Best Operating Systems

Compare the Top Operating Systems as of July 2025

What are Operating Systems?

Operating systems (OS) are the base software layer on any computer, smartphone, server, or computing system. Operating systems manage all aspects of a computing system including applications, software, and hardware. Compare and read user reviews of the best Operating Systems currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.

  • 1
    VxWorks

    VxWorks

    Wind River

    The World’s Leading Real-Time Operating System for the Intelligent Edge For nearly 35 years, VxWorks has been used to ensure the security, safety, and reliability you need to design and build mission-critical embedded systems that simply must work. VxWorks® is the industry’s most trusted and widely deployed real-time operating system (RTOS) for mission-critical embedded systems that must be secure and safe. It delivers a proven, real-time, and deterministic runtime combined with a modern approach to development. Regardless of industry or device type, companies building intelligent edge systems rely on the VxWorks pedigree of security, safety, high performance, and reliability. VxWorks is a deterministic, priority-based preemptive RTOS with low latency and minimal jitter. It is built on an upgradable, future-proof architecture to help you rapidly respond to changing market requirements and technology advancements.
    Starting Price: $18,500 / seat
  • 2
    Oracle Solaris
    We’ve been designing the OS for for more than two decades, always ensuring that we’ve engineered in features to meet the latest market trends while maintaining backward compatibility. Our Application Binary Guarantee gives you the ability to run your newest and legacy applications on modern infrastructure. Integrated lifecycle management technologies allow you to issue a single command to update your entire cloud installation—clear down to the firmware and including all virtualized environments. One large financial services company saw a 16x efficiency gain by managing its virtual machines (VMs) using Oracle Solaris, compared to a third-party open-source platform. New additions to the Oracle Solaris Observability tools allow you to troubleshoot system and application problems in real time, giving you real-time and historical insight and allowing for unprecedented power to diagnose and resolve issues quickly and easily.
  • 3
    Flatcar Container Linux
    The introduction of container-based infrastructure was a paradigm shift. A Container-optimized Linux distribution is the best foundation for cloud native infrastructure. A minimal OS image only includes the tools needed to run containers. No package manager, no configuration drift. Delivering the OS on an immutable filesystem eliminates a whole category of security vulnerabilities. Automated atomic updates mean you get the latest security updates and open source technologies. Flatcar Container Linux is designed from the ground up for running container workloads. It fully embraces the container paradigm, including only what is required to run containers. Your immutable infrastructure deserves an immutable Linux OS. With Flatcar Container Linux, you manage your infrastructure, not your configuration.
  • 4
    Rocky Linux

    Rocky Linux

    Ctrl IQ, Inc.

    CIQ empowers people to do amazing things by providing innovative and stable software infrastructure solutions for all computing needs. From the base operating system, through containers, orchestration, provisioning, computing, and cloud applications, CIQ works with every part of the technology stack to drive solutions for customers and communities with stable, scalable, secure production environments. CIQ is the founding support and services partner of Rocky Linux, and the creator of the next generation federated computing stack. - Rocky Linux, open, Secure Enterprise Linux - Apptainer, application Containers for High Performance Computing - Warewulf, cluster Management and Operating System Provisioning - HPC2.0, the Next Generation of High Performance Computing, a Cloud Native Federated Computing Platform - Traditional HPC, turnkey computing stack for traditional HPC
  • 5
    KubeSphere

    KubeSphere

    KubeSphere

    KubeSphere is a distributed operating system for cloud-native application management, using Kubernetes as its kernel. It provides a plug-and-play architecture, allowing third-party applications to be seamlessly integrated into its ecosystem. KubeSphere is also a multi-tenant enterprise-grade open-source Kubernetes container platform with full-stack automated IT operations and streamlined DevOps workflows. It provides developer-friendly wizard web UI, helping enterprises to build out a more robust and feature-rich Kubernetes platform, which includes the most common functionalities needed for enterprise Kubernetes strategies. A CNCF-certified Kubernetes platform, 100% open-source, built and improved by the community. Can be deployed on an existing Kubernetes cluster or Linux machines, supports the online and air-gapped installation. Deliver DevOps, service mesh, observability, application management, multi-tenancy, storage, and networking management in a unified platform.
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