don't be put off by some of the answers here Dave, centos is primarily for servers but I use it on all my desktop machines besides my servers. you can pretty much add any application to your system that was intended for RH9 upwards including fedora without too much problem and dag covers most of the good stuff. what you cant find in dags repo get from rpmfind.net...I use webmin for that.

Dave Gutteridge wrote:

...

The fact that enterprise-class distros don't give you the latest and greatest. Their focus is on distro stability, not on whiz-bang technology.

I'm sorry that it took me so long to understand.

I will look for other distributions and move away from CentOS as soon as possible.

I apologize for wasting people's time in trying to use CentOS in ways that it was not designed for.

Dave

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CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos

Chris Mauritz wrote:

Tom wrote:

...

don't be put off by some of the answers here Dave, centos is primarily for servers but I use it on all my desktop machines besides my servers. you can pretty much add any application to your system that was intended for RH9 upwards including fedora without too much problem and dag covers most of the good stuff. what you cant find in dags repo get from rpmfind.net...I use webmin for that.

CentOS is perfectly fine for desktop/workstation use. However, if you're new to Linux (like Dave) and you want to use unsupported tools/components, you're going to have to dig under the covers and customize things. If you don't know much about Linux internals, that could turn out to be a supreme pain in the behind. My suggestion is to "use what works" until you're comfortable with the inner workings of the system. THEN you can experiment when you have some of the skills necessary to get out of trouble if you break things. Switching to Fedora Core (whatever's current this week), Gentoo or Ubuntu or whatever, might improve things somewhat. I suspect a Linux "virgin" is going to have just as many issues with those if they try to get off the beaten track of supported packages.

A good analogy is someone who is disappointed with their new car because they can't change the camshafts or pistons by themself to make more power without spending a lot of money on an expert or by repeatedly breaking things and taking a lot of time to learn to do it themselves. Better to just drive the car until you can learn more about how its engine works.

Cheers,

exactly, and I think Dave has enough sense to realise this but there are ways around everything. I have many applications installed that theoretically shouldn't work with centos/rhel but do. he wants to stay with centos and can but with some of the replies to his questions I can't blame him for wanting to switch distros. let's just give helpful answers or none at all!!!

On Wednesday 12 October 2005 09:36, Chris Mauritz wrote:

A good analogy is someone who is disappointed with their new car because they can't change the camshafts or pistons by themself to make more power without spending a lot of money on an expert or by repeatedly breaking things and taking a lot of time to learn to do it themselves. Better to just drive the car until you can learn more about how its engine works.

To further the analogy, many time the Linux car will require you to change crankshafts to install a new radio. Or at least it seems that way. Blame the developers of the program you wish to install for using libraries that are too far on the cutting edge.

I've been around the RPM dependency block enough times (as a packager) to know this piece of it cold.

Les Mikesell wrote: On Wed, 2005-10-12 at 10:04, Lamar Owen wrote:

...

To further the analogy, many time the Linux car will require you to change crankshafts to install a new radio. Or at least it seems that way. Blame the developers of the program you wish to install for using libraries that are too far on the cutting edge.

But, if you really want a new car it is kind of painful to replace all your individual parts even though it is possible when you group them appropriately. Especially when the price is right for that other new car...

To go even further in the analogy, what do I want in a car? Do I want the very latest untested engine that might strand me in the boonies? Or do I want an engine that has had hundreds of thousands built and tested? Or worse: what if I have a new whiz-band hydrogen engine, and run out of gas a couple hundred miiles from the nearest hydrogen station?

When I migrate from an enterprise distribution like CentOS to a bleeding edge distribution I lose a lot of things; I won't change to a hydrogen engine for a new XM Radio, for instance. Now, in my case, I have changed the entire body on my CentOS installations through the use of the kde-redhat repository; but that is just the skin, and doesn't touch the frame or the engine. And thus far later kde installs don't require large base changes in terms of versions except the KDE install itself.

Now, if kde-redhat didn't exist it would be far more painful, but that's a case where I'm prepared to do the work manually to get the killer feature I need out of KDE 3.4 (the improved telescope control of the 3.4 kstars: read the .sig to find out why).