On Monday 09 April 2007 03:00, centos-request@centos.org wrote:

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I suspect this release is widely and eagerly anticipated. There will be many our here like me who are looking to migrate to a stable, long-term upgradeable distro that comes with a specification that is not far behind the latest "cool but buggy" efforts. Some people want a Linux to experiment with, others need one they can rely on to earn a living. CentOS 5 looks like it should fit the bill.

Not wishing to put a dampener on things, but I don't think CentOS 5 will be any more eagerly anticipated than CentOS 4 or CentOS 3. And as for 'cool but buggy', there are still many people who consider the 2.6 kernel is not yet up to production standard, and insist on using 2.4

As an upgrade to existing installations, particularly servers, it will be business as usual, certainly, but there are people out here, desktop users, who will be looking to switch. I, for one, have experimented quite enough, and I am looking for a desktop distro that is good for the long haul. I currently run Kubuntu 6.06 LTS, and I like it, but I don't like the support plan. My impression is that CentOS upgrades, following the upstream vendor, are going to be more solid than those of other distros, genuinely upgradeable, and supported for a sensible length of time. And I like the tone of the mailing list.

There has been a rapid increase in Linux use over a very few years. Most people will have tried Fedora, Ubuntu, SUSE, etc. for a year or two, and many will now have refined their requirement to match the CentOS virtues. The historical hit rates on DistroWatch make an interesting study, revealing not only the changes in volume of interest, but also the changes in relative popularity. CentOS came in at 62 in 2004, in 2005 it was at 15, where it stayed for 2006, but a current 30 day span brings it up to 11. I would say this indicates increased curiosity, surely the imminence of CentOS 5 cannot be a coincidence?