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CentOS 5 Released
jonesy16 writes "Only a few weeks behind the release of Red Hat Enterprise 5, CentOS announced today the immediate release of version 5 of the free derivative of RHEL 5. Torrents are available for both i386 and x86_64. New features include compiz and AIGLX support as well as better virtualization and thin-client support. Package updates include Apache-2.2, kernel-2.6.18, Gnome-2.16, and KDE-3.5."
We use Cent where I work. There's a special "Server" CD that strips out pretty much everything that's not a major requirement. I think they're taking the same path that Microsoft has with Windows: you put one version on the server, and another version on the client, and it's all tested to work very well together. In that respect, Compiz on the client might be considered a feature.
"I do a grep for shit, bollocks, and tits before checking in code. I'm professional..." -RECURSIVE_META_JOKE, reddit.com
About 75% of the University of Wisconsin Computer Science dept. (graduates + faculty + computer labs) uses CentOS. That's, I dunno, 400 computers?
CENTOS is ideal for any dev work that will eventually be deployed to RHEL, as its basically the same binaries with the redhat copyrighted stuff removed. ( and sans support contract ...)
we tend to set up vm's as dev and staging environments per project, last count there was about 30 dormant and 5 active on our vmware box.
as for the compiz & desktop candy.. you can thank fedora for that finding its way to centos... of course you dont have to install or even use it.
A few people use it ... well, maybe more than a few as we have had 2 million unique IP Addresses do updates against our yum repositories in the last 12 months.
Except ... Fedora Core 6 will stop getting updates once FC8 is out in a year .. but RHEL5 (and CentOS) being Enterprise OSes will continue to be supported for 7 years. So, while they are the same (or at least very similar) to FC6 now, if you are installing it on your enterprise servers or desktops, you will appreaciate the support lifetime and reduced cost of totally reloading your OS every 6 months.
Debian is best for running non-commercial stuff on, but for most HP stuff and VMware server etc (that officially support RHEL4) CentOS is the way to go. The server install (single CD with all the stuff you need) rules, hope they make one for CentOS5 soon.
When installing for example VMware Server, all the stuff one needs is already in. Even the kernel modules load without any recompiling.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
Well ... it seems that the Fedora team (and Board Chairman) do not seem to share your opinion of CentOS (they must not have gotten the memo to hate CentOS before we shared a FOSDEM 2007 devroom). Also see:
... but instead used debian or ubuntu. Of course they wouldn't ... Red Hat benefits greatly because CentOS gets software installed that can easily move to their flag ship product when and if the time is right.
... but that is enough for now. No, Red Hat is not loosing sleep because CentOS exists ... indeed, quite the opposite.
LinuxFormat Article
I'm sure that Red Hat would be much better off if the people who want to install a free server did not install CentOS (which can easily run anything on RHEL later if support and a paid for OS is required)
Also, take a look at the Red Hat bugzilla sometime and do a search for CentOS. The code base gets seen / installed by many more people on many more pieces of hardware, many of which would not have installed on RHEL but some other free OS if CentOS were unavailable. This allows RH to get feedback and bug reports from many more people to stablize their codebase. All the time, RH does not need to provide any real support to this group of people.
You can even argue that because of the popularity of CentOS combined with some big name 3rd party repositories like RPMForge and KBS CentOS Extras that a whole new need was demonstrated, and that the EPEL project was created to help fill that need. Again, Red Hat and RHEL users benefit greatly because of this colaboration.
There are other numerous advantages as well
RH admitted that 300+ packages in RHEL5 are rpms from FC6. RHEL 5 strongly resembles of FC6... it is nothing but augmented version of it anyway ...and CentOS is exactly that as well.
That's the whole point of the fedora project: to provide a base from which to produce RHEL.
The core difference, as has already been pointed out, is long-term support. If you find you need a security update for a particular package for Fedora Core 6 in a couple of years when FC9 is the latest version, good luck. Your only options are to upgrade the whole system or build the package (and any dependencies which also require updating) yourself.
You may not have a problem with that. CentOS and RHEL is intended for people who do.
Fedora is a whole other beast. While Fedora rpms will often run fine on a RHEL system (and RHEL5 makes many of the FC6 packages available as unsupported extras), its goal is to be much faster moving and bleeding edge, at the cost of reliability and long term support.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.