[CS-FSLUG] Quick Review: CentOS 4.1

[Jerry VanBrimmer]

As most of you know I have been a committed Slackware fan for the last
couple of years. Recently I gave a friend an Ubuntu CD. He installed it
on his laptop and demonstrated it to me. I was so impressed I decided to
install it on a spare partition on my machine. I have to say, I am
totally bored with it. Everything just works, there's nothing to tweak
or troubleshoot. I plug in my SanDisk Cruzer mini usb stick and the
kernel mounts it and opens up a copy of Nautilus with all of it's
contents pefectly displayed right before my eyes. Yes, I did have to
create a mount point for it and add a line in fstab for it, but that was
all. 

If there are security updates a red icon appears on the panel at the top
of the screen. Click once on the icon, enter your password, one more
click on INSTALL, and all updates are downloaded and installed right
befor your eyes. 

If I want more than the standard Ubuntu packages I can add any debian
repository url to the sources.list file and the whole debian world opens
up to me. 

It's just too perfect, it's boring. Please pray for me, I'm afraid I
might have to back to Wxxdblows just to have something to do.

Ahem, what's a contented man to do with his spare time?

!!! I just might get some real prayer/work/ministry done for a change!!!


On Sat, Sep 10, 2005 at 12:45:03PM -0500, Ed Hurst wrote:
> 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
> -----------
> Applied Bible -- http://users.tconline.net/~softedges/
> Plain & Simple Computer Help -- http://ed.asisaid.com/
> Plain Package blog -- http://ed.asisaid.com/blog/
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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-- 
Godspeed,
Jerry
The KING is coming!..................Rev. 1:7
The bottom line......................John 3:3-7
Linux User #153217..................http://counter.li.org