Compare RLC Pro and Red Hat Enterprise Linux
RLC Pro is Enterprise Linux built on Rocky Linux, binary compatible with the applications, certifications, and runbooks you run today. LTS, FIPS 140-3 validated cryptography, direct bug fixes from the engineers who build the distribution, legal indemnification, and Enterprise Linux Manager for fleet lifecycle all come with the base subscription, licensed per node. Sources stay publicly available through OpenELA, which CIQ co-founded.
Talk to a CIQ engineer about switching
Enterprises, national laboratories, and government agencies run production on CIQ.
If this sounds like your infrastructure:
- Your renewal climbs every cycle, and the capabilities you actually need sit outside the base subscription
- You are budgeting separately for extended support, fleet management, or both
- Source access for the OS under your fleet depends on a single vendor relationship
- You moved off CentOS and you are still not certain you landed in the right place
- A bug you filed sits outside the published errata criteria, so it waits on someone else’s discretion
- New hardware enablement means running your production release as a guest on a newer host
- Subscription management tooling on every host is one more thing to run and audit
- Your licensing unit changes depending on whether the workload is physical, virtual, or in a cloud
See how NASA runs 28,000 cores on RLC Pro
The Flight Sciences Lab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center runs mission-critical HPC on Rocky Linux and RLC Pro, FIPS certified across the fleet, supporting Artemis II and ISS operations. Their team describes CIQ support as an extension of their own engineers.
RLC Pro and RHEL, side by side
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux | |
| Binary compatibility with the Enterprise Linux ecosystem | ||
| Public source availability | Published through OpenELA, which CIQ co-founded with Oracle and SUSE, within days of each Enterprise Linux release1 | CentOS Stream is the public repository for RHEL-related sources. RHEL sources are available to customers and partners through the Red Hat Customer Portal2 |
| Base life cycle | Aligned to the upstream major version, included in the subscription | Ten years across Full Support, Maintenance Support, and an Extended Life Phase. During the Extended Life Phase, no bug fixes, security fixes, hardware enablement, or root-cause analysis are provided3 |
| Staying on a minor release | Included. LTS on even-numbered minor releases, with pinning for up to 48 months of extended support | Extended Life Cycle provides six years from GA on eligible even-numbered minor releases, replacing the earlier Extended Update Support, Enhanced EUS, and E4S offerings. Long-Life term extensions add renewable annual increments beyond that, and Extended Life Cycle, Premium is a separate stand-alone subscription providing a 14-year major-release life cycle3410 |
| Bug fix scope | Filed directly with the engineers who build the distribution and delivered to your repositories | All errata are provided at Red Hat’s discretion. Bug fix errata cover Urgent and Selected High Priority bug fixes against a published package list; urgent bugs outside that list may be addressed at Red Hat’s discretion3 |
| Security errata scope | CVE remediation across the supported package set | Critical, Important, and Moderate CVEs with a CVSS score of 7.0 or higher, effective April 1, 20253 |
| New hardware enablement after Full Support ends | Pre-built images carrying the NVIDIA CUDA and DOCA-OFED stacks, with production validation on current cloud machine types | Native during the Full Support Phase. During Maintenance Support and Extended Life Cycle, refreshed hardware enablement is achieved by running the release as a virtualized guest on a newer host3 |
| FIPS 140-3 validated cryptography | Included. Five active CMVP certificates issued to Ctrl IQ, Inc., covering the kernel cryptographic API, OpenSSL, and libgcrypt on Rocky Linux 8 and 9: 5200, 5117, 5116, 5113, and 50955 | Validated modules are published per release in the NIST CMVP database5 |
| Fleet content, patching, and provisioning | Enterprise Linux Manager, a separate CIQ product provided at no additional charge on qualifying RLC Pro subscriptions | Red Hat Satellite is a separately licensed product6 |
| Host-side subscription tooling | None | Hosts register and report entitlement through subscription-manager7 |
| Licensing unit | Per node, flat, regardless of sockets, cores, or where the node runs | Socket-pairs for physical servers, virtual instances for VMs, and cores in cloud environments, across Self-support, Standard, and Premium service levels8 |
| Legal indemnification | Included in the base subscription | Provided under Red Hat’s Open Source Assurance program9 |
- OpenELA
- Red Hat, “Furthering the evolution of CentOS Stream”
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Extended Life Cycle, Premium, announced April 2, 2026: press release and product page
- NIST Cryptographic Module Validation Program, certificates issued to Ctrl IQ, Inc., all FIPS 140-3 and active: 5200 (Rocky Linux 8 OpenSSL), 5117 (Rocky Linux 8 and 9 libgcrypt), 5116 (Rocky Linux 9 OpenSSL FIPS Provider), 5113 (Rocky Linux 9 kernel cryptographic API), and 5095 (Rocky Linux 8 kernel cryptographic API). See also the CMVP validated module search.
- Red Hat Satellite
- Red Hat Subscription Management
- Red Hat production support: service levels and Linux platforms store
- Red Hat Open Source Assurance Agreement
- Red Hat legacy extended support offerings: EUS, Enhanced EUS, and ELS
Comparison reflects Red Hat’s publicly published documentation as of August 2026. Red Hat’s offerings and terms change; verify current details with Red Hat before making a purchasing decision.
Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL, CentOS, CentOS Stream, and Red Hat Satellite are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Linux is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. CIQ is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Red Hat, Inc. References are made for identification and comparison purposes only.
Why teams switch
The quote fits on one line
LTS, FIPS 140-3, fleet lifecycle management, and direct fixes come with the base subscription. Licensing is per node and flat, so the number does not move when a server gains sockets or a workload moves to a cloud.
No replatforming
Rocky Linux is binary compatible with the Enterprise Linux ecosystem, so applications, certifications, kickstarts, and runbooks carry over as they are.
Support that ends at a fix
Your case reaches the engineers who build the distribution, and the fix lands in your repositories. A 30-minute Sev 1 response and a named CSM come with the Premium tier.
Hardware that works natively
Pre-built images carry the NVIDIA CUDA and DOCA-OFED stacks, and releases are production validated on current Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure machine types, so enabling new hardware does not mean virtualizing your production release.
Sources you can see
CIQ co-founded OpenELA with Oracle and SUSE to keep Enterprise Linux sources publicly available. Your access to the source under your fleet does not depend on your relationship with any one vendor.
Switching is smaller than you think
Rocky Linux was created by a co-founder of the CentOS project to be what CentOS was: Enterprise Linux, compatible bug for bug. Moving is a repoint rather than a replatform.
- Migrate servers in place with free open source tooling, no reinstall required
- Applications certified for Enterprise Linux run without changes
- Kickstarts, repositories, and runbooks carry over
- CIQ engineers plan and support the cutover with you
Put RLC Pro next to your renewal
Bring your current bill. A CIQ engineer will map it to RLC Pro line by line, including the pieces that sit outside your base subscription today.