of its predominance, the word "Fedora" is often used interchangeably to mean both the Fedora Project and the Fedora operating system.
Debian
Debian systems currently use the Linux kernel or the FreeBSD kernel. Linux is a piece of software started by Linus Torvalds and supported by thousands of programmers worldwide. FreeBSD is an operating system including a kernel and other software.
Kali Linux
It is a Debian-based Linux distribution aimed at advanced Penetration Testing and Security Auditing. It contains several hundred tools which are geared towards various information security tasks, such as Penetration Testing, Security research, Computer Forensics and Reverse Engineering.
See all alternatives