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CentOS 7 Release Relives RHEL7 As A Community Project

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  • CentOS 7 Release Relives RHEL7 As A Community Project

    Phoronix: CentOS 7 Release Relives RHEL7 As A Community Project

    After being under public QA since last month, CentOS 7 has been released as the popular community-based re-spin of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    I really wonder if this is a genuine touch and go distro for those family pc`s you hope you don`t have to touch more often than you want to.

    Anyone got experience with this?

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    • #3
      Originally posted by Rexilion View Post
      I really wonder if this is a genuine touch and go distro for those family pc`s you hope you don`t have to touch more often than you want to.

      Anyone got experience with this?
      Think about it that way, this distribution is made so enterprise operations can have long-term reliable software that doesn't change much and just performs without anyone touching it. I work with CentOS all the time professionally and it's very nice. You don't get bleeding edge features or snazzy looks like with some modern distros out of the box but you can install anything you like after the fact, if you absolutely want to. With the EPEL repository (Extra packages for Enterprise Linux afaik) you can get pretty much anything a "normal" user would need. Bug- and Security Fixes are backported to the supported kernels and packages so you don't have to worry about that either. It's got SE Linux and is very stable from what I can tell.

      I run a few productive machines on CentOS 6.5 and so far not one has made any problems even though I regularly update the kernels and packages every 2-3 months.

      It's definitely worth a shot. It's not as pretty or simple to use as some other distros but other than those it's rock solid.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Rexilion View Post
        I really wonder if this is a genuine touch and go distro for those family pc`s you hope you don`t have to touch more often than you want to.

        Anyone got experience with this?
        well, as far as mine goes. centos is as stable as it goes, i use it everywhere where i need LTS and RHEL is not affordable or needed. but, if you want to use it as workstation it depends on what you need. if you want gaming, you're better off with fedora since with centos you're stuck with stable versions for years. but, if you need regular use, go with centos

        still, as far as rh flavors go. i never had to touch any fedora either and i set up whole lot of those in various places and needs.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Rexilion View Post
          I really wonder if this is a genuine touch and go distro for those family pc`s you hope you don`t have to touch more often than you want to.

          Anyone got experience with this?
          Lol. I was just thinking about switching over some of my family's aging systems to CentOS to make it easier to maintain them.
          All the users really need is Firefox and LibreOffice, so it should be perfect.

          Example: I couldn't get a B4311 wireless chip in a family member's laptop to work with the latest Liquorix 3.15(.3) kernel yesterday. Turns out it's a regression that's been in the kernel for a while but just recently started affecting users due to a change in 3.15. FWIW, this is still not fixed in upstream 3.15.4 that was released today and the patch is sitting in the stable queue >.>

          Aging hardware gets less attention over time and seems to me more prone to unnoticed regressions or even dropped support

          While on the subject about wireless, it seems Ubuntu likes to change its module blacklist and there's been a lot of breakage for b43 chips every kernel release since 3.1 or so.
          Having to figure out what changed and what needs to be (un)blacklisted is freakin' annoying. Luckily I only update the systems every 6 months or so, but that's still too often for my liking.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Ouroboros View Post
            Lol. I was just thinking about switching over some of my family's aging systems to CentOS to make it easier to maintain them.
            All the users really need is Firefox and LibreOffice, so it should be perfect.

            Example: I couldn't get a B4311 wireless chip in a family member's laptop to work with the latest Liquorix 3.15(.3) kernel yesterday. Turns out it's a regression that's been in the kernel for a while but just recently started affecting users due to a change in 3.15. FWIW, this is still not fixed in upstream 3.15.4 that was released today and the patch is sitting in the stable queue >.>

            Aging hardware gets less attention over time and seems to me more prone to unnoticed regressions or even dropped support

            While on the subject about wireless, it seems Ubuntu likes to change its module blacklist and there's been a lot of breakage for b43 chips every kernel release since 3.1 or so.
            Having to figure out what changed and what needs to be (un)blacklisted is freakin' annoying. Luckily I only update the systems every 6 months or so, but that's still too often for my liking.
            If you're on aging hardware, maybe try CentOS 6.
            EL7 drops support for some older hardware, and EL6 will be supported for another 6 years.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by SyXbiT View Post
              If you're on aging hardware, maybe try CentOS 6.
              EL7 drops support for some older hardware, and EL6 will be supported for another 6 years.
              Looks like RHEL/CentOS 7 only supports 64bit, so I'm going to have to pass on it. It took Intel until 2008 to finally drop the Pentium M 32bit CPUs which they shoved in so many laptops >.>
              I'm sure the laptops with Pentium M processors continued to be sold for at least a year or two after Intel stopped manufacturing them too.

              RHEL/CentOS 6 is sadly a bit too outdated for my tastes. Software looks to be from around 2010.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by Rexilion View Post
                I really wonder if this is a genuine touch and go distro for those family pc`s you hope you don`t have to touch more often than you want to.

                Anyone got experience with this?
                Yes, it worked fine for me (this was two or three years ago, with Scientific Linux), but getting all the codecs that I wanted installed was a hassle.

                Comment


                • #9
                  In my experience CentOS has been the only distro with reliable support for the binary video drivers. Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. I'm always afraid that some random update will break API/ABI compatibility with a driver. If you need/want the binary drivers then it's best to go with CentOS or a LTS Ubuntu release, because that's what the drivers are primarily targeting.

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                  • #10
                    Thanks for the feedback! I'll keep this in mind in case I get to make decisions like this again.

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