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74 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+23Should someone tell Jerry Taylor, mayor of Tuttle, Oklahoma before he says CENTOS HAXD MY WEBSITE again?
- Mindflux, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17If you don't like it go somewhere that's not so tech oriented, douche.
- NJHewitt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Try including the "completesentences" USE-flag and rebuilding.
- Mindflux, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12You are kidding, right? The point of CentOS is to have a 'Server Class' Linux distribution for the price of nothing. You get Red Hat's "reliability" (Take that for what you will, but RHEL releases are infinitely more reliable/stable than FC releases). Anything you want to do with CentOS, you can dig out howto's for RHEL and it'll likely work in CentOS too.
So, free os, free support. What's the problem? - bluenova, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12CentOS is one of the most stable distro's out there, which is why it's used for most internet servers.
- bipolar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Fedora is basicly alpha/beta testing for RHEL. It's not something a sane admin would really want to use for anything he expected to run for years without issues. CentOS, however, *IS* RHEL with all the trademarked stuff replaced. If you must use a RedHat compatible distro for something business critical, CentOS is the way to go.
- Vanadium, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8It's a pain that there is no upgrade route via yum. Looks like I'm spending my weekend in the data center I guess.
For those of you that don't know CentOS is a "free" version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Since the source RPMs are made available of RHEL the CentOS team just recompiles these and releases them under the CentOS name. - counterplex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7@beercosoftware
As it's a drop-in replacement for RHEL, Centos is a great way for ISVs to test software against. It's also great to have an identical environment at home to what one has at work (for those of us running RHEL) without having to spend a dime. - halleyscomet, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9@GawtMilk
Where the HELL did you get a copy of Windows for $80???
Windows Server (Which CentOS is designed to compete with) STARTS at $1,000 unless you somehow qualify for the truncated $400 version.
Sure you can get the Vista Home Basic Upgrade for about $90, but you sound like you use your PC for actual work, which, if you want decent networking support (VPN and the like) means you have to look at the Business or Ultimate editions, which starts at $200.
Of course, if you need Photoshop and Gimp won't do, you really have to choose between Windows and Mac, which gets into a whole different flame war. - mwosh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7So... I'm no linux fanboy so please resist the flames, but do all gnome desktops look like that?
Because the taskbar and menu layouts look strikingly similar to Ubuntu - beercosoftware, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@Mindflux
There's no problem. The packages on RHEL and Debian tend to get stale though.
The whole point of using RHEL for most companies is it's supported and TESTED hardware configs, and stability.
I think you mentioned that. That being said, the support is an integral part of that stability.
If you hire an RHCT or CE with CentOS, the binaries are not named the same, ect... because of trademarking issues.
Fedora and Ubuntu work very well and are stable in server environments, and have newer packages.
The point of RHEL is the support and the testing. I've worked on people's servers that had CentOS, and I would have to end up rebuilding TONS of packages and charging them more for support than it would have cost them with Red Hat.
Sure you can get any GPL packages for free, but that's not where the real value of RHEL is.
You can avoid paying Red Hat, but if you are using it commercially, you are going to end up paying as much or more anyway.
I would rather support customers that already have Red Hat support as a 2nd tier than people who are stranded with CentOS.
CentOS as a free Linux distro is fine. Sometimes it is advertised as free RHEL, and that's not the case though because 80% of RHEL is the enterprise support.
@bipolar,
If you stick to the base and updates repositories and possibly just livna, Fedora is very stable for Enterprise environments. Tons of large datacenters like affinity in central Florida use it as a primary OS. They're not alone. I would recommend it without hesitation for companies looking to save money. - jackcall, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Jerry 'the engineer' Taylor wasn't the mayor, he was the city manager. The mayor of Tuttle was some kid-like real-estate agent...
but yeah, somebody should give the idiot a heads-up ... or we could just watch the fun unfold again*evil laugh* - sulf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5In Fedora Core 6 they introduced new yum metadata parser written in C. It is _dozens_ of times faster than the original one written in Python. I hope they include it in RHEL/CentOS 5.
- GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Think the criticism of Red Hat is a bit unfair. They state clearly that the money is for the support contracts and not the software and haven't tried to make it difficult for CentOS to continue to do it's job (because they recognise that it essentially familiarises people with RHEL, they could obfusticate source distribution channels rather than distributing SRPM's). Red Hat as a long stated policy of supporting open solutions only unless it would absolutely break the system.
Also Red Hat will be producing a free gratis desktop solution built on RHEL5 technology for the community in the coming months.
Despite all this I'm really looking forward to CentOS5. RHEL5 is a much more exciting release than previous ones (largely due to an improved desktop option) and has had rave reviews in all the Linux magazines I've read. - ordminute, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"I just find Linux confusing, period. The entire nature of Linux is confusing. Which distro do I download, what front end do I use, what packages to install or even what package installer to use?"
Do you always need people to tell you what to do? Who told you what clothes to wear, which apartment to rent, which movie to watch? You value choice in other areas of your life, why not on your desktop? Is a country fragmented (to reference an excellent analogy from ZheAldo above) if they have more than one province or state? No, of course not. You're diluting your own argument with such wild generalisations.
Linux is for those computer users that like to make a computer a home - and why not. They want the machine to yield to their needs as opposed to them yielding to the needs of some generic idea of what 'Desktop Useability' constitutes. People drive on different sides of the road, in different colored cars, in different skin colors, speaking different languages, wearing different colored clothes. Do you _really think_ it's actually bad (or even unnatural) that we have such a myriad of choice on the desktop? I'm grateful we don't just have a world of personal computing as boolean as "Apple or Windows"? Yuk. Neither suit me.
Anyway, Linux isn't out to get Windows. Quit suggesting this is the charter of Linux. It's a public resource, made by people for people and always will be. - ZheAldo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I don't know much about America, but is it me or is there a lot of states in the United States out there?
(Yeah, there's a lot of distributions using the GNU/Linux core.) - bastion_xx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4CentOS is good stuff and glad to see 5.0 released. A lot of new packages require newer version of support services such as MySQL 5, newer versions of PHP, python, etc. Of course, I just completed downloading and installing the beta (v4.92).
- Vanadium, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4According to the docs on the RHEL site upgrade should be avoided, and if you are to do an upgrade it should be done via the install media.
http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/Installation_Guide-en-US/ch-upgrade-x86.html
Perhaps I'll try your suggestion on a non-production box and see how it works. - nite23, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3RHEL (and CentOS) is to Fedora what Debian is to Ubuntu... the latter has all the bleeding edge stuff, but it doesn't go through rigorous testing, so it is less stable.. it doesn't matter much if you use it on desktop, but if you use it on server, it has to be rock solid...
- Mindflux, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Did you steal that from /.? Because this same comment was there too. Dugg down for being unoriginal.
- Nodren, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3centos isnt meant to compare to windows, its meant to compare to redhat.
some people just cant use a windows machine as a server. where i work we have to use centos, it supports cpanel(which we are all quite familiar with) and windows has horrible support for production sites when running php as your development backend.(unless you decide to spend insane amounts of money for a zend product to optimize it) - bmeshier, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3No cluster suite or GFS for 5.0 yet?
- bevans, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3From the Centos Website:
How long will CentOS-4 updates be supported?
We intend to support CentOS-4 updates until Feb 29, 2012.
The current plan is this:
Full Updates (including hardware updates): Currently to Feb 29, 2008
Maintenance Updates: Mar 1, 2008 to Feb 29, 2012
http://www.centos.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=42
CentOS rocks! - Mindflux, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I used CentOS 4.3 I believe it was last. Good distro, too bad yum is so damn slow. The distro, itself was rock solid and has a wonderful support community on freenode.net though.
- javaroast, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Centos 4 is supported with Full Updates until Feb 29, 2008 and maintenance updates until Feb 29th 2012. Heck even Centos 2 is supported until May 31, 2009. Try that with Fedora Core. Fedora 4 is already discontinued status. Centos is perfect for servers. I get long term support and security updates, but don't have to constantly update the systems because support ends on a Fedora version. locux beat me to the punch, but in a server environment the length of support and being able to avoid the constant rebuilds is worth using Centos over Fedora and worth repeating.
- beercosoftware, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@sulf,
I do not remember a 2.6.17 kernel that caused a panic ever, and I have been using Fedora for several years now.
It sounds like you may have had a bad SELinux policy file rather than a problem with the kernel.
(as if the Fedora team would let a corrupt kernel drag on for days)
In the worst case scenario, if that actually did happen, you could have simply rebooted into the last kernel.
I still think you may have had another problem. If it was the SELinux policy file that was bad or corrupted, it would have happened on RHEL too assuming you had it on.
Also, Actually, there's this guy Eric Raymond. You may want to start a friendship with him. - sulf, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@beercosoftware
Fedora might be stable if you have a spare machine where you apply updates and see what happens. For example, I remember some 2.6.17 kernel that just causes kernel panic after I updated and rebooted my workstation. New kernel was available in a couple of days, but it proves the point that you can't just update "production" Fedora servers without prior testing. With RHEL, at least you can trust Red Hat at some point that their updates won't break your system.
Anyway, I can't think of a reason why you would want to use Fedora on a server instead of CentOS. - counterplex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@beercosoftware
Agreed! I don't expect big time ISVs (e.g. Maya) to work with CentOS. However smaller or FOSS development efforts are greatly helped by having a free rebranded RHEL to work with. I've worked on projects that I've deliberately chosen CentOS for (my usual distro of choice is Gentoo) just so I'm developing towards whatever my customers will have in the field.
When I'm at work all my machines are RHEL and the differences I find between RHEL and CentOS are fairly small. Mostly if you replace the word "redhat" in a system command with the word "system" it'll work on CentOS. - locnguyen, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3beercosoft I hope you've learned something today!
- immrlizard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I agree with bluenova. It is rock solid. There is a big move at where I work to get people to use that if they are going to use any linux. I haven't seen 5 yet but 4.xx was nice. I like the look and the way the ubuntu versions do things so I went with kubutu and really like it. If I ever switch to one at work, I would probably go with centos. There is something to be said for stability. I just can't resist trying one of the bleeding edge distros at home when I have a chance though. That is what choice is all about
- GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Also Yum tends to be slow because it checks for new packages online all the time. If you disable this behaviour it speeds up quite a bit (obviously then you have to ensure you update your cache personally). My biggest concern is that Pup and Pirut only use a single thread of execution so for large downloads they tend to act as if locked up because the GUI won't update until it finishes that operation. This could confuse a few new users.
- beercosoftware, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@locnguyen
Yes, I've totally learned my lesson. I'm a bad vista, a bad, bad vista. - geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2As someone pointed out, fedora is a beta testing platform for Redhat. It goes like this: fedora -> redhat -> centos.
I like that centos is at the end. - robbyt, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4centos is a director competitor for windows server... which costs $600 for 5 CALs.
- beercosoftware, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@locux
"The reason we are now using CentOS is the long term support available for each release. We can install a server today, and know 3 or 4 years from now we'll still be able to do a simple `yum update` and get all current security updates. Fedora can't say the same."
Rolling out an upgrade to a new version is not bad at all. If there are fixes, you can build your own bash fix RPM with a small .spec and distribute it on a cluster and patch everything at the same time.
I don't think either way is more care free. I was a little disappointed when fedoralegacy shut down, but in the end I think it's better just to update.
I guess I am seeing this from the perspective of somebody who doesn't have any problems with Fedora. - tnvwboy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2And their marketing slogan...
"CentOS the FRESH maker!"
Ok it was lame but I couldn't stop myself. - GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Why, CentOS4 will be supported for a bazillion years. If it works why switch. The most interesting changes for CentOS5 are on the desktop IMHO. It ain't Ubuntu but it has it's uses. Also Xen provides some interesting use cases. Currently I run a personal revision server and a web server for development on VMware, seeing Xen now I have no excuse not to go with the OSS solution (still think VMware is better in many ways but Xen is good enough and will be properly supported as OSS).
- GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If you read the thread you'll discover that CentOS is a binary compatible clone of RHEL built from the same source packages with the trademarked material removed. Imagine if Vista was OSS baring the fact you couldn't use MS trademarks and copyrighted artwork, then you took the source code and cleansed it of the non redistributable material then rebuilt it. What you'd essentially have is Vista for free. In the end this isn't 'Yet Another Distro' but something which is almost a copy of another one but for free and lacking support.
- DonCarcharo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Choice is a good thing. Linux allows you to pick how you configure your system, what it looks like and what it does. It doesn't tell you what your desktop should look like, how to install programs or anything else. There's a version of Linux that meets your needs and there's a version of Linux that meets mine. They may not be the same but that's the beauty of it. Everyone can have their own customized experience without blindly following some corporate set standards. Choice is good.
(it's about the only way to get Dugg up in a Linux thread) - Mindflux, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Why would there be no upgrade path via yum? Just switch your yum config to point to the 5.0 repository and run 'yum upgrade' or whatever it is?
- javaroast, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@beercosoftware
Easily upgraded... Not been my experience. On my home system maybe, but we aren't talking 10 years with Fedora, it's closer to 6 mos between versions and that amounts to a year and a half lifetime. Maybe if you don't have many servers and maybe if you want the headaches. Don't get me wrong, I like Fedora that's what I use on my home system, but no way for servers. Centos has so much more going for it on low cost servers than Fedora, it's not even close. Fedora is a great distro, but not a great server distro and it's as simple as that. You obviously have your mind set and by all means do what works for you, but I would fire any consultant that suggested using a Fedora server. - kjbetz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Also, with CentOS you're getting 7 years worth of updates. This is important in an enterprise / business server environment. Fedora only supports the current and last release, I believe, basically giving you only a year - 1 1/2 years of updates and fixes.
- rdotson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Direct download of the i386 DVD version is available at:
http://cryptomania.info/crypt/CentOS-5.0-i386-bin-DVD/ [cryptomania.info]
By tomorrow the x86_64 DVD version will be available at:
http://cryptomania.info/crypt/CentOS-5.0-x86_64-bin-DVD/ [cryptomania.info]
I'm trying out a new webhosting provider and am curious how they perform. Comments welcome. - DonCarcharo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I agree with your point, Linux is fragmented. However you need to realize that the Linux faithful insist this is a good thing since it creates choice. Honestly, I'm sure Microsoft feels this is a good thing as well. Because if Linux could overcome the inherent need to dilute itself it would probably be a serious competitor to Microsoft in a wide variety of market segments.
But it won't happen, not any time soon. It might seem arcane to those not familiar with Linux but most of those users are pretty happy that there's a half dozen different ways to accomplish just about anything. Of course this is because they can't see beyond their own personal preferences. They don't understand that Linux won't be adopted on the desktop until there's a uniform desktop to adopt. Right now there's at least a half dozen desktop environments. Of those perhaps two are "mainstream" but even then each desktop is customized depending on the flavor. A plain vanilla Ubuntu desktop isn't the same as a CentOS one (speaking of default gnome installs). Try teaching that in school. It just won't fly.
It's quite sad, really. This same community that shouts out about the need for industry standards can't develop any of its own. Package systems, configuration techniques, desktop environments, Linux couldn't possibly be more fragmented if it tried. - locux, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Personally, I like having the options available. Some people like KDE, others like Gnome, others like something else, but we have the choice. I like having the choice of a RPM based distro myself, while I know others who prefer to build everything by source, while others prefer debian based distros.
The nature of the open source community is to have the different versions which make everybody happy in their own little way, and so we can split off into the group of like-minded folks we choose. I'll stick in the RH/CentOS camp because everybody there has similar standards and likes.
If we didn't want to have any choice in the matter and just use what the "consensus" voted for, or rather what someone else chooses for us; we'd all install Windows. - jdelsman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The main reason you'd want to update is security, and updated RPMs (one would believe)
- beercosoftware, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@kjbetz and @javaroast,
I agree that the turnover on Fedora is fast. BUT, you can upgrade easily, even from a networked environment, so I don't see that as a problem.
Most of the customers I work with are constantly improving whatever it is they are using Red Hat for, so they're not the type to set up a cluster and leave it there unattended for 10 years at a time(besides hardware failure will kick in).
If they were, I would definitely recommend RHEL over Fedora.
The problem with CentOS and RHEL is that like Unix, you have to build a LOT of what you're going to install. If you're not just running Oracle or something. - motang, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Damn it I just got done installing CentOS 4 at my school. Well time to update.
- beercosoftware, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@sw10
"Dude, you're the worst sysadmin ever. Really."
Patches to old systems only work to a certain extent. Eventually you have to upgrade anyway, unless you plan on using the software as firmware, like in a telecom environment.
An environment where only security matters. Otherwise, you're going to end up building the packages and rolling your own RPMs either way. Because your interfaces to other systems are going to become outdated.
In a firmware like environment, I would totally recommend RHEL over Fedora.
RHEL, because the RH support is not as trivial as some make it out to be. - spafbnerf, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1IT'S A TRAP!
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