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CentOS 4.3 Multi-Platform Release
hughesjr writes "The CentOS development team has announced the availability of CentOS-4.3 for the i386, x86_64, and ia64 architectures. Major changes in this version of CentOS include: upgraded update system - this new system provides more that 100 total mirrors for updates and picks geographically close and non-stale mirrors based on our master server's content; Frysk, InfiniBand Architecture (IBA), and z/VM hypervisor added; see the release announcement for more information. ISO's are also available for download on their site."
Obligatory Wikipedia link. CentOS is a project which uses the source packages published by Red Hat in order to create an Enterprise Linux solution that can compete with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is distributed only in uncool binary form. While the differences between RHEL and Fedora Linux, the everyday consumer version, are not great--they are often documented in a single book, as in Wiley's Red Hat Fedora and Enterprise Linux 4 Bible , CentOS is probably not important news for most Linux hobbyists.
You dumbass, the entire 2.6 scheduler, virtual memory manager, and auditing subsystem are all written and maintained by Red Hat. Let us not forget the countless other contributions they make to the kernel and the development of one of the most often used filesystems, ext3 (its not the fastest, but it is one of the most feature filled and stable). The majority of GCC is also maintained and/or coded by them. They didn't like using a proprietary virtual machine so they started GCJ too, a native compiler for java. Shall we start about how they pay the salary of Chris Blizzard, the big firefox developer and mozilla board member, or Alan Cox, one of the most important kernel developers alive. Red Hat has contributed more code to linux and OSS in general than any other entity, and they don't even brag about it. They also do the majority of the development for Gnome (even the Gnome.org site is hosted by them, read the bottom of the site). Red Hat has spent millions making sure that Linux stays competitive, they bought GFS and Logical Volume Managing from Sistina and gave it away for free, the bought eCos and Cygwin, gave them away for free, spent a few million on the Netscape Directory Server and gave it away for free, and I could go on for much longer. You really have no idea how important Red Hat is to the OSS movement, if something ever happens to them we'll all be set back years as far as development pace goes. Even a good chunk of GLibc is written by them. Unlike most distributions, Red Hat actually codes a good portion of that which they sell, they aren't just repackaging other people's work in an easy to use fashion, they are responsible for where the movement is today. (They also gave 12 million dollars worth of stock to Linus Torvalds to show appreciation for what he's done, thats why Linus never has to worry about work, owns a big home, and drives 3 cars, a Mercedes SLK32, a BMW convertible, and an Acura SUV) Get your facts straight.
Regards,
Steve
Yes, I have heard that people who are studying for Red Hat certification need distros like Centos. Of course you want to play around with RHEL and study it, and of course RHEL is too expensive for that. From what I've read Fedora doesn't cut it for this purpose either.
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