Florin Andrei wrote:
I'm a big CentOS fan, I joined even the Facebook group (lol), but its place is on the server or, perhaps, on a workstation for a power user (or for things like running scientific apps on the desktop). If you're a PhD running quantum theory equations with Mathematica on your Xeon multicore workstation, I can very well see why you would prefer CentOS, or even Red Hat Enterprise proper.
+1 I have to agree here as well. I used to recommend and help set up CentOS on user desktops, but it became more of a burden than good thing. I no longer do so, because Ubuntu is so much more user-friendly.
In my experience, Ubuntu is much more out-of-box useful for a standard user desktop or laptop. There's no fussing around with hardware configurations, or extra drivers (in most cases), and things just seem to work. All the gadgets, gizmos, and eye-candy items are already there, things I enjoy, but have some setup time involved in with using CentOS.
For instance, on my laptop, CentOS doesn't recognize my external display and it doesn't matter what I've tried, I can't get it to work. On Ubuntu, though, it just works. I've had other experiences like having to really try hard to get wireless working. Most of my issues were hardware issues, but I know CentOS is improving on that.
I think like others have mentioned. It's a combination of what the user is going to do with it, versus, what you are most comfortable with, versus how much twiddling the user is going to want to do. Ubuntu is much much easier for the user to configure himself/herself.
Although it doesn't stop me from using CentOS on my laptop and desktops, I don't recommend it to people I know now because of the following reasons.
I think it's all personal experience and what the system is going to be doing. It's not a simple question. These are just my experiences.
Regards, Max