My laptop is a Thinkpad T20 running CentOS 5.1
The reason it is running CentOS at all is because Fedora Core 6 was workable on it, but Fedora 8 was a complete dog.
Anyway - with all the new desktop stuff in CentOS 5.2 I'm wondering if I would be happier just leaving it at 5.1 rather than letting it update to 5.2.
Will 5.1 continue to get security fixes if I leave it at 5.1 or do I need to update to 5.2 to get the patches?
I'm planning to replace it at some point, just haven't seen T40s on eBay drop to my price range yet.
On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Michael A. Peters mpeters@mac.com wrote:
My laptop is a Thinkpad T20 running CentOS 5.1 The reason it is running CentOS at all is because Fedora Core 6 was workable on it, but Fedora 8 was a complete dog. Anyway - with all the new desktop stuff in CentOS 5.2 I'm wondering if I would be happier just leaving it at 5.1 rather than letting it update to 5.2. Will 5.1 continue to get security fixes if I leave it at 5.1 or do I need to update to 5.2 to get the patches? I'm planning to replace it at some point, just haven't seen T40s on eBay drop to my price range yet.
I upgraded my Desktop yesterday and my daughter's Desktop this morning. If you surf the web, the move from Mozilla Firefox 1.5.x to Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 will be well worth your time. I was having problems, on web sites I frequently visit, with Firefox 1.5. CentOS 5 is based on Fedora Core 6 as I recall. The difference is with CentOS you get a LONG life, more stability and more security, along with super support from this mailing list. I believe that Firefox 3.0 requires a bunch of other stuff that is not in CentOS 5.1, to run. It took me just over an hour to download all the packages for each box and about another hour to get it all installed. I would suggest that: (a) You backup the data on your laptop (b) login as root and do "yum upgrade" and move to CentOS 5.2. If you do not upgrade everything, you will still get security updates, for the packages you do want to update.
Lanny Marcus wrote:
I upgraded my Desktop yesterday and my daughter's Desktop this morning. If you surf the web, the move from Mozilla Firefox 1.5.x to Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 will be well worth your time. I was having problems, on web sites I frequently visit, with Firefox 1.5. CentOS 5 is based on Fedora Core 6 as I recall. The difference is with CentOS you get a LONG life, more stability and more security, along with super support from this mailing list. I believe that Firefox 3.0 requires a bunch of other stuff that is not in CentOS 5.1, to run. It took me just over an hour to download all the packages for each box and about another hour to get it all installed. I would suggest that: (a) You backup the data on your laptop (b) login as root and do "yum upgrade" and move to CentOS 5.2. If you do not upgrade everything, you will still get security updates, for the packages you do want to update.
I'm already running FF2 on the laptop. The issue is the laptop has a 700MHz CPU (550 MHz on battery) and 384MB of ram, and unfortunately it seems that many of the new gnome libraries aren't very conservative when it comes to ram and CPU, causing gnome to be a dog.
My only gripe with FF2 is that it has a tendency to sometimes crash when opening a dialog window, but I'd rather have that happen then a desktop that just isn't usable because of code bloat on older hardware.
My desktop is a 2.2GHz AMD X2 w/ 2GB of RAM - upgrading that to 5.2 is a no brainer. My LAN server is an older machine, but it's headless so I don't forsee an upgrade problem causing performance there either. It's the laptop w/ desktop performance that I'm worried about, and I'd rather not play around with minimal UIs that aren't well supported.
It's the desktop performance of 5.2 that I really want to know about. If I have to upgrade to get security patches I have to upgrade, but as long as 5.1 still gets security patches, then I really may consider not doing it.
On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 3:32 PM, Michael A. Peters mpeters@mac.com wrote:
Lanny Marcus wrote:
I upgraded my Desktop yesterday and my daughter's Desktop this morning. If you surf the web, the move from Mozilla Firefox 1.5.x to Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 will be well worth your time. I was having problems, on web sites I frequently visit, with Firefox 1.5. CentOS 5 is based on Fedora Core 6 as I recall. The difference is with CentOS you get a LONG life, more stability and more security, along with super support from this mailing list. I believe that Firefox 3.0 requires a bunch of other stuff that is not in CentOS 5.1, to run. It took me just over an hour to download all the packages for each box and about another hour to get it all installed. I would suggest that: (a) You backup the data on your laptop (b) login as root and do "yum upgrade" and move to CentOS 5.2. If you do not upgrade everything, you will still get security updates, for the packages you do want to update.
I'm already running FF2 on the laptop. The issue is the laptop has a 700MHz CPU (550 MHz on battery) and 384MB of ram, and unfortunately it seems that many of the new gnome libraries aren't very conservative when it comes to ram and CPU, causing gnome to be a dog.
We do not have a lot of RAM in our Desktops, which are older models. Mine has 512 MB and my daughter's has either 384 MB or 512 MB (I can't remember and she is using it now)... However, we do have more horsepower than your laptop. I use GNOME 99% of the time and it's running well. My box has a Celeron 2.6 GHz and daughters box has a P4 1.6 GHz.
My only gripe with FF2 is that it has a tendency to sometimes crash when opening a dialog window, but I'd rather have that happen then a desktop that just isn't usable because of code bloat on older hardware.
I used FF2 for a few minutes, while testing a Ubuntu Live CD, before I shipped it to a friend, Monday. From that quick test, I think FF3 is FAR more advanced and so far I haven't seen any problems, while surfing with FF3.
My desktop is a 2.2GHz AMD X2 w/ 2GB of RAM - upgrading that to 5.2 is a no brainer. My LAN server is an older machine, but it's headless so I don't forsee an upgrade problem causing performance there either. It's the laptop w/ desktop performance that I'm worried about, and I'd rather not play around with minimal UIs that aren't well supported.
Our Router/Firewall is a headless IPCop and I will leave that one alone, since it's working properly.
It's the desktop performance of 5.2 that I really want to know about. If I have to upgrade to get security patches I have to upgrade, but as long as 5.1 still gets security patches, then I really may consider not doing it.
Well, as you gradually update packages, if you update everything, you will be on 5.2. If you only update a few packages that you feel are necessary for security, you will continue to be on 5.1.
If you can backup the data on your laptop, give it a shot. Do not upgrade anything, without backing up. HTH
On Wed, 2008-06-25 at 15:49 -0500, Lanny Marcus wrote:
On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 3:32 PM, Michael A. Peters mpeters@mac.com wrote: <snip>
Well, as you gradually update packages, if you update everything, you will be on 5.2. If you only update a few packages that you feel are necessary for security, you will continue to be on 5.1.
Ummm... not quite. Addressing several posts I saw in this thread.
First. There is no *unique* 5.1, 5.2, ... As posted on this list many times, and probably in FAQs, these nomenclatures only represent a time and content based snapshot of some upgrades to the system. Associated with this snapshot is a manifest. If you add any updates 5.1, you may have a 5.1 with some 5.2 stuff in it. The result is not a 5.2 because the manifest is incomplete.
It's not a 5.1 because 5.1, by definition, does not contain the packages updates you have applied. That being said ...
Yes you'll be on 5.1 because you have not achieved 5.2! ;-)
Regardless. You will find the manual labor of selectively applying the updates to be not worthwhile after a while. And at some point you may not be able to apply some that you need/desire because prerequisites that are needed are not installed.
Further, regardless of 5.1 or 5.2, as soon as any update is applied, you are no longer on that release because the manifest is on your system no longer matches 5.x. But as "hoomons", we conveniently ignore this distinction and commonly use phrase such as "fully updated 5.x".
It is a useful concept for communication shorthand, but that's all it is.
Anyway, overall doing selective security-only updates is a bad idea IMO.
To the inquisitor: no I also am not an official CentOS person. So what?
To concerns about FF: there is an officially released 3.0. I used the b5, the one released by upstream with 5.2. It has its problems. Get the real 3.0 release, put it in your home dir, update your desktop icons to point at it, and get the benefits. Even the release candidate 2 I'm running ATM is much better than the beta.
Plugins: mine finds it and others. Check out the various instructions related to installation (they're copious). Key: .mozilla/pluginreg.dat and .mozilla/firefox/pluginreg.dat. Not to be edited manually normally.
If you have the "local install" 3.0 in your home dir, interesting places are here ~/firefox/plugins. Also, for system-wide install, interesting things are in /usr/lib/mozilla and /usr/lib/firefox.
However, the most interesting place are the various installation and setup instructions.
If you can backup the data on your laptop, give it a shot. Do not upgrade anything, without backing up. HTH
<snip sig stuff>
HTH
Michael A. Peters wrote:
I'm already running FF2 on the laptop. The issue is the laptop has a 700MHz CPU (550 MHz on battery) and 384MB of ram, and unfortunately it seems that many of the new gnome libraries aren't very conservative when it comes to ram and CPU, causing gnome to be a dog.
Wow, that's a tiny RAM. You should consider running XFCE instead of Gnome.
My only gripe with FF2 is that it has a tendency to sometimes crash when opening a dialog window, but I'd rather have that happen then a desktop that just isn't usable because of code bloat on older hardware.
You can always install any FF version you want in /home/${USER}/firefox and put that directory at the beginning of $PATH in .bash_profile Voila, instant FF "upgrade" and you don't even have to remove the original FF package.
Lanny Marcus wrote:
<snip>
I upgraded my Desktop yesterday and my daughter's Desktop this morning. If you surf the web, the move from Mozilla Firefox 1.5.x to Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 will be well worth your time.
FF 3b is not without its own warts, though.
I frequently save downloaded video clips to be saved on CD or DVD for friends who don't have broadband access. I have been doing this very cleanly in FF 1.5 using an extension named Download Helper -- which doesn't work in Firefox 3. It turns out that there is an update for Download Helper but I can't say whether of not that works because Firefox 3 can't find the flash player -- which is definitely installed 'cause I'm listening to the audio from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzAXb7qCCAo right now. (Foster Brooks "Drunk Airline Pilot" routine)
Hopefully, a "compound w" for Firefox will be forthcoming.
on 6-25-2008 12:02 PM Michael A. Peters spake the following:
My laptop is a Thinkpad T20 running CentOS 5.1
The reason it is running CentOS at all is because Fedora Core 6 was workable on it, but Fedora 8 was a complete dog.
Anyway - with all the new desktop stuff in CentOS 5.2 I'm wondering if I would be happier just leaving it at 5.1 rather than letting it update to 5.2.
Will 5.1 continue to get security fixes if I leave it at 5.1 or do I need to update to 5.2 to get the patches?
I'm planning to replace it at some point, just haven't seen T40s on eBay drop to my price range yet.
5.1 is not a different distro than 5.2. If you update 5.1 it becomes 5.2. You don't go out and say "update to 5.2", you just yum update, and it becomes 5.2. Think of it in Windows terms as Centos 5 sp1 (service pack 1) or Centos 5 sp2. If you want to stay with 5.1 you no longer get updates.
Upstream has a setup for staying with a point release, but I don't think it has trickled down to CentOS yet.
5.1 is not a different distro than 5.2. If you update 5.1 it becomes 5.2. You don't go out and say "update to 5.2", you just yum update, and it becomes 5.2. Think of it in Windows terms as Centos 5 sp1 (service pack 1) or Centos 5 sp2. If you want to stay with 5.1 you no longer get updates.
are you speaking as an official representative of CentOS?
on 6-25-2008 3:39 PM Spiro Harvey, Knossos Networks Ltd spake the following:
5.1 is not a different distro than 5.2. If you update 5.1 it becomes 5.2. You don't go out and say "update to 5.2", you just yum update, and it becomes 5.2. Think of it in Windows terms as Centos 5 sp1 (service pack 1) or Centos 5 sp2. If you want to stay with 5.1 you no longer get updates.
are you speaking as an official representative of CentOS?
If you want something from an Offical CentOS rep, then read http://www.centos.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=34 but it is a little dated since it only refers to Centos 3 and 4.
You know that the docs are the last thing that gets done! ;-P
Scott Silva wrote:
If you want something from an Offical CentOS rep, then read http://www.centos.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=34 but it is a little dated since it only refers to Centos 3 and 4.
http://wiki.centos.org/FAQ/General#head-6e2c3746ec45ac3142917466760321e868f43c0e also covers CentOS 5.
You know that the docs are the last thing that gets done! ;-P
No, but ease of use makes the wiki more sexy for updating docs >:)
Cheers,
Ralph
Spiro Harvey, Knossos Networks Ltd wrote:
5.1 is not a different distro than 5.2. If you update 5.1 it becomes 5.2. You don't go out and say "update to 5.2", you just yum update, and it becomes 5.2. Think of it in Windows terms as Centos 5 sp1 (service pack 1) or Centos 5 sp2. If you want to stay with 5.1 you no longer get updates.
are you speaking as an official representative of CentOS?
No, but he is right. This discussion happens *every* time a point release comes out, it is archived in the mailing list archives, it is in the FAQs on http://wiki.centos.org/.
You *CANNOT* stay on 5.1 except if you never type "yum update" again.
Ralph
On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Michael A. Peters mpeters@mac.com wrote:
My laptop is a Thinkpad T20 running CentOS 5.1
The reason it is running CentOS at all is because Fedora Core 6 was workable on it, but Fedora 8 was a complete dog.
Anyway - with all the new desktop stuff in CentOS 5.2 I'm wondering if I would be happier just leaving it at 5.1 rather than letting it update to 5.2.
Will 5.1 continue to get security fixes if I leave it at 5.1 or do I need to update to 5.2 to get the patches?
I'm planning to replace it at some point, just haven't seen T40s on eBay drop to my price range yet.
My daughter's Desktop has 384 MB of RAM. I did "yum upgrade" on it this morning, without any issues. That box has a P4 1.6 GHz CPU, which is more power than your laptop has. Probably your laptop would be OK on CentOS 5.2 but I cannot guarantee that. You will have to decide whether or not to upgrade from 5.1 to 5.2. Backup first! If you want to stay with CentOS 5.1, don't do any updates or upgrades. The Distribution is CentOS 5. CentOS 5.1 and 5.2 have the latest updates, as of a certain date, at Upstream.
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Florin Andrei -
Lanny Marcus -
Michael A. Peters -
Ralph Angenendt -
Robert -
Scott Silva -
Spiro Harvey, Knossos Networks Ltd -
William L. Maltby