CentOS 4.1 Quick Examination
Since Redhat stopped supporting their commercially available Linux distribution, they moved to an Enterprise Linux Server (RHEL) and left everyone else to use a community effort (Fedora Core). Considering the cost of RHEL, the source packages were recompiled and redistributed. The resulting CentOS is a free binary compatible distribution of RHEL without the proprietary Redhat only software. I have seen some virtual private servers using CentOS for the virtualized operating system.
I installed the DVD based copy of CentOS 4.1 on my main desktop a few weeks ago just to experiment. For the most part it, it installs and is setup very similarly to Fedora Core 3(?). Upon initial inspection it also seems to come with the similar list of software. However the major issue here is that it is geared for server performance. Hence, it will not include the latest versions of most software and instead use widely supported and stable applications (i.e. PHP4 as opposed to PHP5, etc.). I could tell that the desktop applications were a bit out of date, but that makes sense considering its intended purpose. … After having used Fedora Core 4 for the past four months, I was shocked at the performance of CentOS. CentOS seemed significantly faster han FC4. In terms of user interface, web browsing, launching applications and even running servers and daemons - it was very notable. I do not know if it has to do with the GCC4 being used in FC4, but I’m still surprised to realize this now. Anyways, I decided I could not use it for desktop purposes since much of the software was older and there was not as much support from the community in general.
I played around configuring different installs of Apache, MySQL and PHP. I tried recompiling source RPMs (SRC.RPM) from FC4, but it became tricky to have multiple versions running. I will try again from source files instead.
My opinion so far is that it is a VERY stable and usable server distribution. If the software it included was newer I would probably be using it as my main Linux desktop. Anyways, more later as I learn more.
Posted in: Distributions, FC4, Hosting, Linux, Server,
1 Comments:
kOoLiNuS on January 23, 2006 - 07:07 AM
also they have a really strong IRC channel and a real focused and prepared mailing list in action …
for a server-machine i would have no doubt on what to install !