TechieMoe.com

Introduction:

I was pushed to try CentOS more out of frustration than anything. If any of you have read my relatively glowing review of Fedora Core 4, know that apparently it only works that well on MY computer, and not necessarily on anyone else's.  It took me two hard weekends of hacking to get FC4 working on another one of my test machines, this one with much more common hardware, so I was fed up after that.  Fedora, for those of you unfamiliar, is a testing branch.  The maintainers want the latest and greatest software and features in their distro regardless of how untested the code is.  The result is that more often than not, something doesn't work.  Enter CentOS. 

CentOS is based off of Redhat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).  They can't say that because of Redhat's legal department, but it's the truth.  Redhat still releases the sourcecode for their enterprise operating system because they have to; it's GPL.  CentOS takes this source code, compiles it, removes any and all Redhat copyrighted information (mostly just logos and such) and redistributes it as CentOS.  Don't think that they're trying to compete, however.  They bill themselves as offering a service that anyone with enough time and effort could do themselves.  They just package up the freely-available sources so you don't have to. It's the difference between making a pizza and buying one, only this pizza is free.

Why RHEL, you might ask?  Well, Redhat Enterprise Linux is designed for (yep, you guessed it) the Enterprise crowd, which means every package must be very thoroughly tested to make sure it's rock solid so that Redhat's corporate customers can install it on their servers and workstations.  The end result of this is a very stable distro with perhaps not the latest and greatest features, but the features present work as expected.

Install:

What can I say? If you've installed Redhat 9 or any of the Fedora Cores, you're familiar with the Anaconda graphical installer.  It's pretty, relatively simple, and gets the job done. The only thing to note with this version of Anaconda is that every spot that usually says "Redhat", "Fedora" or has the "shadow man" logo has been replaced with "CentOS" and a tux logo.

After the basic system install, my fun begins.  I immediately test the Nvidia 3D driver on most distros, and this one was no different.  One thing to note is that where Fedora Core 4 made me jump through hoops to get it to work, with CentOS I was able to simply run the Nvidia install script, edit my xorg.conf, and voila.  This is a breath of fresh air to me. On to the games.  My first install was Doom 3.  Unlike Fedora Core 4, which gave me a strange sound issue with the default sound system, I had no trouble whatsoever.  Neverwinter Nights, UT2003, and Quake worked just fine as well. 

The crowning acheivement however was when I attempted to install AlephOne, the open source engine for Bungie's first person shooter, Marathon.  Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity installed and ran beautifully, as long as they weren't in full screen mode. That's further than I got on any other Linux distribution, though, so I'm happy with that.

Software Selection:

Once again, if you've installed Fedora Core or Redhat 9, you're familiar with the basic packages.  Gnome 2.10 is the default, the kernel is 2.6.9, and the basic array of office software, gcc compilers, and server stuff is included. My basic installation weighed in at 2.9GB.  Also, unlike the Fedora series, CentOS (and I assume RHEL as well) still includes the kernel sources on the disc.  This makes compiling kernel modules like the Nvidia driver much easier.

Most Annoying Feature:

There's no support for ReiserFS with the default kernel.  I wouldn't have noticed this except that I tried to mount my SuSE home partition in order to copy over my savegame files for Neverwinter Nights (I'll be damned if I'm going to start over with my Level 12 Chaotic Good Warrior, particularly after that godawful hard end boss in Chapter 2).  I wasn't able to mount and copy over the files, so that's an annoyance.  Is it enough to sour my impression of this distribution as a whole? Nope. Since the kernel sources are included and I'm relatively well-versed in the sorcery of Linux, I can recompile it with ReiserFS support if I like. 

Who's it best for?

Anyone who's been disillusioned by the "testing" branch of Redhat-based Linux (Fedora) but still wants the familiarity that comes with using a Redhat system should give this one a try.  It's more stable, to me it feels more solid, and you have less of a chance of something breaking.  Updates come out about the same time as RHEL updates, with about a day lag, but that's still pretty good in my opinion.  Overall, it's free (no cost) and free (GPL), and more well-tested than Fedora, but still new enough to give you the comforts of GUIdom.