Message: 33 Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 11:08:10 -0600 From: Mike McCarty Mike.McCarty@sbcglobal.net Subject: [CentOS] Jumping from FC2 To: CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org Message-ID: 45DF1F7A.90003@sbcglobal.net Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
and do not wish to remain with the Fedora Core Project
The first FC release we used was FC4. No problems, on several boxes, for more than one year. Then, I did a "clean" install of FC6 on my box and the "out of the box" experience on this box was *not* good. Several issues I did not want to fight. I went back to CentOS 4.4 and I plan to stay with CentOS now!
interface to what I am now accustomed to (Gnome)
I use GNOME 99% of the time, but my wife and daughter use KDE, so I install both Desktops when I install. And, there are several KDE Applications that I use frequently or exclusively, when using GNOME.
As a Desktop user, the only "issue" I have with CentOS 4.4 is that Digital Audio (audio from music Cd's, via the EIDE ribbon cables from the DVD-ROM and CD-RW drives) does not work while using CentOS 4.4 and it does work, when using MS Windows XP. I hope that will change with the Kernel in CentOS 5.0!
My wife and daughter are gamers and after I installed the KDE game package, my daughter told me there are just as many games on this box as on her FC4 box.
I currently use XP boot manager (I dual boot and have one of those machines which tries to "repair" itself if it sees modifications to the MBR) to load GRUB which then can boot various versions of FC2.
This is a dual boot machine, Windows XP and CentOS 4.4. No problems booting either OS.
What, if any, other concerns need enter into my decision? Recommendations for gotchas?
Red Hat, in their documentation manuals, which are available to download from CentOS.org, does NOT recommend upgrades. It is always better to backup your data, do a "clean" install, and then restore your data. That said, with my recent experience on this box, going from FC4 to FC6, in retrospect, I would have probably done as well or better, with an "upgrade". :-)
I suggest that you partition manually with Disk Druid and that you do not use LVM if you are not up to speed on that. Same for RAID. Those are the recommendations in the Red Hat manuals for RHEL.
Suggest you set up a small FAT32 partition, when you partition with Disk Druid for your Linux partitions, and move data between NTFS and ext3 via FAT32, if you need to share data. Not a good idea, to write to NTFS partitions from Linux, unless the knowledge of NTFS has increased a lot recently.
When you get to the Disk Partitioning phase of the installation, say that you want to retain your non Linux (Windows XP) partitions.
Should I just download the disc sets and install on a test machine and see which I feel more comfortable with?
Yes, give it a try. We used Red Hat Linux 9 for a *long* time. CentOS 4.4 is probably very similar to that. CentOS does not have the latest Multimedia or Internet applications, for desktop use, but that's because it is a server oriented distribution and it is based on RHEL, which is more stable and secure. It is not always good to have the latest and greatest software, unless you like to fight bugs.
I always do "Custom" installs, select what packages I want and how to do it. The Installer in CentOS 4.4 will allow you complete control, if you want it.
The developers of CentOS are extremely active on this mailing list and I have seen them be incredibly helpful to people on this list.
HTH, Lanny in Colombia, South America