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What's the difference between Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux? ================================================================== Published January 3, 2023•*3*-minute read Copy URL Jump to section --------------- OverviewHow do I choose?Enterprise vs. communityBenefitsPopular distrosWhy choose Red Hat?An innovative relationshipWhy Red Hat? Overview -------- A [Linux®](/en/topics/linux) distribution, or distro, is an installable operating system built from the [Linux kernel](/en/topics/linux/what-is-the-linux-kernel), supporting user programs, and libraries. Each vendor or community's *version* is a *distro*. Because [the Linux operating system is open sourced](/en/topics/linux/what-is-linux) and released under the [GNU General Public License (GPL)](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html), anyone can run, study, modify, and redistribute the source code, or even sell copies of their modified code. This differs greatly from traditional operating systems—HP-UX, Microsoft Windows, and macOS—which are proprietary and far less modifiable. [Try Red Hat Enterprise Linux](/en/technologies/linux-platforms/enterprise-linux/server/trial "product | red hat enterprise linux | try it")   [Try Fedora](https://getfedora.org/) How do I choose a Linux distro? ------------------------------- Choosing the right Linux distribution depends on your use case and tool requirements. Certain Linux distros work better for different purposes. Some distros are designed as desktop environments while others are designed to support backend IT systems (like enterprise or web servers). When choosing your next Linux distro, your first consideration needs to be whether you need an enterprise Linux distro or a community Linux distro. Red Hat resources ----------------- [Keep reading](/en/resources "Keep reading") Enterprise vs. community Linux distros -------------------------------------- Linux distributions are available as community versions or enterprise versions. A community distro is a free Linux distro primarily supported and maintained by the [open source](/en/topics/open-source/what-is-open-source) community. An enterprise—or commercial—Linux distro is available through a subscription from a vendor and does not rely solely on community support. The primary difference between community and enterprise distros is who decides what’s important to users. A community distro’s direction is set by contributors, who choose and maintain packages from the wide variety of open source options. The direction of an enterprise distro is set by a vendor, based on the needs of their customers. Think about it like this. [The Fedora project](https://getfedora.org/) is the upstream, community distro of [Red Hat® Enterprise Linux](/en/technologies/linux-platforms/enterprise-linux). Red Hat is the project’s primary sponsor, but thousands of independent developers also contribute to the Fedora project. Each of these contributors, including Red Hat, bring their own new ideas to be tested and debated for inclusion by the larger community into Fedora Linux. This also makes Fedora an ideal place for Red Hat to put features through its own distinct set of tests and quality assurance processes, and those features eventually get incorporated into a version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. [Learn more about these differences](/en/blog/what-enterprise-open-source "What is enterprise open source?") What are the benefits of an enterprise distro? ---------------------------------------------- If Linux is free and open source, why would you want to pay for a commercial distribution? Community distros are a great option for people who are new to Linux and don’t have much experience with the command line, or who just want to play around and experiment. If you’re trying to support a [server](/en/topics/linux/linux-server) for a long period of time, community distros like Fedora might not be the best choice. Enterprise distros, like Red Hat Enterprise Linux, are designed to meet business needs and concerns. Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers 10-year life cycle support (as opposed to Fedora’s 2 years of support), so you can better support long-term apps. With an enterprise distro, you get patches, updates, upgrades, expert technical support, and access to training and resources. A community distro relies on forum-based support from its community members, and release cycles aren’t always on a regular cadence. Also with a commercially supported distro, you get the benefits of the latest open source innovation with the stability and support an enterprise needs. Red Hat has a team of engineers to help improve features, reliability, and security to make sure your infrastructure performs and remains stable—no matter your use case and workload. [Explore the importance of enterprise open source](/en/enterprise-open-source-report/2019 "Enterprise Open Source Report 2019") Popular Linux distros --------------------- Android Arch Linux Centos Debian Elementary OS Fedora Gentoo Linux Kali Linux Linux Mint Manjaro Linux MX Linux Puppy Linux Slackware Solus Ubuntu and all its versions (Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Lubuntu—just to name a few) Why choose Red Hat for Linux? ----------------------------- Every technology in your IT stack needs to work together. And the workloads need to be portable and scalable across bare metal servers, virtual machines, containers, or private and public clouds. They need a modern, security-focused operating system with long-term support. That operating system is Red Hat Enterprise Linux. With a standard operating system underlying your workloads, you can easily move them across environments—wherever it makes sense for your business. Red Hat Enterprise Linux gives you a consistent, stable foundation across [hybrid cloud](/en/topics/cloud-computing/what-is-hybrid-cloud) deployments, along with built-in [manageability](/en/topics/management) and [integration](/en/topics/integration) with the broader Red Hat [management and automation](/en/hybrid-cloud-solutions/automation) portfolio. You can learn more about how Red Hat Enterprise Linux works for your particular tasks in our [learning hub](/en/technologies/linux-platforms/enterprise-linux/learn). An innovative relationship -------------------------- [Developers](/en/technologies/linux-platforms/enterprise-linux/red-hat-enterprise-linux-for-developers) and [Linux](/en/topics/linux) enthusiasts flock to Fedora for the latest features and the opportunity to directly collaborate with Red Hat engineers. The Fedora community has thousands of users, contributors, and supporters, who interact through various online forums, email lists, and wikis to support each other. With a rapid development and release cycle, Fedora provides the latest technology on current hardware platforms. The size and expertise of the Fedora open source community makes it the ideal testing ground for features that eventually get incorporated into Red Hat Enterprise Linux, after Red Hat puts those features through its own set of tests and quality assurance processes that are separate and distinct from those of Fedora. Why Red Hat? ------------ When enterprises choose Red Hat Enterprise Linux, they begin a relationship with the leading provider of open source solutions. Not only do we offer stable platforms with long support lifecycles, customers also get the benefits of a global engineering, consulting, and support organizations. A [Red Hat subscription](/en/about/value-of-Red-Hat) gives you access to software and maintenance along with information and support services that span your entire application infrastructure lifecycle and architecture. Hub The official Red Hat blog ------------------------- Get the latest information about our ecosystem of customers, partners, and communities. [Keep reading](/en/blog "The official Red Hat blog") All Red Hat product trials -------------------------- Our no-cost product trials help you gain hands-on experience, prepare for a certification, or assess if a product is right for your organization. [Keep reading](/en/products/trials "All Red Hat product trials") Keep reading ------------ ### Why run Linux on AWS? For organizations using Amazon Web Services (AWS), Linux shortens time to market, reduces complexity, provides on-demand scalability, and lowers costs. [Read the article](/en/topics/linux/linux-on-aws "article | Why run Linux on AWS?") ### What is high availability? High availability determines if a system is meeting its operational performance level, is available almost 100% of the time, and is performant for an established time period. [Read the article](/en/topics/linux/what-is-high-availability "article | What is high availability") ### What is ERP? Enterprise resource planning (ERP) unifies the massive amounts of data within an organization, and enables information flow between different teams. [Read the article](/en/topics/linux/what-is-erp "article | What is ERP?") Linux resources --------------- ### Related content * Blog post [Simplify Linux management across your systems’ lifecycles with Red Hat Insights](/en/blog/simplify-linux-management-across-your-systems-lifecycles-red-hat-insights) * Blog post [Building Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10: Behind the scenes](/en/blog/building-red-hat-enterprise-linux-10-behind-scenes) * Detail [Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription guide](/en/resources/red-hat-enterprise-linux-subscription-guide) * Blog post [The next evolution of Red Hat’s Developer options](/en/blog/next-evolution-red-hats-developer-options) ### Related articles * [Why run Linux on AWS?](/en/topics/linux/linux-on-aws) * [What is high availability?](/en/topics/linux/what-is-high-availability) * [What is ERP?](/en/topics/linux/what-is-erp) * [Functional safety and continuous certification on Linux](/en/topics/open-source/functional-safety-and-continuous-certification-on-linux) * [What is SAP HANA (and why does it run on Linux)?](/en/topics/linux/sap-hana-and-linux) * [Why run Linux on IBM Cloud](/en/topics/linux/linux-on-ibm-cloud) * [What is CentOS Stream?](/en/topics/linux/what-is-centos-stream) * [Why choose Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Azure?](/en/technologies/linux-platforms/enterprise-linux/why-choose-red-hat-enterprise-linux-on-azure) * [Why choose Red Hat Enterprise Linux on AWS?](/en/technologies/linux-platforms/enterprise-linux/why-choose-red-hat-enterprise-linux-on-aws) * [Linux on Azure](/en/topics/linux/linux-on-azure) * [Linux for cloud computing](/en/topics/linux/linux-for-cloud-computing) * [Why choose Red Hat for Linux?](/en/topics/linux/why-choose-red-hat-enterprise-linux) * [What to know about CentOS Linux EOL](/en/topics/linux/centos-linux-eol) * [What is CentOS?](/en/topics/linux/what-is-centos) * [What to know for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 End of Maintenance](/en/technologies/linux-platforms/enterprise-linux/rhel-7-end-of-maintenance) * [How to move to Red Hat Enterprise Linux from other Linux distros](/en/technologies/linux-platforms/enterprise-linux/migration-process/convert2rhel) * [Red Hat Enterprise Linux migration process](/en/technologies/linux-platforms/enterprise-linux/migration-process) * [Why run Linux on Google Cloud?](/en/topics/linux/linux-on-google-cloud) * [Red Hat Satellite on Red Hat Enterprise Linux](/en/technologies/management/satellite/satellite-for-rhel) * [Why choose Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Google Cloud?](/en/technologies/linux-platforms/enterprise-linux/why-choose-red-hat-enterprise-linux-google-cloud) * [What is Linux kernel live patching?](/en/topics/linux/what-is-linux-kernel-live-patching) * [What is the SAP HANA migration?](/en/topics/linux/what-is-sap-hana-migration) * [Why run Microsoft SQL Server on Linux?](/en/topics/linux/why-run-sql-server-on-linux) * [What's the best Linux distro for you?](/en/topics/linux/whats-the-best-linux-distro-for-you) * [What is Linux?](/en/topics/linux/what-is-linux) * [What is an image builder?](/en/topics/linux/what-is-an-image-builder) * [What is a Linux server?](/en/topics/linux/linux-server) * [What is a configuration file?](/en/topics/linux/what-configuration-file) * [What is high performance computing (HPC)?](/en/topics/high-performance-computing/what-is-high-performance-computing) * [What is a golden image?](/en/topics/linux/what-is-a-golden-image) * [ARM vs x86: What's the difference?](/en/topics/linux/ARM-vs-x86) * [What is an ARM processor?](/en/topics/linux/what-is-arm-processor) * [What is lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) authentication?](/en/topics/security/what-is-ldap-authentication) * [What is MPLS?](/en/topics/edge-computing/what-is-mpls) * [Red Hat Enterprise Linux security](/en/technologies/linux-platforms/enterprise-linux/security) * [What is a Linux certification?](/en/topics/linux/linux-certification) * [What was CoreOS and CoreOS container Linux](/en/technologies/cloud-computing/openshift/what-was-coreos) * [What is SELinux?](/en/topics/linux/what-is-selinux) * [What is the Linux kernel?](/en/topics/linux/what-is-the-linux-kernel) [More about this topic](/en/topics/linux "More about this topic")