[CentOS] Enabling X on headless server via network

Sun Jul 25 17:29:45 UTC 2010
Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>

Akemi Yagi wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 9:42 AM, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> You need to be somewhat careful these days about things that came from
>> centos-testing or extras as some now also appear in epel with the same names and
>> version number that aren't likely to be coordinated.  I haven't seen anything
>> actually break from this yet but have been surprised to see things originally
>> installed from CentOS updating from EPEL.
> 
> Good point. While centos-testing and centosplus repos are disabled by
> default, extras is shipped enabled. So, any 3rd party repo (including
> EPEL) must be used with proper setup (priority plugin, include/exclude
> lines, etc). I have added a note to the EPEL section at:
> 
> http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories
> 
> EPEL is generally known to not overwrite distro files, but when it
> starts showing conflicts with the CentOS extras repo, that needs an
> additional note.

I think the point is that CentOS isn't 'the distro' that epel doesn't overwrite. 
  And it really makes more sense for most additional content to be maintained in 
epel where it is available and compatible for RHEL and Scientific Linux users as 
well as CentOS.  And since you are fairly likely to need at least some of the 
extensive content from epel, you might as well treat the centos 
plus/extras/testing repos as the 3rd party addons that they are, particularly in 
light of the frequent comments here that their only priority is compatibility 
with upstream.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com