[CentOS] WUBI like process for CentOS ?

nate centos at linuxpowered.net
Wed Aug 13 03:01:47 UTC 2008


MHR wrote:

> To repeat what has been said before (right here!): CentOS is just like
> RHEL, an enterprise Linux distribution, suitable for anything from
> laptops to desktops to enterprise-wide networked multi-server
> machines.

I don't think RHEL would make a good desktop. I think it would make
an ok workstation, or perhaps corporate desktop, where things are
tightly controlled. There's just not enough things available for
it in the default distribution, and hardware support isn't quite
kept up to date. If your standardizing on some platform that
supports RHEL (or perhaps just works with RHEL) then great.
When I say workstation I mean a replacement for something like
an IRIX, Solaris, or HP-UX box that would run specialized software
(3D modeling or something).

http://www.press.redhat.com/2008/04/16/whats-going-on-with-red-hat-desktop-systems-an-update

"It’s worth pointing out what’s missing in the list above: we
have no plans to create a traditional desktop product for the
consumer market in the foreseeable future."

Of course everyone's ideas are different, these are just mine.

If your adding stuff from all sorts of 3rd party repositories
to get your system to your liking, well at least to me it's
not really RHEL(or CentOS) anymore (depending on how much you
add), it's just based on RHEL (or CentOS). I see a seemingly
endless supply of posts of people complaining about how
3rd party repositories have screwed up their systems(most
often it's because they haven't configured everything right,
but apparently it's not very obvious). If/when RHEL decides to
vastly increase the amount of software that they provide/support
in their distribution I think it may become a worthwhile system
to use on the desktop.

Until then, for me at least, it's Debian on my desktops(when
the hardware is supported), or otherwise Ubuntu LTS (I do
enable the universe repositories which aren't officially
supported but at least seem to seamlessly integrate into
the system without issue -- though I haven't used Ubuntu in
several months, maybe things have changed).

Debian stable has roughly 18,000 packages.

CentOS 5 seems to have roughly 2400 packages by comparison,
fortunately in a server role it(and CentOS 4) provide almost
everything I need(I do install about 50 extra packages), though
a desktop system needs quite a bit more. The desktop/server
I'm writing this on (Debian stable) has 1400 packages installed,
my servers get about 850.

I used to think SuSE was pretty slick but haven't looked at it
since I started messing with Ubuntu a couple years ago.

Main reasons I like RHEL/CentOS:
- kickstart rocks, Debian doesn't really have anything that compares
  (IMO)
- I've come to like src RPMS, they really make building from
  source easy
- long release cycles (which can be bad for laptops/desktops
  especially from a hardware support perspective, even Ubuntu
  had trouble with suspend/resume on my last laptop - Toshiba M5,
  Ubuntu 7.04 worked quite reliably, but when I upgraded to 8,
  it pretty much stopped working for no apparent reason(even
  using the older kernel didn't help).

There's certainly potential for a good desktop in RHEL, the
software just isn't there yet(I'd be willing to forgive the
hardware support, just give me more packages to choose from
and provide security updates etc for).

nate




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