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Installing CentOS 4.4 - Short-n-Sweet
Welcome to CentOS 4.4I have not installed Red Hat or its derivatives in years. I decided to give CentOS 4.4 a spin. I already knew CentOS is known for not changing much. Yet, I still was bowled over when I discovered they are still using a pre-2.0 version of OpenOffice.org. Even so, many swear by its stability, and use it heavily in business environments. Hence, we're assuming a business workstation running CentOS in this scenario. I'll be keeping this one short, sweet, and to the point. With that in mind, let's get started! Wrestle With An Anaconda
The fairly helpful boot screen offers the initial options. Beware, though, that it's on a timer, and will launch the default installer after about a minute. Go ahead and hit
Next, Anaconda takes over the installation process, and brings us to the Introductory screen. Click You'll be asked to choose the type of installation:
Hard Disks & BootloadersAs with most distributions, you can choose to partition your hard disks yourself, or let the installer do it using reasonable defaults. Should you choose 'Auto' mode, you'll see options like this:
Remove all partitions, as well as the other options you want here. Then click Next. Confirm the format when the dialog appears.
The bootloader configuration is pretty nice, allowing users to choose other OSes at install time. We're only concerned here with CentOS, so the default settings should be fine. You may, however, choose to set a password on the bootloader. There is a checkbox to answer whether you want to configure advanced bootloader options. Unless you need to do so, just Click Configure Networking
Time to configure our network:
Now for the firewall: Final Pre-Installation Phase
When you first boot into the newly installed system, there remain a few steps before you can login for the first time. You will need to accept the license agreement. CentOS is licensed under the GNU GPL, so this should not be a problem. Next, you will need to configure the monitor. Choose your:
Finally, you will setup the system user, or what I consider to be a 'normal' user - a user other than root.
Next. The last screen confirms you are ready to finish. Click Next. You're done! Have fun with your shiny new CentOS 4.4 system!
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Comments (27)
7 earlier comments in the full thread.
Quoting:I think that comment shows a huge change in the way Debian is viewed and used.
And that has two major reasons:
1) The size of the Debian repository more than doubles with each release
2) Ubuntu, among other's, have shown for the last couple of years that Debian Unstable is actually quite stable and therefor very much suited for a home desktop. Believe me, within the year, Debian stable will belong to the "conservative business and server guys with grampa high waist bands" again :-)
The Author
Good point Don. The problem is that some people (even the writers) are starting to think that any install tutorial == review. Obviously (?) that isn't so.
Quoting: What made anyone think this was a review?
Good Q, very good Q. I think having installation overviews is a great thing, and the fact that the title says it's about installation was a very good clue to that point.
Quoting: for CentOS it would be pretty dull- 'Day 180: everything still works."
I use 4.4 at work...yes, it's a very dull distro that simply allows me to get my work done. No excitement there. I'd use Gentoo (just joking!) but my old PC would take three weeks to compile any updates. :) Give me boring at work any day of the week. CentOS is so far ahead of Windows (and most other distros) in terms of stability that it ain't even funny.
Anyway, I now have the Centos 5.0 CDs downloaded - just need to burn and then install over top of the 4.4 system. No, I'm not upgrading. I'm playing and testing - probably more of the former than the latter. Hopefully, I'll finish up my review of Vector Linux tonight and get it on the wire for tomorrow. It's an actual review, and one I hope folks will enjoy. ;-)
Quoting: I admit I was shocked that 4.4 still had OOo 1.x - 2.0 launched last year! I suppose the Ubuntu-speed projects have my head spinning.
My advice is to not install OOo from the CDs, even on 5, and to download the latest and greatest from OOo.org, then just upgrade as needed from there.
I am surprised also, however, that the CentOS-specific repos don't have 2.0. If you go with the 100% compatible Red Hat repos, you're stuck with MySQL 4.1, but adding the CentOS repos gives you access to 5.x, and it's far more up to date overall...I guess installing and updating OOo on your own is so easy they don't feel the need.
The reason we did not add OOo version 2.x to the centos repos is a combination of 2 things:
1. To compile the 2.x SRPMS (from OpenOffice.org) one needs to add many things that are not part of CentOS-4.x Base ... once compiled, it will run on CentOS-4.x. Some of the things we can't distribute (java related), so that means that CentOS users can't recompile the SRPMS with things we provide. We don't like to ship things like that, and won't unless we have to.
2. The OpenOffice.org version 2.x works as is and is provided by them in an RPM format. Since it works, and because of comment 1, we just recommend using the OpenOffice.org RPMS for those who would upgrade.
Obviously if Red Hat moved OpenOffice.org 2.x into their EL4 product, then CentOS would do so as well.
Johnny Hughes CentOS Developer
Quoting: The reason we did not add OOo version 2.x to the centos repos is a combination of 2 things:
Cool, thanks for the clarification, and thanks for all the work on CentOS. Great stuff.
That is a whole lot funnier now than it was then :P
It's certainly disconcerting to be suddenly and inexplicably thrust into theater of the absurd ;-)
Believe it or not ... in the new update set, the upstream provider has included OpenOffice-2.
If you still have your centos-4.4 install, you can install OOo2 with this command:
yum install openoffice.org2-base openoffice.org2-calc openoffice.org2-core openoffice.org2-draw openoffice.org2-emailmerge openoffice.org2-graphicfilter openoffice.org2-impress openoffice.org2-javafilter openoffice.org2-math openoffice.org2-pyuno openoffice.org2-testtools openoffice.org2-writer openoffice.org2-xsltfilter
Having a standalone font system is dumb. Having its own printer subsystem is dumb, especially since it doesn't include all the supported features in your printer drivers. Or maybe it does in the Windows edition, and as usual us Linux users are shoved to the back of the bus.
Documentation is mediocre, but fortunately there are several good print books.
There was no migration path from 1.0 to 2.0, so everyone who had invested in custom settings and macros had to start over. The lists and forums had many requests from users about this, but last time I looked there were no answers. The #1 most-requested feature is a good outlining tool for Writer. So you can collapse and expand the various levels of your outline, print the different outline views, and all those neat things we 21st-century users expect. I don't know if that's even on their roadmap, but what I've heard so far is a lack of interest.
Sooo...I still like it a lot. But it has a long way to go, and I'm not sure they're even aiming in the right direction. I'm keeping my eye on KOffice, since KDE (at least for me) has a better history of coming up with fully-featured, usable applications.
It may have changed now, but not that long ago I had struggles with formatting when opening the files on a different computer. It didn't matter if I was using .abw, .kwd, or .odt. The only way I have found to have a truly portable file is to use OOo with .odt. That works without problems even when going between Linux and Windows.
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I think that comment shows a huge change in the way Debian is viewed and used. Remember that, until quite recently, Debian was only for the conservative business and server guys with grampa high waist bands, Now it's used for the hottest Desktops as well, and Distros like CentOS are perceived as conservative.