This should be simple, but I can't find it on the web: How do I make KDE my default environment? Every time I reboot it goes back to Gnome unless I specifically change the environment before logging in.
And while I'm at it, why is it I never find any information about CentOS on the net? I look up "CentOS KDE default" or something like that, and I get more about things like Mandrake or Fedora or any other distro than I do about CentOS. I know that CentOS is supposed to be on the same level as Fedora Core 3 and Red Hat Enterprise 8 or 9... but still, why is it that no one even seems to mention CentOS? It's like this big but invisible community of users.
Dave
On Mon, August 1, 2005 12:27 pm, Dave Gutteridge said:
This should be simple, but I can't find it on the web: How do I make KDE my default environment? Every time I reboot itgoes back to Gnome unless I specifically change the environment before logging in.
And while I'm at it, why is it I never find any information aboutCentOS on the net? I look up "CentOS KDE default" or something like that, and I get more about things like Mandrake or Fedora or any other distro than I do about CentOS. I know that CentOS is supposed to be on the same level as Fedora Core 3 and Red Hat Enterprise 8 or 9... but still, why is it that no one even seems to mention CentOS? It's like this big but invisible community of users.
Run the command:
switchdesk
as root and pick KDE
On Monday 01 August 2005 13:27, Dave Gutteridge wrote:
And while I'm at it, why is it I never find any information aboutCentOS on the net? I look up "CentOS KDE default" or something like that, and I get more about things like Mandrake or Fedora or any other distro than I do about CentOS.
Because CentOS is younger and less popular than those other distros. When I search for information related to CentOS I try these terms, in this order:
rhel centos fedora <-- I usually stop here linux
On Mon, August 1, 2005 12:56 pm, Simon Perreault said:
On Monday 01 August 2005 13:27, Dave Gutteridge wrote:
And while I'm at it, why is it I never find any information aboutCentOS on the net? I look up "CentOS KDE default" or something like that, and I get more about things like Mandrake or Fedora or any other distro than I do about CentOS.
Because CentOS is younger and less popular than those other distros. When I search for information related to CentOS I try these terms, in this order:
rhel centos fedora <-- I usually stop here linux
CentOS is a rebuild of rhel source ... everything you find for rhel is almost always relavent to CentOS (rhel3 for centos3, rhel4 for centos-4, rhel2.1 for CentOS-2.1. etc.)
Using switchdesk has worked in getting KDE as my default. Thanks for suggesting that.
CentOS is a rebuild of rhel source ... everything you find for rhel is almost always relavent to CentOS (rhel3 for centos3, rhel4 for centos-4, rhel2.1 for CentOS-2.1. etc.)
The relationship between CentOS and Red Hat is something I can grasp. It just seems kind of odd to me that no one has any web sites up, or that there seem to be much, if any, discussion in linux forums about CentOS. Is it just because everyone switches Red Hat Enterprise in when they have an issue to discuss?
Further, if CentOS is the that interchangeable with Red Hat Enterprise, why would anyone buy Red Hat Enterprise? Isn't RHE the one that Red Hat sells?
Dave
On Tue, 2005-08-02 at 09:53 +0900, Dave Gutteridge wrote:
Using switchdesk has worked in getting KDE as my default. Thanks for suggesting that.
CentOS is a rebuild of rhel source ... everything you find for rhel is almost always relavent to CentOS (rhel3 for centos3, rhel4 for centos-4, rhel2.1 for CentOS-2.1. etc.)
The relationship between CentOS and Red Hat is something I can grasp. It just seems kind of odd to me that no one has any web sites up, or that there seem to be much, if any, discussion in linux forums about CentOS. Is it just because everyone switches Red Hat Enterprise in when they have an issue to discuss?
Further, if CentOS is the that interchangeable with Red Hat Enterprise, why would anyone buy Red Hat Enterprise? Isn't RHE the one that Red Hat sells?
Dave ... there is no relationship between centos and rh ... they use GPL software that requires them to release their source code. We take that source code, comply with their trademark restrictions, and build centos.
See this FAQ entry:
http://www.centos.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=13
And About CentOS:
Dave ... there is no relationship between centos and rh ...
Sorry, that was poor wording. I didn't mean a relationship in terms of any official partnership between the creators. I meant a relationship in the sense that they share a lot of the same features and design. I mean, I don't know what RHE looks like, but I know that Fedora and CentOS look exactly alike, as far as my newbie eyes can tell.
But really, it's not so much how Red Hat and CentOS connect or don't connect that I'm wondering about. It's more about the community of support for CentOS. I've been pretty impressed with the helpfulness of this list, and I don't feel I'm lacking support. I just feel like when I search the net for relatively obvious questions about CentOS, unless it's on the centOS web site, there's nothing out there. So I keep coming to this list with rock bottom basics.
Let me qualify further. I know that probably a lot of issues I'm likely to ask about are more Linux specific than CentOS specific. And I also know that so long as I'm reading information about some kind of Red Hat build, it probably applies to CentOS. And I also know that most issues are to do with the applications rather than the OS. But as a newbie, I'm always nervous that if I take information about a Linux command from some Linux infortmation web site and apply it on my system, it will turn out as often as not that things don't work exactly as the web site says, because there's some setting somewhere that makes CentOS just a little different from what the web site says. It's really comforting when trying to look up information on the net to see the information provided in a context that is as close to your own as possible. Fedora seems to have lots of people saying they run it and here's what they did to configure whatever it was they wanted to configure. CentOS... not so much. Is it really just that CentOS is so new it hasn't taken hold yet?
Dave
On 8/1/05, Dave Gutteridge dave@tokyocomedy.com wrote:
Dave ... there is no relationship between centos and rh ...
Sorry, that was poor wording. I didn't mean a relationship in terms of any official partnership between the creators. I meant a relationship in the sense that they share a lot of the same features and design. I mean, I don't know what RHE looks like, but I know that Fedora and CentOS look exactly alike, as far as my newbie eyes can tell.
Yeah, not so much "share same features and design" but "as exact of a copy as is legally possible and damn near exactly the same". But I feel like you get it and we're just nitpicking.
<snip>
Let me qualify further. I know that probably a lot of issues I'm likely to ask about are more Linux specific than CentOS specific. And I also know that so long as I'm reading information about some kind of Red Hat build, it probably applies to CentOS. And I also know that most issues are to do with the applications rather than the OS. But as a newbie, I'm always nervous that if I take information about a Linux command from some Linux infortmation web site and apply it on my system, it will turn out as often as not that things don't work exactly as the web site says, because there's some setting somewhere that makes CentOS just a little different from what the web site says. It's really comforting when trying to look up information on the net to see the information provided in a context that is as close to your own as possible. Fedora seems to have lots of people saying they run it and here's what they did to configure whatever it was they wanted to configure. CentOS... not so much. Is it really just that CentOS is so new it hasn't taken hold yet?
Well, it was one of the top three vote winners in the Linux Journal Editors Choice 2005 awards, so I wouldn't say that it hasn't taken hold. I think that we are all entering the wrongs keywords in our articles and our web searches. I've seen some people call CentOS and it's ilk (Tao, White Box, Scientific, etc.) by the name RBEL for ReBuild Enterprise Linux and others just post comments and articles saying "RHEL" and later clarify that it was really on a rebuild environment. It's something that the ReBuilds ought to figure out if they want to build a good following, but that will come with time.
Until then, this mailing list, the forums on Centos, the Fedora mailing lists, Redhat documentation - these are all good places to find documentation on how/what to do.
Greg
On Tue, 2005-08-02 at 10:47 +0900, Dave Gutteridge wrote:
Dave ... there is no relationship between centos and rh ...
Sorry, that was poor wording. I didn't mean a relationship in terms of any official partnership between the creators. I meant a relationship in the sense that they share a lot of the same features and design. I mean, I don't know what RHE looks like, but I know that Fedora and CentOS look exactly alike, as far as my newbie eyes can tell.
They look the same ... and they are very similar (FC3 and CentOS-4) ... but RHEL-4 and CentOS-4 are much more similar. In fact, only 27 of 803 SRPMS have any changes at all between the two ... that is 3.4% Almost all the changes are trademark / logo related.
See the release notes for any changes that are not logo/trademark related:
http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/i386/RELEASE-NOTES-en.html
But really, it's not so much how Red Hat and CentOS connect or don't connect that I'm wondering about. It's more about the community of support for CentOS. I've been pretty impressed with the helpfulness of this list, and I don't feel I'm lacking support. I just feel like when I search the net for relatively obvious questions about CentOS, unless it's on the centOS web site, there's nothing out there. So I keep coming to this list with rock bottom basics.
Let me qualify further. I know that probably a lot of issues I'm likely to ask about are more Linux specific than CentOS specific. And I also know that so long as I'm reading information about some kind of Red Hat build, it probably applies to CentOS. And I also know that most issues are to do with the applications rather than the OS. But as a newbie, I'm always nervous that if I take information about a Linux command from some Linux infortmation web site and apply it on my system, it will turn out as often as not that things don't work exactly as the web site says, because there's some setting somewhere that makes CentOS just a little different from what the web site says. It's really comforting when trying to look up information on the net to see the information provided in a context that is as close to your own as possible. Fedora seems to have lots of people saying they run it and here's what they did to configure whatever it was they wanted to configure. CentOS... not so much. Is it really just that CentOS is so new it hasn't taken hold yet?
CentOS has very much taken hold :)
We are the top rated RHEL rebuild on http://DistroWatch.com/ (their description, not mine :) ... and we are in the top 20 distros on distrowatch, after a release we normally are near number 10.
We serve about 20TB of data per month from our update, BT, and download servers.
We have average 15,000 downloads per month of just the Bittorrent images of CentOS ... that does not include ISO images downloaded from external public mirrors (there are more than 40 of those mirrors), or the CD companies that sell CentOS CDs.
We have been distributed in at least 2 magazines (one in Germany, one in the UK). We are about to be distributed in the next issue of http://www.apcmag.com/ (Australian PC Magazine).
Hundreds of ISPs offer CentOS based servers, 12 of them have donated servers for our use in distributing CentOS.
(google for: centos dedicated server) -------------------------------------------------- We are ranked higher than several big name Linux distros on both Alexa.com and netcraft.com traffic monitors. Some linux distros that we have more traffic than include on Alexa include:
slackware, knoppix, mepis, xandros, Damn Small Linux, PCLinuxOS ... and we are on par with Mandriva.com.
On netcraft.com www.centos.org has a site rank of 8765 ... mandriva is 8670. ------------------------------------------------- Most of the help is obtained via this list, on IRC:
http://www.centos.org/modules/tinycontent/index.php?id=8
or in our forums:
http://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/
--------------------------------------------------- We have been the focus of several news articles from many places ... some of which are called out here:
http://www.centos.org/modules/news/index.php?storytopic=9
--------------------------------------------------- Several universities use CentOS, including Linux@Duke: http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/04/25/426cc96cf1a9f?i...
And Boston University built a distro based on Centos: http://linux.bu.edu/content/view/64/36/
Bromley College http://www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=95
Google on university and centos, there are dozens more :) --------------------------------------------------- Several Projects are basing their products on CentOS as well:
http://www.centos.org/modules/news/index.php?storytopic=11
----------------------------------------------------
OK, that is enough for now :)
Thanks, Johnny Hughes
On Tue, 2005-08-02 at 10:47 +0900, Dave Gutteridge wrote:
Dave ... there is no relationship between centos and rh ...
Sorry, that was poor wording. I didn't mean a relationship in terms of any official partnership between the creators. I meant a relationship in the sense that they share a lot of the same features and design. I mean, I don't know what RHE looks like, but I know that Fedora and CentOS look exactly alike, as far as my newbie eyes can tell.
But really, it's not so much how Red Hat and CentOS connect or don't connect that I'm wondering about. It's more about the community of support for CentOS. I've been pretty impressed with the helpfulness of this list, and I don't feel I'm lacking support. I just feel like when I search the net for relatively obvious questions about CentOS, unless it's on the centOS web site, there's nothing out there. So I keep coming to this list with rock bottom basics.
Let me qualify further. I know that probably a lot of issues I'm likely to ask about are more Linux specific than CentOS specific. And I also know that so long as I'm reading information about some kind of Red Hat build, it probably applies to CentOS. And I also know that most issues are to do with the applications rather than the OS. But as a newbie, I'm always nervous that if I take information about a Linux command from some Linux infortmation web site and apply it on my system, it will turn out as often as not that things don't work exactly as the web site says, because there's some setting somewhere that makes CentOS just a little different from what the web site says. It's really comforting when trying to look up information on the net to see the information provided in a context that is as close to your own as possible. Fedora seems to have lots of people saying they run it and here's what they did to configure whatever it was they wanted to configure. CentOS... not so much. Is it really just that CentOS is so new it hasn't taken hold yet?
---- The value of RHEL is in the baseline and support. Red Hat supports it, Dell, HP, IBM etc. support it. Oracle and other software platforms support it.
When you use CentOS, the support of these things drifts away. To many of us, that is no big deal since we pretty much are our own support or have figured out where to go to get the information that we need.
To a lot of companies, having a company on which you can rely upon for answers has a substantial value.
I offer both options to my clients...some pick RHEL, some pick CentOS (formerly used Whitebox but John has his own priorities which sometimes lag behind mine).
Craig
On Tue, 2005-08-02 at 09:53 +0900, Dave Gutteridge wrote:
Further, if CentOS is the that interchangeable with Red Hat Enterprise, why would anyone buy Red Hat Enterprise?
If your (one's) enterprise values the support and warm fuzzy that comes with the Red Hat contract you may be willing to pay the freight. I hope enough people do, since if RH goes out of business CentOS is in jeopardy as well.
Isn't RHE the one that Red Hat sells?
Yup, and we wish then well so they can keep supplying those nice SRPMS. If our budgets had not been severely slashed at work, I would still be buying RHEL as I did RH distros for many years, despite having very little need for the support. Giving a donation to CentOS is also a nice thing to do.
Phil
On Mon, 2005-08-01 at 22:47 -0400, Phil Schaffner wrote:
If your (one's) enterprise values the support and warm fuzzy that comes with the Red Hat contract you may be willing to pay the freight. I hope enough people do, since if RH goes out of business CentOS is in jeopardy as well.
Researching who works at Red Hat and on what is always an enlightening experience.
On Mon, 2005-08-01 at 22:15 -0500, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
On Mon, 2005-08-01 at 22:47 -0400, Phil Schaffner wrote:
If your (one's) enterprise values the support and warm fuzzy that comes with the Red Hat contract you may be willing to pay the freight. I hope enough people do, since if RH goes out of business CentOS is in jeopardy as well.
Researching who works at Red Hat and on what is always an enlightening experience.
Well, I know they employ kernel luminaries such as Alan Cox and Arjan van de Ven, and a lot of other people who work "upstream" on kernel drivers and key packages too numerous to mention, but I'm afraid I'm unenlightened as to the point of the comment.
Phil
On Tue, 2005-08-02 at 09:53 +0900, Dave Gutteridge wrote:
Further, if CentOS is the that interchangeable with Red Hat Enterprise, why would anyone buy Red Hat Enterprise? Isn't RHE the one that Red Hat sells?
Not that it hasn't been beaten like a dead horse, but RHEL is more about Subscriptions and Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
Red Hat's first attempt at offering SLAs was not actually Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1, but Red Hat Linux 6.2 "E" (SLAs for RHL6.2).
It was actually SuSE who introduced the first "enterprise" release as a separate product in SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 7 with SLAs.
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Bryan J. Smith -
Craig White -
Dave Gutteridge -
Greg Knaddison -
Johnny Hughes -
Phil Schaffner -
Phil Schaffner -
Simon Perreault