CentOS 5.4 was released 21 Oct.

Just updated from 5.3 and all's well. Whew !

Stuck to the release note and updated as follows:-

yum clean all
yum update glibc\*
yum update yum\* rpm\* python\*
yum clean all
yum update
shutdown -r now

Edit:- CentOS 5.4 Release Notes

 

All good here too
Remarkable: one command "yum update" did it all ( I'm a bit lazy )


Just giving the 64bit version a run in VM today.

 

Have installed the 64bit version of 5.4 in VM: nice, no obvious benefit re speed.
Flash working well !! No special tweaking req.
Big repo of useful if not exotic 64bit apps available via yum.
Still trying to break it.

Updated 5.3 running well.
( have 5.4 .iso jic )

OT diversion:
Interesting: the CentosDVD is the most dl'd OS file from my ISP library over the last 2 weeks. I suspect new version of the 'buntus will eclipse that, be interesting to compare to SUSE and Mandriva.
More than Slackware 13.

An aside: the Chakra dev release also getting a lot of interest.
Miro v.v. popular

The library users prolly represent a fairly tech savvy subgroup straw poll of subscribers. Makes a nice roadmap of latest goodies.

 

http://elrepo.org/

 

Heh, not unexpected: Ubuntu ( vanilla desktop x86 ) being dl'd at rate of 3:1 over CentOS
cest la vie

 

Sorry for going OT but may I ask why you all like using CentOS when the last time I checked at DistroWatch its component applications version numbers were far behind those of Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.. For example, the kernel version, if I recall correctly, was 2.6.18 while Ubuntu Karmic is using 2.6.31.4.

Thanks for any replies, and, again, sorry for the intrusion.

Later...

 

Trespasser, you have a excellent question.

A good reason could be that it gets installed on last years hardware, for example one of my toys is a HP laptop of almost 10 years old with 512 MB RAM.
I think that KDE 3.5.x as offered by Centos 5.4 would suit better than the more massive KDE 4.3.
Just like I would not try to install Windows 7 on such hardware.

Just my thoughts.

 

Thanks for the info. . I actually hadn't looked at it from that perspective but it makes good sense.

The sheer size of the download (3+ gigs at least at DistroWatch) has always discouraged me from trying it.

Later...

 

Another reason could be "life long support" (at least compared to other distro's):

 

CentOS is RHEL: different kettle of fish to cutting edge utd distros.
Really meant as Server distro.

I am basic end user:
I was experimenting/distrohopping and wanted to test my mettle
Lo and behold:!! rock solid, high useability factor for me, no issues with older or newer HW.
Outstanding simple desktop. Cant break it.

See the first 2 posts here for, imo, serious WOW factor

Lots to learn with CentOs as base install: I dont mean hard to set-up: good learning experience.
Good ( and kind ) community back-up in my experience.
The devs cop a lot of criticism re repos and there has been recent turmoil..but for me..I'm happy with whats on offer.
Lots of useful 64bit apps available that work for me.
There's afaics, little in it for them other than just doing it: nice effort.

Any upstream developments have already been done over by RH: cant be bad.

CentOS gets lots of criticism for being somewhat of a dinosaur, no eyecandy: so what.
Some functions dont occur "automagically", but will require some learning: then they work.

Try the live Cd: mirrors here:
http://isoredirect.centos.org/centos/5/isos/i386/

If you want a slightly more utd RHEL clone : go to Scientific Linux: big community, occasionally just a bit more 'upstream' than CentOS.

LOL: coolness factor: any dipstick can run Ubuntu:
try CentOS

 

I will probaly end up running centOS once version 6 comes out.
I like fedora but its to unstable.
centOS 5X cant mount ntfs partitions due to the older Linux kernel.

CentOS is meant as a work horse aka server and workstations. One of the games I play uses centos as server OS and it is ultra reliable.

 

@lodore
Do you intend to use CentOS as a desktop OS? We've been experimenting with 64-bit CentOS workstations but currently it's only running on two our servers. I feel that for desktop usage you're better of with one of the more current mainstream distro's.

 

Hello Sputnik,
what reasons are you deciding not to use centOS as a desktop OS?

the reason im not currently using centos as a desktop OS is because it is hard to get some stuff working plus it uses an older kernel that doesnt support ntfs partitions. fedora has these problems sorted and will later on become rhel 6 and centos6.

 

@lodore
I'm sorry for my incomplete post. Well it's pretty much exactly what you said, it's too far behind the current packages to be used for workstations/desktops. The packages itself are very stable but let's take the Gnome library's for example are version 2.16.0, initially released in September 2006. Three years of development in open-source software is a very lot. You'll miss lots of bugfixes and other improvements witch make it hard to justify just the few more (possible) instabilities running a newer version.

In fact we preformed a test with two workstations in spring 2009, one running CentOS 5.3 and the other running openSUSE 11.1. On both the crash counter stayed on zero after three months. However the more recent openSUSE workstation pleased it's users with more up-to-date software and easier out-the-box hardware support for the administrator. On laptops this difference became even clearer, since there are almost hundreds different types of laptops in our organization this would be a major headache for our administrators to get CentOS running on all of them.

Currently we're experimenting with customized openSUSE packages running KDE4.

However CentOS is serving our servers very very well!

 

Ah ha i thought that might be the reason.
fedora is to unstable and centos gets to old.
I dont like Suse. one of the reasons is because i really dont like YAST. it has to many options and once you open the option it doesn't have give much configuration for that thing.

I quite like Debian but i cant seem to get my laptop's wireless card to work on lenny. Once squeeze has the 2.6.31 kernel im gonna install testing on my desktop since it will then support all my hardware.

what made you choose centos for server instead of debian lenny?

 

@lodore
Good question Too be honest with you I can't give any rational answer to that other then that I have big trust in CentOS as a server OS. Also most of our administrators do have experience with Red Hat servers so this was an advantage.

Regarding openSUSE, YAST is indeed a mater of loving or hating it. While I stood skeptical against it at first YAST now makes me happy. Now-a-days YAST is open-sourced so we could take a look at the source. It's quite clean code but above all very well documented making it possible for us to make adjustments of needed.
Starting from openSUSE 11.2 configuration modules that are offered by your DE will not be part of YAST anymore. YAST is becoming more an addition to your configuration tools rather then replacing them. Personally I feel that programs like YAST and Mandriva's DrakeTools (?) make the life of Linux users easier.

 

for anyone wondering: "why do you use CentOS..."
Here is an interesting comparison from Phoronix.
Frankly I was a bit surprised: but; validates the 'feeling'
Of course there are some qualifiers re individual usage profiles.

CentOS 5.4 vs. OpenSuSE 11.2RC vs. Ubuntu 9.10 Benchmarks

 

Interesting indeed, I tend to format the system partition with XFS, from this article it seems that ext4 doesn't offer speed improvement.