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.

Hybrid Cloud

Other

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.

Hybrid Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

We use Rocky Linux as a big data platform, with a Solar, Apache setup having many nodes, in production just eight and two in test. We have an application server with Tomcat and TomEE, and we use it for the application server for this big database, Quadrant, Docker, and we have CUDA installed with Docker, using PySpark, Torsion, TensorFlow, and many other things. We use Rocky Linux for all, and I have installed Ansible and Prometheus to monitor all servers in production.

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.

The best features Rocky Linux offers include clustering and all the packages from Red Hat.

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.

Rocky Linux could be improved by having more integration with Kubernetes.

I started using Rocky Linux two years ago because we migrated many servers from the CentOS distribution, and now we have all servers migrated by me in Rocky Linux.

When I started to migrate, we had Ubuntu as another choice to move from CentOS, but Ubuntu is a little different, and the best way is to maintain Rocky Linux. We used Rocky Linux, and now we are very happy with it; it's a very good choice, and I think it's very powerful, making it an excellent option with 17 VMs using VMware and many instances.

I give Rocky Linux a nine out of 10 because ten represents perfection, perhaps similar to a real-time operating system such as those used in airplane computers.

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.

On-premises

Other

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.

Hybrid Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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.

On-premises

Other

I am responsible for virtualization and networking, and other services related to the systems including Linux and Windows, but the security part is actually the responsibility of the French team in our headquarter.

Currently, I am dealing with Linux systems. We were on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and because of the license system, we have changed to use Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux.

Rocky Linux is suitable for our needs. We haven't specialized applications, just managing our network. Here we construct a model of infrastructure independent which must respond to the needs of our client, and we make tests. These are tests for VBS and some electronics that are made and developed here. It's an experimental infrastructure with many dynamic changes and many needs from our project manager. With our team, we can provide support as needed. We have a very good team with high skills in Linux and development, and it works correctly with no enterprise cost or enterprise license. At the same time, we have to conform to ISO 27001. We try to have the latest patch management, and we try to use some open source centralized platforms to manage or supervise what we have.

We are using Rocky Linux on servers including Cisco UCS M5, M4, and we have some Dells 750, 740, with high-performance computing tasks. We have stronger servers.

Rocky Linux is quite good for us and for the nature of our business. By using Foreman, Katello, for example, the management system and repository for patch management is very quiet and very good for our business because we don't need more.

Until now, we haven't had any problems with integration of Rocky Linux with other products in my system.

We haven't needed technical support for Rocky Linux, but I think because of the complexity and the number of VMs that we have, we can consider going for a support contract. It's not a bad idea because, while we haven't encountered very difficult problems, with the complexity of the network infrastructure, we need to be supported by the editor.

If I find something which is strong with virtualization with Rocky Linux, it's an alternative that I can study and spend time learning about, trying it, making tests, validating, and perhaps ultimately migrating.

We haven't implemented Rocky Linux container management yet, but we have an idea to find an alternative solution to VMware because of the license model. To migrate to a solution, we need to improve our skills for the first step, and for the second step, we must be able to support the developer teams. What I'm sure about is that we are looking for a solution for virtualization in order to migrate our VMware platform.

One year ago, we switched to version 9.4, Alma and Rocky Linux, and now we are on 9.5.

I cannot answer how Rocky Linux frequent updates have aided our organization in staying secure because it's not under my responsibility, but what I am sure about is that in the next three years, we will continue to use Linux.

I cannot judge if Rocky Linux is complex to use for the first time or if it is intuitive because we use very simple applications such as DHCP, DNS, ICS. I don't remember encountering any difficulties because the infrastructure is for tests and is not an enterprise infrastructure. We haven't deployed LDAP or Active Directory. We don't have this kind of complexity or mail servers. For storage, we are using the Dell EMC storage device hardware, Unity. We don't have the complexity to communicate with Rocky Linux or other systems with our storage network. Perhaps in the future, we might meet some difficulties, which is why I said it might be a good idea to have support for Rocky Linux.

The initial setup of Rocky Linux is easy. It's well done. For my team, we haven't found any problems in the first initial setup. We work with an image with which we can reconstruct what we need of the virtual component.

We were a customer of Red Hat for Linux distribution. We studied Rocky Linux and learned from documentation and information on the internet. It's the successor of CentOS, which we used for five to seven years. When CentOS reached end of support, we tried to migrate. We got two alternatives, AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux. It seems that Rocky Linux is more similar to CentOS than AlmaLinux. AlmaLinux is based on binary, and we identified some latency when using our application. Two or three servers are working on AlmaLinux currently, and all the rest was migrated to Rocky Linux.

The initial setup of Rocky Linux is easy. It's well done. For my team, we haven't found any problems in the first initial setup. We work with an image with which we can reconstruct what we need of the virtual component.

I would rate Rocky Linux seven or eight as a minimum.

We switched to Rocky Linux because of the license price, and in our business, we don't need to have a higher cost as that is not a good idea.

We studied Rocky Linux through documentation and information on the internet. It's the successor of CentOS, which we used for five to seven years. When CentOS reached end of support, we tried to migrate. We got two alternatives, AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux. Rocky Linux is more similar to CentOS than AlmaLinux. AlmaLinux is based on binary, and we identified some latency when using our application. Two or three servers are working on AlmaLinux currently, and all the rest was migrated to Rocky Linux.

I cannot understand the meaning of the question regarding whether we purchased Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux on the AWS Marketplace or somewhere else. I am not sure if we bought our current products on AWS Marketplace.

The problem with all products now is the manner of licensing. Even international or worldwide enterprises have difficulties with the cost of the new model of license in Cisco, Red Hat, and VMware. After the Broadcom acquisition of VMware, every time we ask for a budget, we have difficulties getting what we need. It's becoming difficult for enterprises. Even though I'm working for Sagemcom, a worldwide enterprise, they don't want to spend money on this kind of license if it is not needed.

Rocky Linux is popular in my region as it's a successor of CentOS. CentOS was very popular, so everybody that used CentOS and lost the support will look for a solution to substitute it. The nearest alternative to CentOS is Rocky Linux.

I would rate Rocky Linux a 7 out of 10.

My typical use case for Rocky Linux is that it's the backend operating system for managing where we have a lot of scripts managing networks.

I don't have a use case for AI integration yet because we simply did not look into it, so I don't know if it's there or not.

The experience of working with Rocky Linux is the same as with other Linux distributions; there was no difficulty for me in learning how to work with it.

Rocky Linux is similar to other distributions. I did some research on Google, and then it was manageable without needing documentation.

To be honest, Rocky Linux is almost similar to each Linux distribution, so I have no specific reason why it should offer me its features.

I haven't noticed anything special that could be done better in Rocky Linux.

I switched less than a year ago from my previous company, and I think they have been using it for one or two years.

The experience of working with Rocky Linux is the same as with other Linux distributions; there was no difficulty for me in learning how to work with it.

First of all, there is in-house knowledge for handling technical support or community issues.

If I have specific issues that couldn't be resolved by myself, I either contact an outside ICT company with specialized engineers or contact the vendors.

We have not yet needed to contact a vendor regarding Rocky Linux.

Positive

It's equal whether it's now CentOS, Rocky Linux, or Ubuntu; actually, a bash script remains a bash script.

A server on VMware rolls out the template, so it's a one-hour job to deploy it.

It's equal whether it's now CentOS, Rocky Linux, or Ubuntu; actually, a bash script remains a bash script.

I'm just using tools, so I'm not in any decision making.

The decision is made at the customer, so it's not my decision. I'm not in any decision maker role.

All these decisions have been made. I'm just following it, and for me, there's no real preference between A or B.

I switched less than a year ago from my previous company, and I think they have been using it for one or two years.

It's a hard question to determine the most helpful or useful features in this tool.

I rate Rocky Linux eight out of ten. An eight means that I'm satisfied with it; a product having a ten never exists because things can always be better.

I have nothing really in mind that could make Rocky Linux a nine out of ten.

I have been using Rocky Linux for three or four years. It is used for HPC, online assessments, and Ceph storage.

The solution is free and open source.

The OS choice in my project is quite specific. It is based on customer requirements, as they might want to use Rocky Linux or Ubuntu, depending on their needs.

The package versions can be quite older compared to other distributions such as Ubuntu.

I have been using this solution for about three or four years.

The deployment process is simple.

I would rate the stability an eight out of ten.

The scalability is quite good, though there are some issues with Rocky Linux. I would rate the scalability a five out of seven.

I rely on self-support and community resources.

Positive

I previously used VirtualBox but now tend to use Proxmox.

The initial setup is simple.

It involves a normal setup process using a USB drive or network installation.

It requires a plain installation. The server can be set up with UI, similar to a desktop installation in an on-premises environment.

I use Rocky Linux on the production server first. For Ubuntu installations, it depends on customer requirements.

The package management system requires attention when working with Rocky Linux.

There can be some issues with scalability that need consideration.

I would rate Rocky Linux an eight out of ten.

On-premises

The platform's ease of setup, reliability, and minimal maintenance are valuable features. The custom install scripts streamline the setup process, making it straightforward.

Improved integration with Windows, particularly Active Directory, would be beneficial for the product. Currently, this aspect requires additional effort.

I have been working with Rocky Linux for approximately 18 months, which aligns with its release timeline. We are currently using version 9.4 of the solution.

The product is stable and reliable. I rate the stability a nine. 

Approximately 40 to 50 customers are using the solution. Most of our on-premises servers run Linux, with some running multiple instances. I would rate the scalability as a nine. It performs very well in scaling scenarios.

I have not utilized official technical support and have relied on community resources and forums.

The setup is straightforward, with minimal manual intervention. Depending on the customer's requirements, it is deployed on cloud-based systems or on-premises hardware. 

The deployment typically takes about an hour. Virtual machines can be set up in this timeframe, with additional time needed for specific customer configurations.

I rate the process a nine and a half. 

The product is expensive. I rate the pricing a three. 

The solution allows us to quickly set up multiple virtual machines, reducing costs and requiring less management than other systems.

 It is a robust solution for various server needs. I rate it a nine. 

I use the solution in my company to do some automation stuff to run Ansible, and it has an administration server to provide all the Linux control like a client node can be connected to that master node. Basically, it is an administration node, and I can manage all of the on-premises machines. Basically, it acts as a bastion host or jump host for me.

The most valuable feature of the solution is its stability. The tool's stability is similar to CentOS. The project for CentOS is not functional as of now, a reason why I moved to Fedora and Rocky Linux by another distributor.

I have certain problems with the tool's DNS part, making it an area where improvements are required.

I have been using Rocky Linux for three years and seven months.

Around 400 people in my company use the tool.

I have not contacted technical support for the solution.

I do use multiple operating systems, like CentOS, Red Hat, Fedora, and Rocky, which are all enterprise OS tools meant for commercial use only.

The product's installation, setup, and deployment are easy to manage.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model. My company also uses AWS, Ubuntu versions, Amazon Linux versions, and Red Hat, so the images are used by opting for a cloud provider.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.