Rocky Linux 9 Latest (Rocky 9) with support by ProComputers

Our main use case for Rocky Linux  is to host servers and developer environments for leading telecom vendors.

The best features Rocky Linux  offers, in my experience, include long-term support, stability, and one-to-one binary compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux .

Rocky Linux has been a major driver for our cloud migration strategy and has proven to be one of the most cost-effective solutions for us, allowing us to save huge revenue while maintaining fantastic consistency with updates.

From a feature or experience perspective, it has been fantastic, but the only drawback we have seen is that even though there are timely deliveries of security patches and vulnerability fixes, the Rocky Linux Security Advisor or RLSA updates via the DNF utilities are broken or delayed. When we use the DNF functionality to search the affected RLSA or RLSA with CVE IDs, it's not working as expected, and the mirrors or the XML files need to be updated similar to Red Hat, which would help us keep our environment more secure and make maintenance easier. Otherwise, we have to do extensive research to identify the affected packages or RPMs with specific RLSA numbers.

I would like to see improvements in the security areas and updates of RLSA details as soon as the RLSA numbers are updated in the XML file. Security has been a major driver for IT organizations across the world and must be addressed at a faster pace. The unavailability of RLSA in the DNF search has been a major drawback that I would like to see improved in the future.

I have been using Rocky Linux for three years for our day-to-day use cases.

We have seen a stable Rocky Linux environment as of now.

Our solution does not currently involve architecture with scalability.

Customer support for Rocky Linux is excellent, and the documentation is also very good.

Positive

We were using CentOS  previously, and as the lifecycle of CentOS  was changed by Red Hat, we looked for an alternative, and Rocky Linux suited us best.

It has been a wonderful experience associating with Rocky Linux, and we would continue to use it full-fledged. I don't see that we have to choose any alternative OS in the near future.

ROI has been good as we have significant open source community involvement. In fact, we have increased our footprints, allowing us to onboard more resources or employees, which is a positive sign.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Rocky Linux is good and streamlined, with no hiccups.

Before choosing Rocky Linux, we evaluated other options including Ubuntu , Oracle Linux , and a few other flavors, but since Rocky Linux has one-to-one binary compatibility with Red Hat, it was the best fit.

Rocky Linux has been a ready-to-use solution for us, so we don't need to have vendor dependency or vendor lock for any support or help. The community has been a great help in resolving all issues, and while from a monetary point of view, it has resulted in significant savings, we cannot provide the exact numbers as some of this is company confidential.

There is not much need for further improvements at this juncture.

If you want to get a premium product with the best in-house community support, Rocky Linux would be the one solution.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate Rocky Linux a 9 out of 10.

My main use case for Rocky Linux  is that all the applications used by our company are hosted in Rocky Linux  servers, so we will be maintaining, remediating the vulnerabilities which are getting reported on the servers, patching the servers and making them up to date, and helping all the users who log into servers to use their applications without any issues.

A specific example of an application where I'm using Rocky Linux in my company is the POS machines which are used by the customers, where all the POS related applications are hosted in Rocky Linux operating system, so that's where Rocky Linux came into the picture, and from the OS level, we will be giving all the support wherever it is necessary.

The middleware packages such as Apache Tomcat , Java, HTTPD are all running on these Rocky Linux servers, so we ensure all those services are up and running without any issues.

The best features Rocky Linux offers are that it is much easier to use. Since it is open source, whatever issues we face, we can get answers from the community for each and every issue we encounter, so finding a solution for each problem is much easier, and that's the major feature I feel for Rocky Linux.

When comparing Rocky Linux to Red Hat, it is more stable, as whatever issues arise, we can solve them quickly, and since there is an open community, we receive help from everybody who is using this.

Rocky Linux has helped our organization significantly in terms of cost. If we were purchasing a Red Hat subscription, it would cost significantly more, but since Rocky Linux is open source and free, it has helped with cost reduction, allowing us to utilize those funds for other needed things.

When we moved from Red Hat to Rocky Linux, we saved around 70% of the cost which was used for subscriptions. That money is now used for other things such as middleware applications and monitoring applications including DataDog and Dynatrace .

To improve Rocky Linux, providing releases for each package, firmware, and kernel more quickly would be beneficial. Currently, it takes more than one month to release a new package or kernel, so speeding that up would help reduce reported vulnerability remediations.

Documenting the frequently asked questions and related issues in a PDF or Word document would be helpful so that everybody can refer to them, eliminating the need to post a question and wait for a reply, thus reducing time delay.

Currently, there aren't many needed improvements, only the support aspect needs a little improvement. Everything else is going well and smoothly.

I have been using Rocky Linux for more than six years.

Rocky Linux is stable, scalable, and it is very much easier to use.

Regarding customer support, since it is open source, most of the solutions are available on the community page, but even if we raise a support ticket, we receive a resolution or a reply from the team within two business days.

I would rate the customer support a seven.

Positive

Before choosing Rocky Linux, we were considering moving with Red Hat itself, planning to move from RHEL  8 to RHEL  9, but after considering the cost involving Red Hat, we thought about an open source solution, which led us to Rocky Linux.

When it comes to return on investment, a lot of money is saved since we moved from a purchased license to the open source provided by Rocky Linux. Time is also saved since whenever an issue arises, we get resolutions from the community without needing to raise a ticket with the support team.

When we encounter an issue, we look all over the internet, not only depending on the community, so whichever solutions provide us with proper resolution are considered.

My advice to others looking into using Rocky Linux is that it is much easier to use, it's scalable, performance is good, and there is no cost involved in using it.

I rate Rocky Linux nine out of ten.

We have a normal three-tier architecture and new things on Docker with PySpark, using it for enrichment and loading a million records of data in our database. We have a Spark node with Apache Spark ; it's part of our big data, similar to Hadoop  big data.

Rocky Linux has impacted my organization very positively because we migrated everything from CentOS  and Windows servers to Rocky Linux. Everything is clear, with good packaging, and now it's version 9.6, which is very important for us due to security problems since we are in Europe. Rocky Linux is very good for security and other aspects.

Since migrating to Rocky Linux, I've seen specific outcomes such as improved security because CentOS  stopped the project, and security patches aren't being released. We need to maintain a system similar to Red Hat, which is very stable and has many features such as file system, topology, and containers.

My advice for others looking into using Rocky Linux is to choose it, especially for people coming from CentOS; I suggest Rocky Linux as the best option, not any other distribution.

My company has a business relationship with this vendor as a partner.

You can use my real name when publishing my review. You can use Joint Research Center, JRC, but not my real company name in the review as I'm working for another company.

As a Cloud Ops Engineer, we are setting up the server on the EC2  machine with Rocky Linux , while also doing some setup related to the frameworks for Ruby. We are installing their dependencies related to the Ruby on Rails application and other security-level software such as Rapid7, CrowdStrike, and many more.

On Rocky Linux , we have deployed a Ruby on Rails application, and we have set up other applications as well.

We are not doing this stuff manually, as we have set up an Ansible  automation script to set up all this stuff on Rocky Linux, and for the installation and server setup, we are using Terraform . Using Terraform , we are spinning up the instance on AWS  EC2 .

I purchased Rocky Linux through the AWS Marketplace .

Rocky Linux provides us with extended maintenance, security patches, and support lifecycle aligned with RHEL , making it highly reliable for critical systems. For production deployment, Rocky Linux is a great choice because it offers full RHEL  compatibility without licensing costs, along with strong community support.

If we are planning to migrate from CentOS , it was very smooth and straightforward, and we can follow their official document to migrate from CentOS  to Rocky Linux. Rocky Linux 8 is supported until 2029, and Rocky Linux 9 is supported until 2032, which is a significant benefit.

Previously it was CentOS, which is already EOL, and now we have the latest packages and an up-to-date operating system, so we get the most benefit at the security level. Also, performance-wise, we are seeing improvement in the application and day-to-day operations.

I have no suggestions regarding how Rocky Linux can be improved. I haven't identified any areas that need improvement yet.

I have been using Rocky Linux for over a year.

Rocky Linux is stable in my experience.

Rocky Linux's scalability is very easy. Even if the server is not responding and we want to attach the volume on another instance or a temporary instance, it is very easy and straightforward with no hiccups.

I have not reached out to customer support for Rocky Linux. This has not yet been discussed with my security team, as this is recent, and the security team started checking on this.

Negative

We switched to Rocky Linux because our previous OS was EOL, and we had to switch to the new OS, so we chose Rocky Linux.

Regarding return on investment, we have chosen the same exact resource that we were using earlier, so there is no immediate return on investment. That needs to be identified if we can cut down our resources with a smaller instance, but that has not yet been figured out.

I notice money saved as a return on investment.

There is no extra cost for a license if we are purchasing Rocky Linux from the AWS Marketplace .

I didn't evaluate other options before choosing Rocky Linux.

I rate Rocky Linux a nine out of ten.

If you are using any other RHEL-based OS, Rocky Linux is very similar to other RHEL operating systems.

I see some performance-related issues, but we are still checking on that, and we don't know if it is related to the OS or the resource; that is something still to be checked from our end.

I would recommend doing a POC on your existing application or use case with Rocky Linux. If it works smoothly, then observe it for a few periods, and if it works properly for your application and whatever your use case is, proceed with implementation. Each application and use case works totally differently, so if it works for some applications properly, it's not a given that it will work for every application. First do a POC, and if it works properly, then you can proceed with implementation.

My main use case for Rocky Linux  is that we had some web servers that we used as internal web servers on a LEMP stack with Nginx for some internal websites and systems. At the time, they ran on CentOS , but we felt it would be better to migrate them to Rocky Linux . I remember we had a script to migrate those servers and it worked very well. Since then, I have left the company, but my colleagues who are still there are using it with no problems so far.

Stability and good old trusted baseline.

In my opinion, the best features Rocky Linux offers are stability, compatibility, and community support, all of which I think are extremely necessary and essential for the distribution, and I find that all three pillars are very supported by Rocky Linux.

The big difference was the compatibility, one-to-one compatibility, and packages and repos, and that was the main thing that helped us significantly after all.

Rocky Linux has positively impacted my organization, specifically through cost savings, because we did not have to buy any licenses or extra licenses of other distros, such as Oracle or RedHat, and that helped significantly, giving us independence in this project without needing a budget specifically for it. This helped tremendously.

I cannot think of anything right now that could improve Rocky Linux. I think they should keep up the great job.

I have been using Rocky Linux on and off since its first release, right after CentOS  changed its releases and both Rocky Linux and Alma started.

Rocky Linux is stable.

For my case, Rocky Linux's scalability has been very good.

I have not had any experience with customer support so far because I usually research things on my own, and the documentation and community help significantly in those cases.

Positive

We previously used CentOS, and we switched because their release politics were not really going into the stable way that we always thought CentOS was praised for, which is why we chose to migrate.

I decided to migrate those web servers specifically to Rocky Linux instead of another option because I actually tried both distributions, Alma and Rocky Linux, and I believe that the one that was most similar to how we used CentOS was Rocky Linux. This was the best choice after all.

If I recall correctly, I had some problems during the migration process, but it was not with Rocky Linux; it was with AlmaLinux  installation. That was one of the main factors as because we had some bugs. Rocky Linux was a very good choice in the end and it is working efficiently.

I have seen a return on investment because our team was very small and is still small in overall support in the company. One good thing is that we did not have to contract any other team member specifically for the migration since everyone was already well-versed with CentOS. This should count as a point, and while I do not have exact metrics of expenses, I believe it saved around some thousands of dollars for the company.

I did not have any experience with pricing because we used mainly the free version of Rocky Linux at the time.

Before choosing Rocky Linux, I evaluated other options such as AlmaLinux , and if I recall correctly, we also researched RedHat.

I would advise others looking into using Rocky Linux to try it out, especially if they have servers on CentOS, as it is very valid for an upgrade. I know a lot of CentOS servers have already reached the end-of-life state, with no more updates or security updates, so I would recommend a migration to Rocky Linux. I rate Rocky Linux 10 out of 10.