At Sat, 6 Jun 2009 13:48:37 -0500 CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org wrote:
Since my computers use built-in Intel graphics chips (which work great with CentOS 5.3), I've been worrying about Ubuntu's (and other "cutting edge" distributions) problems with these. It appears to be an Xorg problem. What I don't understand is why Xorg would release something that only half worked with a large segment of the computers out there. I'm also wondering how Red Hat / CentOS will handle such a problem -- or have they already addressed it?
CentOS, like RHEL is a 'conservitive' distro and won't release unstable or "cutting edge" versions. Many open source projects release 'beta' test versions of code, as well as older, more stable versions. Linux distributions can make a choice: use the older, more stable version and thus not support hardware that is 'hot off the showroom floor' (this is what CentOS does). Or be cutting edge and include the latest release (this is what Ubuntu does). This means that maybe if you install CentOS on the computer you bought brand new yesterday you might have trouble getting the X11 to work very will (or with all of the latest wizbang hardware accel, etc.). You might get it to work if you installed Ubuntu, or might have other troubles (because the XOrg release is somewhat beta test... OTOH, if you are not using cutting edge hardware and/or have no need of cutting edge software, CentOS will do what you need to do and will do so for like 7 years.
Probably shouldn't worry about a "possible" problem, but I do anyhow.