[CentOS] Has anyone got dvd::rip to work in CentOS?

Mon Aug 22 02:46:36 UTC 2005
Dave Gutteridge <dave at tokyocomedy.com>

>Not to add to this meta-discussion, but forming an opinion of
>a distribution based on its installer is really narrowminded.
> Most people get Windows and other OSes pre-installed, so
>Linux reviews should focus on a pre-installed Linux
>distribution.
>  
>
I'm not a reviewer, and this is not a comparison to Windows.
Also, I'm not judging the merits of whether or not Ubuntu is a good or 
bad distribution. What I found as a newbie was that the effort of trying 
to get it to install far outweighed the effort of considering other 
Linux distributions. Especially considering that the shades of 
difference between each distro were seeminly slight and overly technical.

>???  Linux is free.
>
Perhaps I misunderstood something along the way. What I thought was the 
case was that while Linux is free, some distributions aren't. They 
charge for their installer, support, and added features. I wanted to 
select a distribution that was a free. open source, distribution for 
various reasons to do with my antipathy towards the methods of paid 
software companies in trying to generate profit by offering "upgrades".

Anyway, to keep this on focus with CentOS, if CentOS is designed more to 
be a "server", and "desktop questions" are beyond the scope of this 
list, then why did the installer offer me "personal use", "workstation", 
and other varieties of installation other than "server"?

More to the point, am I being illogical by assuming that if I have a 
distribution of Linux, and I go to a web page that offers Linux 
software, that I would assume that I can download and run it? Why am I 
running Linux if I can't run Linux applications?
Are distributions really different enough that one can't run some 
applications and another can't run others? Wouldn't that be kind of 
insane? I mean, I can understand a specialty build that has clear 
warnings on it that it is built for some specific platform or purpose. 
But why does CentOS have a desktop (two, in fact) if it's not designed 
to handle "desktop" problems?

Dave