CentOS Version 4.3

[fos]

CentOS an open source derivative of Red Hat Enterprise edition released version 4.3 on March 21, 2006. I have heard great things about this distribution. I have downloaded a copy to give it a try.

www.centos.org

fos....

[jorj]

Well Fos, I hope you have better luck than I did. Centos Live was able to find my ISP so I could browse the net. The 4 CD version of Entos 4.3, which I have installed three times was never able to connect. Furnished the same information (my url and any other data I thought might be helpful) to /etc/hosts, but it was never able to connect.
Also, I didn't like the fact that I had to read through two menus to get to the terminal so I change to root do some editing on /etc/hosts.
I hope you have better luck.
73 jorj

[fos]

Hi Jorg,

I haven't gotten around to installing on my wifes computer. The livecd version seemed pretty nice. I still have LN 3.0 on my box and haven't found a replacement. Though I have an uneasy feeling about Ubuntu, I'm going to give it a try when this beta period is over. The beta I tried didn't work very well. I guess that's why it is a beta!

73, de fos....

ps I am going to bring an old box home from my classroom and give it a try on that. I'll post the results next week or the week after, I have grading to do. ;)

[sammil]

I now have CentOS 4.3 up and running on my new machine with the onboard GB LAN. (4.2 did not work, but the new version with the sky2 module instead of sk98lin does.) Found the onboard sound also. Thanks to Daniel I used the Dag repository to get extras.

Only negative up to now is that I'm still using the Vesa driver for my new Nvidia card. Trying even the nv driver caused problems.

Oh yes. Something I can't figure out. On booting the eth0 card is probed and not found. But then it brings up ppp0 without problems. What the hey - it works. Posting from CentOS here.

Just a first report as I only installed last night.

[danieldk]

Only negative up to now is that I'm still using the Vesa driver for my new Nvidia card. Trying even the nv driver caused problems.

Maybe you could try the proprietary NVidia drivers? They work well on my CentOS desktop.

Oh yes. Something I can't figure out. On booting the eth0 card is probed and not found.

Does the driver get loaded?

But then it brings up ppp0 without problems. What the hey - it works. Posting from CentOS here.

Cool :).

<shameless plug>
Oh, yeah, if you start to use more then two repositories, you may want to try my priorities plugin:

http://wiki.centos.org/centoswiki/PackageManagement/Yum/Priorities
</shameless plug>

[sammil]

I'll give the Nvidia drivers a chance later today. And as for the eth0 thing, I'm sure the sky2 driver/module is loaded as the card shows up when I do a system-config-network. Just not initialized. But ppp0 is running. Doing a ifconfig -a shows eth0 with parameters...

Thanks for the hint about repositories. Juggling CentOS with Ubuntu and new box... Christmas in June. Toys everywhere. Now to see what Ubuntu has done to the nvidia driver.

[fos]

I'm currently running the CentOS 4.3 LiveCD on my personal computer.

I really like it! It recognizes everything right out of the box (off the internet) without any effort.

The LiveCD is fast, resolution is good, and application selection is good.

I still need to the the accessibility setup and software. It could be a winner in my search.

IMHO, it is much better than Ubuntu which I also tried today.

fos....

[fos]

I am even more impressed with CentOS now that I have tried its support for low vision users. Even running from the LiveCD, I was able to use Yum to download and setup the Gnopernicus screen reader and screen magnifier software.

It functioning very well even from the LiveCD on my minimal Via M10000N system. This is a breakthrough for low vision users. The Gnopernicus software though not yet mature, still provided functions that cost a lot of money in the Windows world.

fos....

[fos]

I'm curious, has anyone done a comparison between CentOS 4.3 and Fedora Core 5? FC 5 has somewhat newer versions of many software packages. How does the stability and functionality compare?

fos....

[danieldk]

I'm curious, has anyone done a comparison between CentOS 4.3 and Fedora Core 5? FC 5 has somewhat newer versions of many software packages. How does the stability and functionality compare?


Fedora is pratically the beta version of RHEL/CentOS. New technologies are tried in Fedora first, before they are moved to RHEL. So, RHEL is older, but more stable. Another difference is that Red Hat provides security updates for seven years for RHEL.

[fos]

Do I understand correctly that CentOS also provides the security updates for an extended peeriod of time?

fos...

[danieldk]

Do I understand correctly that CentOS also provides the security updates for an extended peeriod of time?

Yes. They also plan to support major platforms (like x86 and x86_64) for that amount of time.

[ralvy]

I'm curious, has anyone done a comparison between CentOS 4.3 and Fedora Core 5? FC 5 has somewhat newer versions of many software packages. How does the stability and functionality compare?

fos....

I find Fedora Core 5 very very stable and fast, and much more up to date than CentOS 4.3.

[danieldk]

Yeah, but new program versions and features are almost introduced daily. Comparing Fedora to CentOS/RHEL is like comparing Debian Testing/Unstable to Debian Stable. Though RHEL is often more up to date, because new drivers are often added in quarterly updates, as well as some other updates (e.g. 4.4 will have new Firefox and Thunderbird browsers).

Fortunately RHEL5 is not far away. From what I have heard beta testing starts this month, and the final release will be end 2006-ish. The beta that is released this month will be very much comparable to Fedora 5 at this point in time, but with major freezing.

Of course, it is nicest to have two disks, one with the latest Fedora Core, and one with CentOS. Or FC with CentOS in a virtual machine. Fedora Core for daily use and development, CentOS for testing stuff (like web applications). And of course, CentOS on servers :).

OTOH, on older computers CentOS is very nice. E.g. my laptop (an Athlon MP2000+) runs very fast with CentOS 4.x, and this version will be supported until 2012. If I chose to run Fedora on that laptop I'd have to choose between slowness (FC5 is too slow on that machine) or obsoleteness (Fedora Core 2/3 with very little updates these days). The idea of being able to get an second hand machine for a few bucks, and being able to run CentOS-2 or CentOS-3 on it is very comforting. Especially because I decided to stop buying new hardware, and go for second hand brand hardware in the future. E.g. my "new" server is a < 200 Euro second hand P4 Dell machine, that works great with CentOS.

[fos]

I'm having trouble with the nvidia nforce nic built into my new mobo. Everything else seems to work. I'm probably going to try a pic nic.

fos....

[julius]

Still searching for the elusive Libranet replacement and, after looking about here, I'm tempted to give the 4 CD set of CentOS 4.3 a try. It's got Gnome and, because I'm bandwidth challenged, a local linux distributor has the set available at a good price.

I had a look at the CentOS website, hoping to find a feature list, but was unsuccessful. There's quite a bit about its server options and features, but it doesn't say a lot about using it as a day-to-day desktop system.

Any comments about using CentOS 4.3 as a day-to-day desktop system would be appreciated. I plan to try a full install (i.e. not live) on a 1.2 GHz Athlon if its recommended.

[fos]

To me, CentOS is the "Debian" of the Redhat/RPM world. It is rock solid and stable. You can choose to install a desktop, development workstation, or server environment set of packages upon install. Or you can customize your own set of packages.

It has a very comprehensive set of applications available, but think stable not cutting edge. Much like Libranet or Debian. It is well supported since it is a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux - probably the most popular Linux distribution for the corporate world. Administration if pretty easy (if you don't have an nvidia chipset) with graphical applications available.

The desktop is nice and defaults to Gnome. I have only been using it on a day to day basis for a short time. I have yet to find and OS based problems.

If you want cutting edge with Gnome try Fedora 5. If you want pretty cutting edge in the KDE world, try Mepis. Both are available in livecds.

fos....

[danieldk]

Some pages with features:

http://www.redhat.com/rhel/details/features/
http://www.redhat.com/rhel/details/

[julius]

Thanks for the responses fos and danieldk.
Had a look through the ref's provided, and on the strength of that decided to order up a set of CentOS CD's. They should arrive tomorrow and I'll have a go at installing them on a test system over the next few days as time allows.
No doubt I'll have a few questions as I move back to the RPM world. :?