On 29/12/12 21:55, James Freer wrote:

Just out of interest i was wondering if many folk on here use Centos.

I've decided now to stop using *buntu after 5 years. I've had a few gripes with *buntu in the past and two bugs in xubuntu i found in (im)Precise - time for a change. Besides that i've been wondering why some packages are being left out - apparently dpkg have changed their description fields and if the author doesn't amend they are left out. *buntu seem to be going on a downhill slide in lots of areas and before unity.

Whilst I have used Linux fort the past 15 years, I remain the eternal newbie! However, during that time I have tried most of the then current top 20 distros, and IMHO Centos 6.3 is the best if 'stability' is your prime requirement. A rock solid distro without unnecessary bells and whistles with a Gnome desktop on installation, but with option of adding KDE which then becomes a choice of either at bootup. Well worth a look is stability and simplicity are most favoured. Michael

I have never used it as a Desktop disto but I'm sure it would be fine. At both my previous employer and current one, we used it for servers (and many business I know of do also); very stable, very secure, very reliable. I would very highly rate it for server work, and I would imagine it would be good for desktop use also. James.

On Wed, 2 Jan 2013, Nick Heppleston wrote:

Hi Guys, Just interested to know how you would compare it to Debian on the stability/security/reliability front? 

I usually just opt for Debian if I need these features for an install.

Nick. 

A couple of years ago i spent a while looking/testing at different distros. Only one's i reckoned worth using were Centos, Debian and Mepis (but these two are rather slow on their development cycle which one could argue is why they are stable distros). As for ubuntu it seems to have got worse imo since 2009 when i stopped using it - xubuntu i've found trouble with latterly. To me the six month release cycle is it's downfall... Fedora is no different (slightly better perhaps). james

On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 1:01 PM, Wayne Stallwood <ALUGlist@digimatic.co.uk> wrote:

On 29/12/12 21:55, James Freer wrote:

...

Just out of interest i was wondering if many folk on here use Centos.

We run it at work on the KVM host machines.

Seems ok but to me it feels like linux from a while ago, the package tools and RPM in general still feels old fashioned and cumbersome after using deb based systems for a while.

I guess part of it is the tools you are used to, One of the reasons I selected it over a Debian server in the first place was to keep familiarity with the RHEL way of doing things. Another (more legitimate reason is that Red Hat are the key maintainers of the KVM project so I'd like to hope RHEL/Centos provides a good KVM base.

I've been experimenting with Centos and the problem is that in order to use it as a desktop one has to use the 3rd party rpmforge repo for desktop type apps - which means that one sets priorities on the repos for updates... and this causes a stability issue. Fine no doubt with its own server related repos. It doesn't tempt me for reliability as a desktop. With the 1001 possible distros there are only a few that are really 'main' and relaible i think. Anyway i'm going to do "The Must Do" in the linux world - a Slack or Arch build as a learning exercise and we'll see where i go from there. The *buntu family seem to be going down hill according to the statistics on distrowatch. Mepis was the nicest and most reliable of the small distros (and v.friendly forum) but it's kde which i don't like as its too fancy. james