Why Rocky Linux Is a Rock-Solid Choice in an Economic Downturn

During this economic downturn, companies are cutting costs and rethinking their investments. This has contributed to the rapid adoption of Rocky Linux as a rock-solid, stable, community-backed, production-ready, free, open source operating system. In fact, Rocky is now the fastest-growing Enterprise Linux distribution, widely adopted because of its low total cost of ownership (TCO), proven stability, extreme compatibility, and strong support. 

Why is Rocky Linux a smart, safe bet in the midst of economic uncertainty? Here are 5 reasons: 

1. TCO/cost savings: One of the primary benefits of using Rocky Linux is that it is a free and open source operating system, which can help organizations save on licensing fees and other costs associated with proprietary software. Rocky Linux will always be free and in the community as an independent project. In addition, CIQ’s support structure enables customers to save money with flexible pricing: we don’t count, audit, or bill for systems, entitlements, cloud instances, virtual machines, or containers because they don’t count; it’s the people who count. Today, based on current pricing, we can deliver a significantly lower total cost of ownership versus other commercial Linux distributions on a by-unit basis with our support plans. Our cloud partners, such as Google, AWS, Oracle, and Azure, can also provide significant cost savings, because you pay only for the resources you consume, rather than incurring the upfront expense of maintaining your own physical infrastructure. That said, Rocky Linux is fully supported for on-premise, cloud-hosted, and hybrid infrastructure.

2. Stability and reliability: Based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Rocky Linux shares the same virtues: reliable, well-tested, and predictable. This can be especially important in an economic slump, when organizations need to minimize downtime and maintain critical systems. Rocky Linux’s latest version further solidifies its stable foundation with Peridot, a completely cloud-native build system, which facilitates quick and seamless releases of the Rocky Linux distribution, as well as routine maintenance software updates and security patches. In addition, with a 10-year committed support lifecycle for each major release, Rocky Linux is ideal for stable, long-term use in enterprise environments.

3. Customization and flexibility: Rocky Linux is highly customizable and the operating system can be tailored to meet the specific configurations or needs of an organization. Peridot enables anyone to build, enhance, or reproduce Rocky Linux independently. You have full access to Rocky’s source code, so that you can view, modify, and improve on it according to your unique needs. This feature is especially important when organizations may need to adapt quickly to changing circumstances. CIQ’s knowledgeable team, with over 500 person-years of experience, is also well positioned to help users customize Rocky Linux and simplify its management at scale. We can even customize the kernel with the Linux mainline stable kernel, enabling our customers to measurably increase performance.

4. Strong support and community: Rocky Linux has a strong community of users and developers, contributing engineering expertise, infrastructure resources, and other ongoing support for organizations using the operating system. CIQ is the official founding support and services partner and sponsor of the Rocky Linux project, but it does not own it. Instead, it belongs to a community of organizations, companies, and individuals, critical to the open source project’s continued success and long-term stability. With broad industry involvement, its backers include Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and VMware. This robust community adds value in the form of escalation support, customization, optimization, integration, and professional services. 

5. Compatibility with existing systems: Rocky Linux is 100% binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which means that it can easily integrate with existing systems and infrastructure. Migration to Rocky Linux from an existing system is straightforward. Users can get up to speed quickly and don’t need extensive training to run it, saving time and money. Its “bug-for-bug compatibility” ensures compatibility at the most granular level. 

As organizations look for ways to future-proof their business, Rocky Linux is the ideal choice for a Linux operating system. Not only is it free, it also offers stability, flexibility, support, compatibility, and security, essential features at all times, but especially during an economic downturn.