Hello Producers
"Longevity of Support" is an attractive drawcard for CentOS if it means the exact opposite of Fedora's "short support cycle" that does not provide updating of infrastructural libraries for very long, libraries which newer versions of applications (like Firefox, Thunderbird, Opera etc) depend on and which wont install unless the libraries are also newer versions? But is that what it means -- ie that those infrastructural libraries (libpango, libcairo etc) are continuously updateable to fairly recent versions?
If so, the problem is in reconciling that meaning with the reputation of CentOS to only support older versions of applications (eg Firefox-1.5, Thunderbird-1.0 etc). It does reconcile, of course, if the implications are merely that the CentOS user must compile and install the later versions of such applications from source, rather than having the luxury of pre-packaged binaries. It doesn't reconcile if there is some other critical reason why newer such applications just wont install. But which?
I ask here because the profusion of vague mission statements and 'target-enduser-profile' claims that litter the internet re '*nix distros' seldom actually address those real issues. And hopefully someone can enlighten. My complex production & developement desktop takes months to fully port to a new OS (or OS-version), so OS updates to get library updates (ala Fedora philosophy) becomes increasingly untenable.
Then there is a further question, I'm afraid. Since CentOS also does specifically target the profile of a so-called 'enterprise/server-user' what does that actually entail. Does it mean concrete security strictures which bolt down non-'root' users or does it merely mean the availability of SELinux (but which can be turned OFF)? For instance, (with SELinux OFF), can a user still: (a) su root via Kterm anytime? (b) Access services-admin anytime via Menu+Pam to control printers, modems, daemons etc? (c) compile (d) have 6 to 8 desktops running (e) call up 'konquerorsu.desktop' (root-konqueror with embedded root-Kterm) (f) have normal cron scheduling .......................................................... maybe more, but that's a start.
Thanks for listening.
Sean