is centos the best alternative to red hat
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| marither Oct 11, 2008 2:15 PM EDT |
since red hat is no longer free, is centos the best alternative to red hat? |
| Scott_Ruecker Oct 11, 2008 3:53 PM EDT |
I may be missing something but I would say that Fedora would be a 'decent' replacement for Red Hat.. |
| tuxchick Oct 11, 2008 3:56 PM EDT |
CentOS is a RHEL clone, so if you want Red hat for free, then you want CentOS. Fedora is pretty bleeding-edge. Pretty good for a desktop, but not so good for important servers. |
| Scott_Ruecker Oct 11, 2008 4:02 PM EDT |
ahh ok, your right, see? I was missing something...like knowing what I was talking about..lol. |
| tuxchick Oct 11, 2008 6:32 PM EDT |
No problem Scott, we still love you :) |
| jdixon Oct 11, 2008 7:14 PM EDT |
> ...is centos the best alternative to red hat? AFAICT, yes. There are other Red Hat clones however, so they're not your only option. |
| rijelkentaurus Oct 12, 2008 8:53 AM EDT |
Scientific is also good. |
| Steven_Rosenber Oct 12, 2008 8:16 PM EDT |
I've run CentOS on the desktop, and it's pretty solid. I really like the graphical installer, and it's easy to install both the GNOME and KDE desktops at once. What you get with CentOS/Red Hat vs. Fedora is that CentOS/RHEL has long-term support, usually 7 years per release. So you keep the same kernel and won't risk having your hardware not work with a distro that's upgrading the kernel and everything else every six months. I think Fedora supports the last two releases, and with a release every six months, that means a year and a half if you don't upgrade. As others have said, Fedora is more bleeding-edge. I'm no expert on packages and package management for RPM-based systems, and I've never stuck with Fedora long enough to see the breadth of packages that the Fedora Project offers, but for CentOS/RHEL, there's nowhere near as many packages available in the default configuration as there are for Debian and Ubuntu. I've heard that there are repositories that can help the desktop user get more packages for RPM distros, but I've never really gotten far enough into it to figure out how it works. I usually retreat back to Debian, where pretty much everything I need is available. That said, I'm close to installing CentOS 5 because I'm having so much trouble with Debian Lenny ... |
| rijelkentaurus Oct 12, 2008 8:35 PM EDT |
Install CentOS and then add the Dag Wieers repositories and you've got a pretty good distro for desktop use. The only problem I have with it on my work laptop is that the wireless doesn't work. It sees the connection and knows it's there, but I can't make it work no matter what I try. I am not alone in this problem, it's easy to find people struggling with it but not easy to find people finding a solution (And if you find one, for the love of all that is wonderful in the world, send it to me!). I dual boot with Mandriva for those times when I have to have wireless...well, and just about every other time, too, just to be honest. Mandriva, while a well-established distro in its own right, was originally based on Red Hat, and I think it retains enough Red Hat-ness that someone familiar with the Raleigh distro can transition to Mandriva with little problem. |
| jdixon Oct 12, 2008 8:41 PM EDT |
> ...but for CentOS/RHEL, there's nowhere near as many packages available in the default configuration as there are for Debian and Ubuntu. Since CentOS is a port of RHEL, that's to be expected. RHEL is, as the name indicates, an Enterprise system. It's intended for bread and butter application support: Billing, payroll, transactions, databases, employee records, customer relations; that kind of thing. The applications Red Hat expects you to be using on it aren't installed via rpm or yum. They're custom installs, often tailored to the company's specific requirements. Oracle and SAP are two common examples. Yes, Red Hat can be used as a normal everyday Linux system, but that's not where Red Hat makes their money. They make their money being a cheaper (and in many cases, faster) replacement for the old school Unix boxes, supporting the same apps those Unix boxes did. |
| jdixon Oct 12, 2008 8:45 PM EDT |
> ...and I think it retains enough Red Hat-ness that someone familiar with the Raleigh distro can transition to Mandriva with little problem. Yeah. The main differences are probably the configuration utilities, and quite frankly Mandriva's are (at least from everything I've heard and seen) better. |
| tracyanne Oct 12, 2008 9:15 PM EDT |
It is the configuration utilities the maintains my addiction to Mandriva |
| gus3 Oct 12, 2008 10:23 PM EDT |
Slackware's configuration utility is called "vi". /ducks |
| Steven_Rosenber Oct 12, 2008 10:51 PM EDT |
Slackware has quite a few text utilities that most of its users never talk about because they make it easy enough for just about anybody to maintain the distro. Pkgtool, netconfig, mouseconfig and whatever the utility is called that enables you to easily change window managers are all super easy to use. They are command-line tools, but still extremely easy to figure out. |
| jdixon Oct 12, 2008 10:54 PM EDT |
> ...and whatever the utility is called that enables you to easily change window managers... xwmconfig Shh. If you keep talking like that, next thing you know everyone will be try Slackware and we'll lose or leet status. :) |
| Steven_Rosenber Oct 12, 2008 10:54 PM EDT |
That's it! The Slackware tools have been around a long time ... but they're still good. |
| rijelkentaurus Oct 13, 2008 9:30 AM EDT |
Mandriva's config utilities on the backend remain very similar, particularly in things like managing services (chkconfig, service, etc). If you're a command-liner, the change is almost like not having a change at all from Red Hat. PCLOS is the same way, being a Mandriva offshoot. |
| Steven_Rosenber Oct 13, 2008 4:44 PM EDT |
My big "stopper" with a lot of these distributions is a lack of good documentation. There are tons of tools, but no easy-to-find, easy-to-use, regular-people how-to-type documentation. (And NO, man pages do not count). I think there's a newish project to write docs for Slackware 12. Debian's online handbooks are nowhere near up to date. Ubuntu has all those books in print, which is a huge deal. There are also a few books -- like those "Unleashed" ones -- for Suse and Red Hat that are fairly up to date. In all fairness, I haven't looked for Mandriva docs, so I don't know what the state of things are in that respect. |
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