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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."
I know you're trolling but in my last job we had CentOS running on 30+ servers (the rest were Win2k3 servers). I find CentOS to be stable, easy to maintain and navigate around, and most importantly reliable with regular and prompt updates.
I want an enterprise quality Linux to run a database server on it. But I don't want to pay the Redhat price tag; CentOS gives me the quality of Redhat Enterprise Linux for free. So it's running my database server and doing so quite well too.
Given the traffic on the mailing lists, I would say yes, a whole lot of people are using it. In my organization, all desktops and secondary servers run CentOS. We keep RHEL on a few critical servers just for the sake of our (sysadmin) jobs.
Strange. The last thing I'd want in an enterprise server is compiz.
Who uses CentOS? Well, the website of this *ahem* rather famous city runs on it :)
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
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
And it's not only enterprise-quality, but since it essentially is RHEL without the branding, all documentation for RHEL works for CentOS as well. Though the Cent OS user can't depend on support from Red Hat, he could still use something like Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Administration Unleashed or whatever. If only all enterprise-level software was both well-documented in the public sphere and had Free versions out there.
About 75% of the University of Wisconsin Computer Science dept. (graduates + faculty + computer labs) uses CentOS. That's, I dunno, 400 computers?
The only use I see for something like CentOS is for a dev or UAT environment, when you're running the same RHEL version in production. This gives you two (three) essentially identical environments, but you've only gotta pay the man for one copy.
You're doing it wrong.
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.
I used to use CentOS for my server boxes, however version 3 left a very bad taste in my mouth. I then attempted to roll out CentOS 4 on a new box I was preparing for a customer (seeing if it was any improvement over version 3) and it had some problem that prevented it from rebooting for the first time after the install. I've switched to running Fedora 5/6 on my servers and everything has been much more stable.
OMG, pirates!! I'm sooo calling the BSA.
I know you are trolling but yes. CentOS is great for Development were your System Admins' take care of everything and if you move the machine to production you can get a CentOS or Redhat maintenance contract.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
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.
Well, Duke University Shared Cluster Resource (http://www.csem.duke.edu/, over 1,100 processors and still growing) has used CentOS for the last couple of years, and it was working just fine.
It is not yet another Fedora Core 6. Fedora and CentOS have different purposes. CentOS releases are supported for seven years, while Fedora usually supports just the current release and the previous release. After that, you have to upgrade to a newer release, or have no security updates. Fedora is great to try and use the latest technology, whereas RHEL and CentOS are useful for production boxes that should run for years without pain.
You can also do:
/dev/sda /boot is on the first partition)
/dev/sdb
grub
grub> device (hd0)
grub> root (hd0,0) (if
grub> setup (hd0)
and then the exact same for
Then both disks are bootable via grub. After that you won't have to mess with grub.conf again.
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
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.
All I see them doing is exercising their rights under the GPL using others' copyrighted code, which is, surprise surprise, exactly what Red Hat does with the vast majority of the code in their products...
His point is that most of the code in Red Hat products is not owned or written by Red Hat, as is the case with every other distro. They simply feature freeze and stabilize it, and then sell support contracts for it. They are selling support, not the product.
If Red Hat did not want this to happen, they could simply not base their product on GPL software. Of course, if they did that, they would never have become profitable in the first place, because there is no way they could have built a product as capable as RHEL5 from the ground up completely on their own and stayed in business.
Red Hat, while contributing as you point out, piggyback's on other peoples' work, and CentOS is doing the exact same thing to Red Hat. I don't see an issue here.
Separated at birth?
Tuttle City Manager Jerry A. Taylor
Dwarf Dopey
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Right ... BUT ....
... then do the same for CentOS
... the more the merrier I always say ... and startcom is a fine distro too.
Try some some ldd compares between RHEL and startcom
CentOS has nearly 200 mirrors world wide and a geoip enabled system to deliver updates and find downloads, startcom as about 10.
Though
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
What about students, both formal and informal? Red Hat is the most popular distro when it comes to finding books. A free (as in beer) clone that you can work the exercises & examples on without the distraction and niggle of differences is a Good Thing(tm).
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
City manager of Tuttle decries more sophisticated attacks against his website, threatening legal ramifications against hacker terror networks who have targetted him for termination.
Make a few bad jokes on
http://www.rocksclusters.org/
ROCKS cluster at our university's department of economics.
There is a couple of clusters registered on the site, too.
Wikipedia says:
"Rocks Cluster Distribution is a Linux distribution intended for computer clusters. Rocks is based on CentOS, but uses a modified anaconda installer that simplifies mass installation onto many computers."
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If you are running RHEL in prod, then nothing in the license stops you from installing it on the dev machines. We do that, and it works great because we have to maintain only 1 distro in the whole environment.
The RHN subscription is for access to the download page, and for support. If you have two licenses, then it entitles you to have support for 2 machines, but doesn't in any way prevent you from installing on a third machine. Just an FYI, in case you weren't aware of it.
Microsoft: "You've got questions. We've got dancing paperclips."
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
https://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_us.html?count ry=buying+a+Red+Hat+Subscription+from+Red+Hat
You need to reread section 5 if you have an RHN subscription. You MAY NOT install redhat software on a machine that does not have an RHN subscription and they MAY ask to audit you.
They could have based their server product on *BSD, then close the source and live happily thereafter.
It's only GPL-ish licenses that prevent such behaviour
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Yeah, sorry about that - I was doing an update to my CentOS server at home over a flaky broadband link and every time it reconnected I got a different dynamic IP address. BTW how's the other user getting on with their system?
AT&ROFLMAO
I don't think that's right at all. I've come across the same question in 2 different companies now and the answer has always been that you must have a RHEL subscription for every machine you have RHEL installed on. In fact have a read of the licencing agreement:t ry=buying+a+Red+Hat+Subscription+from+Red+Hat
https://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_us.html?coun
Read sections 3.1 and 5.1 in particular. In 5.1 they are saying that you must notify them if the number of installed systems exceeds the number of subscriptions you have, and they will bill you for the extra systems etc.:
Client will promptly notify Red Hat if the number of Installed Systems exceeds the number of Installed Systems for which Client has paid the applicable fee. In its notice, Client will include both the number of additional Installed Systems and the date(s) on which such Installed Systems were put into use. Red Hat will invoice Client for the applicable Services for such Installed Systems on a pro-rata basis and Client will pay for such Services in accordance with this Agreement.
This is why Centos is so useful, you can have as many dev/test/uat/whatever machines as you like without having to worry about subscriptions.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
What about students, both formal and informal?
For formal students, they should be able to buy the academic version of RHEL which, for v4 was $50 for AS.
LOAD ".SIG"
PRESS PLAY ON TAPE
The ServerCD version of CentOS always take some time to show up.
That said, you can do a bare minimum install with CentOS 5 CD1 these days easily enough. Just select custom install, and deselect all package groups.
morcego
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.
Dear CentOS developers,
Please stop hacking my browser. When I visit my favorite site, Slashdot, your software's name keeps appearing on my browser. If you don't stop this at once, I will be forced to call the FBI and report your hacking.
Thank you.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
Does that make it NickelOS?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Red Hat also make money from the contributions of others? I know Red Hat pays people to work on Linux, but don't they also benefit greatly from a lot of "free" labor from others? Not to knock Red Hat, but just trying to point out that this is the nature of the game with GPL work.
It depends on what you are doing with your enterprise server. One thing you can do with an enterprise server is run a FreeNX terminal server for many clients. Granted you don't need to run the server at runlevel 5 or run a LOCAL X-server, but having the xserver installed and usable by clients is not "always" a bad thing.
Actually there were zero-day exploits for X.org just last week. RHEL updated their packages and CentOS followed suit a few days later.
Better safe than sorry, just like running IIS as an external web server, you can do it but the risk isn't worth the reward and you can do nearly anything via an ssh session anyway.
And thus the beauty of free (as in freedom) software. Red Hat takes the work of others, adds a few features, a lot of stability and testing, and sells their result with a support plan for a nifty profit. They give those changes back to the community, which then takes their work and releases a free (as in beer) version for people who don't need the support.
Everyone wins. This is no longer a zero-sum game. I don't understand why that's still so difficult for so many people to understand.
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.
They are a business. To help you understand why you have to do this imagine this.
You own a Open Source company and create software and release it with your logos and branding all over it. Now, I take it because it's GPL, alter it the way I want and release it, but fail to remove your logo and branding. Someone else downloads it and installs it see your logo thinking it's your product and it complete screws up their system because of the changes I made, not you. Now, all the sudden this Company attacks you publicly and in the courts. You're business has been damage by no fault of your own.
You have to remove everything, because they are protecting their company. The fact that CentOS exist you should be thanking Redhat. They made it possible to run a Enterprise tested OS for free. Because of that, I can run Enterprise applications and pay for the support I need. (Oracle on RHEL) and run the identical OS (minimizing documentation and training) with the ability to download updates for zero cost on other non-critical servers.
Absurd. Obviously Red Hat is going to demand the removal of their trademarks. The fact of the matter is that RH is very helpful towards the open source community. I see plenty of RH devs and employees participating in Fedora. And there is a lot of bleed-over as far as package development and work on bugs between CentOS and Fedora. It's all connected and RH has been nothing but supportive.
They're a clear force for 'good' in the world of Linux in my mind.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Who modded this informative? It's flat-out wrong.
The GPL indeed says you need to provide source to anybody you provide the binary to, but that's not all it says. It also says that any recipient of the code can modify and redistribute at will. Therefore, anybody who has a copy of GPLed software can freely give it to friends.
Heck, the right to redistribute changed and unchanged versions of the software are two of Stallman's Four Freedoms. There's no way the GPL would not reflect that.
So, if you have GPLed software, you have the right to get the source code, you have the right to run it, the right to modify it, and the right to redistribute it. The limitations that the GPL has is that you cannot deny any downstream recipient those rights.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I'd say integrated virtualization is a big feature. Likewise the updates on all the major infrastructure packages - apache, php, postgresql, mysql, etc. The inclusion of Red Hat Directory Serverer. Encrypted filesystem support. Extended SElinux support, including policy debugging. Installation on iSCSI devices. Better NUMA support. Blah blah blah, etc, etc, etc.
There's also new features on the desktop, but that's to be expected since Red Hat is pushing a desktop variant as well. (And for the record, I know plenty of people who ran RHEL or CentOS 4 on the desktop as well. Some of us appreciate not having to upgrade every twelve to eighteen months on our desktops as well.)
I think that "Server" CD is something your company created. RedHat split RHEL5 into "Server" and "Client" repositories, but CentOS 5 combined them into a single repository, as CentOS 4 did before. So "Server" or "Client" is just a choice of which packages you install.
Where I work, we've created kickstarts for several configurations - development workstations for a couple different teams, basic server, server with RAID. They're minor differences, and in fact I'm switching our configs to be all generated from one file through gpp. As of last night, you can get a CentOS 5 machine by booting our CD, typing workstation-x86_64 name=foo, and waiting half an hour. At some places, you don't even need to put in a CD - you can use pxelinux to boot off the network.