[CentOS] Re: New to CentOS, and wondering about application availability

Wed Jul 27 18:01:48 UTC 2005
Ugo Bellavance <ugob at camo-route.com>

Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> Jim Perrin <jperrin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Whether people run RHEL/CentOS or not, it's based on Fedora
> Core.  And as long as Red Hat doesn't make it simple to
> understand how the distros relate, when someone has an issue
> trying to use a Fedora Core package, I'll try to explain it.

I see, but it is necessary?  Sometimes, too much information is like not
enough.  Try putting yourself in the head of someone who has been trying
to use linux for 3 weeks.  3 weeks.  Does he need to know how crappy is
fedora's versionning scheme is?  When you're a beginner, you want
something that works.  You don't want to get into deep details.  Once
you have a working system, you can dig into details.

Don't take that as in insult.  You're probably the best source of
information I'll ever meet in all of my lives, but flooding newbies with
info can have a very negative effect on their learning, and it may be
worse than saying nothing.  Please keep it simple.  If you want to
express your feelings about something, use your new blog, and send a
link to it so that people can discuss.

So what was the story of the original post?

1- He tried Fedora, but switched to CentOS because of lack of stability
and he could now read DVD's.

2- He found that there are a lot less applications available for CentOS.

3- He tried installing an RPM that was built for Fedora, but it didn't work.

4- He wants to have docs about installation of CentOS.

Conclusion: He wants to keep CentOS, but would like to have more
applications available.  He probably doesn't care much about _why_ a
Fedora RPM doesn't work on CentOS.  He wants install docs for CentOS.

For me, the answer is quite simple:

- Dave, Fedora have more repositories configured by default than CentOS,
but you can easily add some.  It is better to only use RPMs that are
built for your system (Using CentOS3? look for RHEL3; using CentOS4?
look for RHEL4 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux)), or compile from source.  See
my other post for link to other repositories.

- For the doc question, I haven't found any doc similar to the posted
link.  But many tips on that page should work for CentOS, with slight
modifications.  Or write to the list, we'll help you, or use the IRC
channel (other people gave other good suggestions...)

> 
> I thought I did it rather briefly (at least for me).
> 
> 

Yes, but it looks like you fulfill your needs before the original poster's.

Regards,

-- 
Ugo

-> Please don't send a copy of your reply by e-mail.  I read the list.
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