D Steward wrote: >> OK ... this is silly >> >> CentOS is an Enterprise distro and works great as a workstation. In >> fact, it is just as good as Ubuntu for a desktop. I would argue that a >> stable, supported for several year desktop is much better than a distro >> that upgrades every 6 months. >> > > I've been starting to ascribe to your opinion. > > For several years now, I've used CentOS on my servers and fedora on my > laptop and desktop computer. > However, F6 and onwards have been a bit flaky to install, with myriad > little things going wrong which needed some TLC which no beginner could > possibly do. > And just last month when I went to install F8 on my laptop since F7 was > EOL, the darned thing consistently segfaulted, despite the media passing > OK, and my laptop being a bog-standard 4 year old HP corporate > centrino-powered which is certified RH3-compatible. The only way I could > do it was via the LiveCD :/ > And then I had lots of little things going wrong on the install like > vital rpms not being installed by yum which I had to do by hand since > yum refused to even acknowledge they were available. :-X > In 6 months time I'll have to do it all again to install F9 which by > many accounts is a POS, freezing up for several minutes at a time for no > apparent reason. > So IMO, having used Fedora since about FC3, stability is getting worse - > each version is more and more on the bleeding edge, too unpolished, too > unfinished - definitely not suitable for beginners unless they have > someone to hold their hand and pick up the pieces. > > Ubuntu has its own problems. While it is slightly less cutting-edge than > F9 and thus easier to install, the forums are huge and unwieldy. Every > problem that one can possibly have, has already been answered by 100,000 > + people in 10,000+ threads. The noobs outnumber the proficient users by > 100 to 1, so finding the right solution to your problem is a real > challenge in that 95% (my estimate) of the answers are wrong. So you'll > spend a lot of time doing (and undoing) the advice given and > backtracking from dead-ends. > > In stark contrast, this list has one of the highest signal-to-noise > ratios I have ever encountered, and the standard of contributors makes > me feel inadequate :/ > However, IMO, CentOS is still slightly too old to be used on a modern > laptop, but probably fine for use on a desktop where standby and power > conservation is less important. > Stability of CentOS is outstanding, but still not perfect - I remember > one problem from last year when I was using CentOS on a desktop and > Evolution refused to start after an update. It needed a small tweak > which was supplied on-list. But this problem came from upstream so also > affected RedHat. > > FWIW, I don't know what version of NetworkManager that CentOS uses, but > the one used by F8 not only doesn't require wpa-supplicant to connect > via WPA/WPA2 but many 'puters (such as my laptop) don't even need the > network service running, since NW is now managing wired connections as > well as wireless. It even integrates with OpenVPN now, although I am yet > to try this. > > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos > I agree with both posters 100% [especially about the Ubuntu Forums - sometimes bigger isn't always better :-) ] I started using linux with Red Hat 6.2 and I stayed w/ Fedora until around FC3, and that's when things started going downhill. I ended up being the classical distro-hopper for some time trying to find what would work for me, and I ended up using CentOS on my desktop workstation, and I use a small lesser-known distro called Foresight Linux on my Laptop - it's very up-to-date, has a unique and wonderful package manager and is far more stable than either Fedora or Ubuntu. That combination works very well for me.