CentOS Server and Desktop Updates

I’ve been using my previous hosting provider (PowerVPS) for over 10 years now! They had incredibly reliable service so I never switched. But for the past few years so many smaller companies have been providing much more competitive options. However I was just too lazy to make the switch.

Just for fun: the last tweet by @PowerVPS was to me from the last time I purchased a server from them!

@mauriat I’m glad it was an enjoyable 5 years, we wish you the best. Let us know if we can ever help again.

– PowerVPS (@PowerVPS) April 14, 2011

The mistake I made was setting up a server with CentOS 5 instead of 6 at the time. So now, almost everything is way out of support.

I decided I did not need all the features a full VPS with CPanel provided (primarily a full web based administration tool and countless plugins). I know I have enough experience just to setup the critical things I cared about. After some research I decided that Linode (*) was the best balance of price and features. The best part was I could pick a clean minimal install of the latest version of CentOS!

So it took me about 2 weeks to get everything working and I still have some sites to migrate but for the most part I’m very happy with what I’ve got working. I fully intend to write up a lot of this stuff and share it.

• All server software is from up-to-date binary packages from reliable repositories. (No more manual compiles of Apache, etc. just to be current)
• I switched all my site development code to be deployed through a combination of ssh and git (more on this later)
• I have fully switched over to secure sites! Have https on almost everything! Courtesy of Let’s Encrypt
• Everything runs so much faster and smoother than I ever had in the past 5 years!

On the desktop side, I finally switched my main Linux desktop to CentOS 7 - a whole year after I intended to do it. But that really is a good thing since my CentOS 6 setup was so solid that everything worked. I was just getting tired of not being able to try out new software (more on this later). I did update to Windows 10 as well and have been playing with the Ubuntu Linux system embedded in Windows, and I must say I’m really impressed (more on this later as well).

So I’m ashamed that I stated over a year ago that I would resurrect this blog! But a recent kick in the pants finally got me working on cool stuff that I’ve always enjoyed. Greatly looking forward to writing up a lot of the stuff I’ve been working on!

(* Linode is a referral link)

Posted in: CentOS, Desktop, Hosting, Linux, Server,

1 Comments:

• Randy on March 31, 2018 - 11:11 AM

  Hi Mauriat,
  I’ve really appreciated your fedora installation guides over the years… I likewise, dropped off fedora after 17, due to time constraints, and have just recently started CentOS 7
  originally planned for my server apps, but after playing with it (a little while now), I think I might use it for desktop machines as well.
  If you ever find the time, I’d love to see your version of a CentOS 7 installation guide !
  Thanks again for all your insight !
  Randy