[CS-FSLUG] Quick Review: CentOS 4.1

[Ed Hurst]

My wife finally managed to save up and buy a cheap clone system from
Sam's Club, an Everex. She gave me her old HP Pavilion 542x. This is
more machine than I've used before. Having been a little disappointed
with how my old favorite SUSE behaved on some of that older hardware, I
gave CentOS a try. Version numbers essentially track those of RHEL, and
the whole thing is built from freely accessible source RPMs RedHat release.

Except for the external modem, CentOS did a superior job of hardware
detection and setup. Most of the software is a little behind the curve
of SUSE's cutting edge, but that is consistent with RHEL's commitment to
stability. It is sold as a mostly server OS. Sadly, that's too true. By
emphasizing the server aspect, the desktop user loses a little. CentOS
has absolutely no simple dialup application that I could find. For KDE
users, KPPP is crippled in several ways at once, and it seems
intentional. The usual efforts working through the PAM module, SUID
root, using sudo, etc., all failed. Of course, that's a RedHat thing.

But without the famous RP3 dialer to replace it, there is only an admin
tool (requiring root password) to "activate" interfaces. All the
Internet apps are tweaked to work through this application, including
the firewall. Even plain old wvdial is denied access to the modem for
actual dialup (oddly, not for setup). I've already mentioned the problem
with the external modem. Most applications couldn't find it. During
installation, the hardware detection missed it entirely, concentrating
on the onboard ethernet port.

Another naughty issue with installation is hiding package options. That
is, when you take the advanced option to select individual packages,
some of those on the CDs are not listed at all in the installer. I
manually mounted them and checked, finding several things I wanted, but
stuff known to be de-emphasized by RedHat. An example is KDE games. The
installer offered *only* GNOME games. Yet I found the package on the
CDs. On the other hand, automated selections demanded I accept the
kernel sources for SMP kernels when I only wanted a standard set of
development tools for compiling a few apps not part of the distro.

Aside from that, just about everything else is functional and usable, as
long as you keep in mind it's a server OS. It's probably perfect for a
business IT department where restricting user choices is a virtue, but
for the SOHO, it's probably not a good desktop choice.

I also tried SUSE 9.3, but no combination of options could prevent the
installer from crashing out entirely. On a whim, I tried SUSE 9.2, and
managed a text-based installation. I suppose the onboard Intel graphics
chipset is not SUSE's favorite. Oddly, the 3D acceleration works. At any
rate, the system is now working fine. The Celeron 1.8 Ghz CPU seems to
make the shortage of RAM (256MB) less of an issue, because most things
open rather quickly and work well. I managed to save the rebuilt
Freetype2 RPMs with bytecode hinting turned on, and the fonts display
clean and sharp on the Pavilion mx70 monitor. This is a very intelligent
17" monitor, and required absolutely no manual adjustment. At 1280x1024,
things are quite sharp and bright for my aging eyes.

-- 
Ed Hurst
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