I know this may be a stupid place to ask, but I have to ask. I'm looking for a new Linux distro to use and support. I've been a loyal purchaser of SuSE Linux Pro for the last 3 years. I've paid my $90 loyally, in part because I wanted money to actually go to someone working on OSS, but also because I thought it was a good bargain, to get a quality, tested distro for that cost.
The problem is that lately SuSE is sliding down the path towards being considered Fedora-like by Novell. So when I install SuSE I don't know if I'm going to get security updates next week or the week after. My $90 may have just gone to be a 6-month or 1-year beta tester. I need more stability than that.
So I'm considering CentOS based on some articles I've read lately, as my solution. What I'm looking for is a good solid distro that COULD do some multi-media if I go hunt down the RPMs or if there's a YUM repository (I'm familiar with Fedora), but mostly a solid distro where I can do Java work daily and where the distro is memory efficient, solid and stable. And also where if I decide to run it for a year or more I won't be forced to upgrade. Now I believe CentOS promises all of these. My concerns, in terms of it being a safe bet are...
#1 - Is there any reason to fear Red Hat bringing the hammer down and thus ruining the party? I'd love to see an FAQ or something to the effect that legally there's no way for Red Hat to block what CentOS is doing.
#2 - Is the community strong? I'm new to the community and when I look on distrowatch it's way down the list. But is this accurate or is CentOS picking up steam? I get the feeling it's picking up steam. The reason this is important is because I'd hate to pick it only to watch it wither and have to go distro-hopping again. Once again, looking for stability.
Any responses that can help me decide are appreciated. Thanks.
Preston
On 5/7/05, Preston Crawford me@prestoncrawford.com wrote:
...
So I'm considering CentOS based on some articles I've read lately, as my solution. What I'm looking for is a good solid distro that COULD do some multi-media if I go hunt down the RPMs or if there's a YUM repository (I'm familiar with Fedora), but mostly a solid distro where I can do Java work daily and where the distro is memory efficient, solid and stable. And also where if I decide to run it for a year or more I won't be forced to upgrade. Now I believe CentOS promises all of these. My concerns, in terms of it being a safe bet are...
#1 - Is there any reason to fear Red Hat bringing the hammer down and thus ruining the party? I'd love to see an FAQ or something to the effect that legally there's no way for Red Hat to block what CentOS is doing.
#2 - Is the community strong? I'm new to the community and when I look on distrowatch it's way down the list. But is this accurate or is CentOS picking up steam? I get the feeling it's picking up steam. The reason this is important is because I'd hate to pick it only to watch it wither and have to go distro-hopping again. Once again, looking for stability.
Hi Preston,
I can attest to the fact that the CentOS community is strong. One way to gauge that is based on this list. It's basically one of the best lists I have every been on. Not only do people take time to answer questions with good technical advice and without being obnoxious jerks (like you get on some lists I'll refrain from mentioning!), but you also get very active input from all the key CentOS guys you see listed under "Information", "The CentOS Team" in the menu bar at http://www.centos.org. I have learned a lot watching this list; you get tons of input from some really sharp folks (I thought about trying to list some names to express my gratitude, but there are too many!).
Another way to gauge the strength of the community is with security updates -- the CentOS crew is amazing! They get stuff out their in hours (or sometimes even quicker).
I certainly wouldn't call myself a distro expert (I worked with Slackware back in the old days, pretty much every RedHat release since 5.X-ish, and a little bit of debian), but I have been extremely happy with CentOS.
I also can't comment on the multi-media aspects, but our primary application is a server-side Java J2EE application running under Tomcat and things have worked great on CentOS. There have been some good Java discussions on the list.
Let us know what you decide.
Take care, Kennedy
Any responses that can help me decide are appreciated. Thanks.
Preston
Preston Crawford wrote:
I know this may be a stupid place to ask, but I have to ask. I'm looking for a new Linux distro to use and support. I've been a loyal purchaser of SuSE Linux Pro for the last 3 years. I've paid my $90 loyally, in part because I wanted money to actually go to someone working on OSS, but also because I thought it was a good bargain, to get a quality, tested distro for that cost.
The problem is that lately SuSE is sliding down the path towards being considered Fedora-like by Novell. So when I install SuSE I don't know if I'm going to get security updates next week or the week after. My $90 may have just gone to be a 6-month or 1-year beta tester. I need more stability than that.
So I'm considering CentOS based on some articles I've read lately, as my solution. What I'm looking for is a good solid distro that COULD do some multi-media if I go hunt down the RPMs or if there's a YUM repository (I'm familiar with Fedora), but mostly a solid distro where I can do Java work daily and where the distro is memory efficient, solid and stable. And also where if I decide to run it for a year or more I won't be forced to upgrade. Now I believe CentOS promises all of these. My concerns, in terms of it being a safe bet are...
#1 - Is there any reason to fear Red Hat bringing the hammer down and thus ruining the party? I'd love to see an FAQ or something to the effect that legally there's no way for Red Hat to block what CentOS is doing.
How?? the code is GPL, therefore if redhat don't supply the code, then they can't use it themselves. They could make it harder by not supplying the source as rpms, but they can't stop releasing the code. besides, trying to block centos would be huge bad press for them with the very community they want to stay friendly with so it's highly unlikely they'd even try.
Besides, centos is handy for RH, with Sun proclaiming that RH is not a real open source company, CentOS provides an opening where RH can say "of course we are an open source company, look at CentOS which is using all of our code......." you get the idea.
#2 - Is the community strong? I'm new to the community and when I look on distrowatch it's way down the list. But is this accurate or is CentOS picking up steam? I get the feeling it's picking up steam. The reason this is important is because I'd hate to pick it only to watch it wither and have to go distro-hopping again. Once again, looking for stability.
Any responses that can help me decide are appreciated. Thanks.
Preston
Personal experiance, CentOS is fairly new, so it doens't yet have the legs of something like Debian, but I can tell you from personal experiance that their are members on this list that are more helpful and more knowledgable then anyone I've ever met on a debian or mandrake list.
besides, CentOS is essentially RHEL, so the support community can include RHEL as well which makes it considerably bigger then you might otherwise think. There are a ton of resources for RHEL and you can make use of them as well as packages for RHEL.
I've been using Mandrake, Redhat and Debian for years, I recently decided to swap to CentOS and I've been very happy thus far. I expect your experiances will be similiar.
Give it a go.
rgds
Franki
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Preston Crawford wrote: | #1 - Is there any reason to fear Red Hat bringing the hammer down and | thus ruining the party? I'd love to see an FAQ or something to the | effect that legally there's no way for Red Hat to block what CentOS is | doing. | | #2 - Is the community strong? | Any responses that can help me decide are appreciated. Thanks. | | Preston
Concerning RedHat bringing the hammer down and ruining the party. Redhat released the source (as an obligation to the GPL) for others to compile as they see fit. This is done via SRPMS (which you are of course familiar with). There is nothing in their language on the site or Release Notes that prevents a person from downloading SRPMS (as they are publicly available from RedHat) and compiling as you so wish. RedHat does have legal grounds to ask you to remove their trademarks though if you are building your own distribution from their SRPMS. This tibbit of information can be found here:
http://www.redhat.com/f/pdf/corp/trademark1.pdf
Note the language "As a licensee under the GPL and other applicable licenses, you have the right to make changes to RedHat Linux software and can market and distribute those changes according to the terms of the license." in reference to building clones of their distribution. They only ask you not call it Red Hat.
As to your second point, the community has been nothing but helpful in my eyes. Questions are answered very quickly (at least in my case) and they are typically spot on. If someone doesn't already know the answer, usually you find they know where to point you. There is a wonderful array of very knowledgeable people here.
HTH
- -- Alex White prata@kuei-jin.org Fingerprint = 58DC 9199 CE73 74E8 B2C1 442E ACF5 92E0 E068 C46C gpg key location: http://www.kuei-jin.org/GPG-KEY-PRATA ~From the withered tree, a flower blooms --Zen Proverb
Preston Crawford wrote on 07 May 2005 12:35:
#2 - Is the community strong? I'm new to the community and when I look on distrowatch it's way down the list. But is this accurate or is CentOS picking up steam? I get the feeling it's picking up steam. The reason this is important is because I'd hate to pick it only to watch it wither and have to go distro-hopping again. Once again, looking for stability.
Well, CentOS is well supported in the hosting world. There's hardly a provider I know that doesn't offer a Centos 3.4 install. cPanel, the popular control panel system, supports CentOS as a host system. From the looks of things, CentOS is here to stay..
Regards,
Martyn
On Sat, 2005-05-07 at 04:35 -0700, Preston Crawford wrote:
I know this may be a stupid place to ask, but I have to ask. I'm looking for a new Linux distro to use and support. I've been a loyal purchaser of SuSE Linux Pro for the last 3 years. I've paid my $90 loyally, in part because I wanted money to actually go to someone working on OSS, but also because I thought it was a good bargain, to get a quality, tested distro for that cost.
The problem is that lately SuSE is sliding down the path towards being considered Fedora-like by Novell. So when I install SuSE I don't know if I'm going to get security updates next week or the week after. My $90 may have just gone to be a 6-month or 1-year beta tester. I need more stability than that.
So I'm considering CentOS based on some articles I've read lately, as my solution. What I'm looking for is a good solid distro that COULD do some multi-media if I go hunt down the RPMs or if there's a YUM repository (I'm familiar with Fedora), but mostly a solid distro where I can do Java work daily and where the distro is memory efficient, solid and stable. And also where if I decide to run it for a year or more I won't be forced to upgrade. Now I believe CentOS promises all of these. My concerns, in terms of it being a safe bet are...
The issues with multimedia are:
1. DVD playback requires the use of a decryption product that can not be distributed by the CentOS project. Supposedly decryption is bad :).
2. MP3 playback requires a patent payment for every player sold. Being that CentOS is given away for free, and we have no idea how many people install our software, we can't comply with that requirement.
While the CentOS team doesn't agree with either of the above requirements, we do follow them.
#1 - Is there any reason to fear Red Hat bringing the hammer down and thus ruining the party? I'd love to see an FAQ or something to the effect that legally there's no way for Red Hat to block what CentOS is doing.
No ... Red Hat, INC (R) is aware that the CentOS project exists and have provided feedback to help us meet their trademark requirements for distributing software that is rebuilt from their publicly provided sources.
If you look at the below PDF, they specifically have set forth guidelines for doing what the CentOS Project is doing. We are following those guidelines to the best of our ability:
http://www.redhat.com/f/pdf/corp/trademark1.pdf
#2 - Is the community strong? I'm new to the community and when I look on distrowatch it's way down the list. But is this accurate or is CentOS picking up steam? I get the feeling it's picking up steam. The reason this is important is because I'd hate to pick it only to watch it wither and have to go distro-hopping again. Once again, looking for stability.
Our mailing list has more traffic than the enterpise lists at redhat.com (to date in May ... Redhat: Taroon-list:55, Nahant-list:47 .... CentOS list: 61 in just the last 2 days and 165 for the month.
CentOS is in the top 20 on Distrowatch ... and have been as high as #12 (on the release of CentOS-4).
We are by far the highest racked RHEL rebuild on distrowatch (see this page: http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major and look for the Top 5 RHEL-based distributions)
CentOS has a record of providing timely updates for more than a year.
We also have 9 internal mirror servers that distribute updates to 38 public mirrors all over the world.
If you look at the centos.org website ranking at alexa.com, we are competitive with many main stream linux distros concerning site traffic.
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=http://www.cent...
We have 10 active developers all over the world providing our updates.
We also have a vibrate IRC community at freenode.net in the #centos channel (there are 127 people in that channel as I type this e-mail).
I like the CentOS project (I may be bit biased though) :)
Thanks, Johnny Hughes CentOS-4 Lead Developer
CentOS 4 xfce ( http://www.os-cillation.com/article.php?sid=43 ) installer (xfce + goodies + gtk themes) , DAG's repository for yum and apt ( Kaffeine + DVD codecs + mplayer plug-in) = desktop OS nirvanna
On Sat, 2005-05-07 at 04:35 -0700, Preston Crawford wrote:
I know this may be a stupid place to ask, but I have to ask. I'm looking for a new Linux distro to use and support. I've been a loyal purchaser of SuSE Linux Pro for the last 3 years. I've paid my $90 loyally, in part because I wanted money to actually go to someone working on OSS, but also because I thought it was a good bargain, to get a quality, tested distro for that cost.
The problem is that lately SuSE is sliding down the path towards being considered Fedora-like by Novell. So when I install SuSE I don't know if I'm going to get security updates next week or the week after. My $90 may have just gone to be a 6-month or 1-year beta tester. I need more stability than that.
So I'm considering CentOS based on some articles I've read lately, as my solution. What I'm looking for is a good solid distro that COULD do some multi-media if I go hunt down the RPMs or if there's a YUM repository (I'm familiar with Fedora), but mostly a solid distro where I can do Java work daily and where the distro is memory efficient, solid and stable. And also where if I decide to run it for a year or more I won't be forced to upgrade. Now I believe CentOS promises all of these. My concerns, in terms of it being a safe bet are...
The issues with multimedia are:
1. DVD playback requires the use of a decryption product that can not be distributed by the CentOS project. Supposedly decryption is bad :) .
2. MP3 playback requires a patent payment for every player sold. Being that CentOS is given away for free, and we have no idea how many people install our software, we can't comply with that requirement.
While the CentOS team doesn't agree with either of the above requirements, we do follow them
Ryan wrote:
CentOS 4 xfce ( http://www.os-cillation.com/article.php?sid=43 ) installer (xfce + goodies + gtk themes) , DAG's repository for yum and apt ( Kaffeine + DVD codecs + mplayer plug-in) = desktop OS nirvanna
On the topic of Dag's apt/yum repository. I'm fairly new to CentOS myself. I'm planning to use it in places where Fedora would be less appropriate. I was worried about package availability. Looking over Dag's repository, I must say I am totally overwhelmed by the thought of the work involved in maintaining it. For Fedora, the extras repository seems like a "big thing" to maintain. Dag's repository is more extensive, supports more OS versions, and from what I can tell, is more up to date than extras. I had to upgrade clamav and clamav-milter on one of my Fedora Core 3 servers yesterday. The latest in Extras is 0.72, which is ancient history. I searched around for new rpms and finanlly found some somewhere. I should have gone right to Dag, because clamav, clamav-milter, and the gang are all there in their very latest incarnation (which I believe was just released a few days ago) for RH7, RH8, RH9, FC1, FC2, FC3, EL3, EL4, FC2_X86_64, FC3_X86_64, EL3_X86_64, and EL4_X86_64. For most of FC3's life so far, all we had were excuses and apologies for the nonexistence of FC3 Extras.
Sincerely, Steve Bergman
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Alex White -
Franki -
Johnny Hughes -
Kennedy Clark -
Martyn Drake -
Preston Crawford -
Ryan -
Steve Bergman