[CentOS] Why shouldn't I expect more of CentOS/Linux?

[Johnny Hughes]

On Mon, 2005-08-22 at 21:05 +0900, Dave Gutteridge wrote:
> (Thread moved over from "Has anyone got dvd::rip to work in CentOS?")
> 
> >Items designed for Windows 95 don't always work on Windows XP or Windows
> >2003 server.
> >  
> >
> Yes, but I'm not sure that analogy really represents the situation I'm 
> speaking of with Linux. Items designed in the past may not work with 
> current technologies. That's not a hard concept to grasp, the same way I 
> don't expect my CD player to play casette tapes.
> 
> I'm not talking about diffeences in release times. I'm not surprised, 
> nor bothered, that perhaps some software written for Linux kernel 2.4 
> doesn't work on 2.6.
>
> But assuming two different distros have the 2.6 kernel, then why 
> shouldn't they both be capable of running the same software?

No, because they are not necessarily based on the same shared libraries,
nor do they necessarily share the same package management system.  If
you build something on Mandriva, it probably won't run on RHEL ... if
you build something on FC1 it probably won't run on RHEL-4 ... it might
run on RHEL-3, since they have similar shared libraries.

What you would really need to do is either build what you want from
SRPMS ... or find someone who is maintaining it specifically for
RHEL-4 / CentOS-4. (Like Dags repo, dries repo or the extras/centosplus
repo)

> 
> I must admit that partly I'm questioning this because I'm a little 
> annoyed. The first Linux distro I tried was Fedora, and only afterwards 
> was it clearly explained that it's a sort of "permanent beta", where 
> stability was not guarunteed. I'm sorry, but I read the Fedora web site 
> carefully, and it does not explain clearly what it is. I thought it was 
> a reasonable candidate for consumer use.
> 

Fedora Core is a good distro ... it just has a quick release cycle.  It
is very comparable to ubuntu, mandriva, debian, etc.

> But then someone recomended CentOS, because it's more stable. No one 
> said "... but it's really designed more for being a server.". Nothing 
> was said along those lines.
> 

Hundreds (maybe thousands) of users use CentOS on the Desktop ... it is
stable, unsless you are adding stuff to it that makes it unstable.

> Now, after spending weeks getting things like Japanese support, my Palm 
> Pilot to work, Gnome configured, and many other trials and errors, 
> *now*, when I want to get a DVD writing program, people are saying "Oh, 
> well, really CentOS is not really all that good for those kinds of 
> purposes". Where was this advice before?

I use k3b to write DVDs ... it is included in CentOS.  I don't normally
copy stuff off DVDs, other users might.

> 
> In fact, I'm looking at the CentOS web site now, and in it's "Goals" 
> section it says, among other things:
> *  easy maintenance
> * friendly environment for users and package maintainers
> Noticibly lacking is anything saying "a server oriented OS", or "not 
> really intended to run consumer level software". Where was I supposed to 
> come to understand that CentOS was not only a "stable enterprise class 
> OS" but also limited in exactly how many applications it would be able 
> to accomodate?
> 

CentOS is easy to maintain ... if you stay inside the CentOS repos.
Does Microsoft give you support for Norton Ghost or SunOffice installed
on Windows ... how about Apache web server?  If you install stuff that
doesn't come with Windows, you get support from other places.

CentOS is able to do whatever your skills are.  I can make it run
anything I want ... but the average user might not be able to do so.

CentOS has many packages in it's repo, they are pretty much rock solid.
If you go outside that, you must be able to understand and fix your own
problems ... though you have gotten much help from the list.

Unless I (or someone else) installs exactly what you have installed ...
or unless we can see exactly what is on your individual install, we can
only try to troubleshoot assuming you have only CentOS installed.

> So I'm sorry if I'm sounding like a whiner at this point, but if I have 
> to change to another distro and again go through all the growing pains 
> of learning how to use it as well I think I might run back to Windows 
> world. I mean, I've come to really like Linux for a lot of reasons, but 
> I'm getting a little tired of the "this Linux for that, that Linux for 
> this" confusion that only hardened Linux gurus can sort out.

I think you might have unrealistic expectations for your Linux
distribution. CentOS does certain things (as defined by what is included
in it's repos) well. If you want to go outside the realm of what it was
designed to do, it requires knowledge of the programs you are
installing ... which people at CentOS might not have.

If you go outside what any distro is designed for, windows included, you
must have knowledge in what you are trying to do.

You are doing things with CentOS that I have never done (I don't connect
it to a Palm, for example ... nor do I rip stuff from DVDs).

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