CentOS 5.3 - Serious Linux for serious people

Hi all,

I have something grand for you today: an extensive review of CentOS 5.3, a RedHat-based server distribution, with focus on desktop use, covering live CD test, Wireless, Bluetooth, Web camera, NTFS support, installation of 32-bit and 64-bit machines and their differences, package management, proxy support, Samba sharing, compilation, kernel upgrades, extra repositories, multimedia (Flash, Windows video, MP3), applications, themes, and more. If you've ever wondered if CentOS can be used as a desktop distro, then by all means, do read this article.

Here's the agenda in detail, for those interested:

* Live CD checks on two laptops (Wireless, Bluetooth, Web camera, NTFS support)
* Installation of a 32-bit edition
* Installation of a 64-bit edition
* Solving screen resolution issues
* Compilation
* Installing VMware Tools (in VMware Server and ESXi)
* Configuring startup programs in the session
* Configuring proxy
* Solving update problems via proxy
* Samba sharing
* Adding extra repositories
* Flash Player 10 on 32-bit and 64-bit machines
* MP3, Windows video playback
* Installing cool software (VLC, Skype, others)
* Applications
* Making CentOS pretty (new themes, styles in KDE and Gnome)


http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/centos.html


Cheers,
Mrk

 

Nice tutorial.
what im thinking of doing is waiting until CentOS 6.0 comes out which should be based on fedora 11. im hoping it will use at least kernel 2.6.31
I like fedora but it can break sometimes and I cant seem to find an easy way to rollback. do you know if yum commandline has any rollback features?

 

Nice and very comprehensive review. Looks like you had a couple more annoyances than I had - looks like I was damn lucky being relatively new to Linux. However I had help from this forum and by reading the tips and faq's on the CentOS site. Pirut was a pain and after initially using it never used it again. Instead I now use yumex (yum extender - similar to Synaptic) but agree that a simple yum update is the best. Also ensure that 'plugins=1' is enabled in /etc/yum.conf - then 'yum install yum-plugin-fastestmirror'.
For the resolution in VBox I added this line to xorg.conf under the section 'Screen'>SubSection 'Display':-
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" etc. whatever is suitable.
EndSubSection
It is a bit of a pain to install everything but once done it's really great.
Many thanks for this review/tutorial - I will refer to it often.

 

Woohoo: intense Effort+
Yes, perhaps not a straight forward oob ease of use set-up: Server distro as Desktop.
Wireless seems like a big issue for some: not required here.
i must have been a bit lucky with desktop installation; cant recall it being that problematic.

Setting up networked printers is also a bit of an issue here.

I was able to connect straight to NTFS NAS device: read and write.
Auto mounting of FAt32 external USb devices is all good.

For any readers tempted, although there are many oob distros that offer more perhaps oob, have a run: educational; broaden the horizons: security. Long term support.
Nice run through here:
http://howtoforge.com/installation-guide-centos5.1-desktop
Tips and tricks here: http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks

@Mrk:
+1 for Yumex

I was prolly lucky to get a working desktop

I have been experimenting with another RHEL based distro: Scientific;
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=scientific
https://www.scientificlinux.org/
don't be put off by the moniker and description: good working desktop options there, possibly faster app updates from third parties than CentOS.

Hopefully as the recent team upsets at CentOS have settled, the Distro will move forward with more confidence.

regards

 

And here is a nice Firefox skin (with sub-skins if wanted). The NASA theme - it should appeal to Mrk, being a man of science et al.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4908

http://home.comcast.net/~username54321/starfield/nnl.html

 

HI Mrk,

Does CentOS 5.3 include PAE support in the kernel, i.e. it is a server version, and if a motherboard has up to 4GB of RAM installed, both the processor needs to support the PAE capability, and the capability needs to be turned on when the kernel is compiled in order for a user to be able to use all 4GB of RAM as opposed to 3GB if the PAE capability is not turned on when the kernel is compiled.

-- Tom