[CentOS] Installation question

[Scott Robbins]

On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 01:19:25PM +0100, Parshwa Murdia wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> 
> I am having some basic queries which are as follows:
> 
> 1. I am having the PC and already installed is Fedora Core 11 as well as
> Windows XP (dual boot). Fedora has unstability because of its EOL. If I want
> to install the Cent OS for home PC (personal), should the installation CD
> (after getting it burned) would prompt me to replace the existing Linux
> (i.e. Fedora) or would it try to install into the whole of the memory? My
> requirement is to only replace the existing Fedora Core 11 but to make the
> Windows remain intact.

It should give the same option that you see in Fedora, remove existing
Linux distribution.  There is also an option for custom partitioning.
The default, if I remember correctly, is to remove existing Linux and
replace it.

> 
> 2. Though I am new in Linux, and even Fedora commands I don't know much but
> majority of the commands in Cent OS and Fedora are same?

Yes.  As far as command line goes, aside from package management,
(RedHat based distributions, including Fedora and CentOS, use yum,
Debian and Ubuntu based distributions use apt, ArchLinux uses pacman,
and so on) the rest of the commands are going to be the same.

(Or at least extremely similar--sometimes, a distribution has version x
of a program and another distribution has version y--and version y might
have a few different options.)

If you are using the default Gnome desktop, sometimes the layout is
slightly different so using the menu may have some slight
differences---for example, RedHat and Fedora put the terminal under
system tools, whereas Ubuntu (and oddly enough, Oracle Linux) put it
under accessories.  


> 
> 3. What Cent OS should I download and install? I mean for a single PC at
> home, can I install the server CentOS or simple CentOS?

There is no server/workstation version.  It's all one version and you
can customize during installation, which is the same as Fedora. 

> 
> I hope that Cent OS would be good to use at home.

The only issues you may run into are that, as the price of stability,
there are often older versions of packages--this can sometimes mean that
a later version of a program isn't available, because it requires newer
glibc versions, and, at times, hardware support from later kernels isn't
available.  

However, due to many 3rd party efforts, such as elrepo, one
can find the support for some newer piece of hardware.  It sometimes
requires more research than would be necessary for one of the more
desktop oriented distributions, such as Fedora. 


-- 
Scott Robbins
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