Anne Wilson wrote:
I'm thinking of giving CentOS to a non-tech user for her new desktop. He needs are small. She has been used to Mozilla for both mail and browsing, so equivalents there are not a problem. She needs grip and lame, for her mp3s - again no problem.
Desktop, non-techie - use Ubuntu instead.
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.
But non-tech persons, they will be much more comfortable with Ubuntu. Much, much more comfortable. It will do more things for them, they may even be able to tinker with it, in a small way. Your support calls will be much reduced. ;-) CentOS (any RHE derivative, basically) is a less good choice for this particular situation.
Heck, I consider myself very knowledgeable (been using Linux since Slackware came on a stack of floppies and I had it dual-boot with a novelty OS called Windows 95; made my own distribution once from scratch; been using Red Hat nearly since the beginning) and I still don't run CentOS on my desktop - I use Ubuntu instead. (actually, as I'm getting more and more involved with higher-end-ish digital photo and digital video processing, I find myself booting Vista a lot more often on my home PC - it's a long story and yes I am aware of all the wonderful Linux video apps)