MHR wrote: > To repeat what has been said before (right here!): CentOS is just like > RHEL, an enterprise Linux distribution, suitable for anything from > laptops to desktops to enterprise-wide networked multi-server > machines. I don't think RHEL would make a good desktop. I think it would make an ok workstation, or perhaps corporate desktop, where things are tightly controlled. There's just not enough things available for it in the default distribution, and hardware support isn't quite kept up to date. If your standardizing on some platform that supports RHEL (or perhaps just works with RHEL) then great. When I say workstation I mean a replacement for something like an IRIX, Solaris, or HP-UX box that would run specialized software (3D modeling or something). http://www.press.redhat.com/2008/04/16/whats-going-on-with-red-hat-desktop-systems-an-update "It’s worth pointing out what’s missing in the list above: we have no plans to create a traditional desktop product for the consumer market in the foreseeable future." Of course everyone's ideas are different, these are just mine. If your adding stuff from all sorts of 3rd party repositories to get your system to your liking, well at least to me it's not really RHEL(or CentOS) anymore (depending on how much you add), it's just based on RHEL (or CentOS). I see a seemingly endless supply of posts of people complaining about how 3rd party repositories have screwed up their systems(most often it's because they haven't configured everything right, but apparently it's not very obvious). If/when RHEL decides to vastly increase the amount of software that they provide/support in their distribution I think it may become a worthwhile system to use on the desktop. Until then, for me at least, it's Debian on my desktops(when the hardware is supported), or otherwise Ubuntu LTS (I do enable the universe repositories which aren't officially supported but at least seem to seamlessly integrate into the system without issue -- though I haven't used Ubuntu in several months, maybe things have changed). Debian stable has roughly 18,000 packages. CentOS 5 seems to have roughly 2400 packages by comparison, fortunately in a server role it(and CentOS 4) provide almost everything I need(I do install about 50 extra packages), though a desktop system needs quite a bit more. The desktop/server I'm writing this on (Debian stable) has 1400 packages installed, my servers get about 850. I used to think SuSE was pretty slick but haven't looked at it since I started messing with Ubuntu a couple years ago. Main reasons I like RHEL/CentOS: - kickstart rocks, Debian doesn't really have anything that compares (IMO) - I've come to like src RPMS, they really make building from source easy - long release cycles (which can be bad for laptops/desktops especially from a hardware support perspective, even Ubuntu had trouble with suspend/resume on my last laptop - Toshiba M5, Ubuntu 7.04 worked quite reliably, but when I upgraded to 8, it pretty much stopped working for no apparent reason(even using the older kernel didn't help). There's certainly potential for a good desktop in RHEL, the software just isn't there yet(I'd be willing to forgive the hardware support, just give me more packages to choose from and provide security updates etc for). nate