Goodbye Fedora and hello Centos?

[Alexander Dalloz]

Am Mi, den 27.07.2005 schrieb Dave Gutteridge um 14:34:

>     I was unable to resolve my problems in reading DVD drives in Fedora 
> 4. So, I decided to switch to another distribution. I saw on one site 
> that the three distros being nominated for best distribution by user's 
> vote were Ubuntu, CentOS, and Fedora Core. I tried Ubuntu, but the 
> installer kept failing. So I went to CentOS.

CentOS has it's own mailing list:

http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos

This isn't the proper forum to answer CentOS questions. (I meanwhile see
you joined it - good.)

>     Anyway, long story short, CentOS looks and feels just like Fedora, 
> and it reads all my DVD drives normally, so I think I could be happy 
> with it.

CentOS is a so called RHEL clone. Current RHEL4 is mainly based on FC3,
though both are not identical.

>     But...
>     When I tried to install Xine, using yum, it said it could not find 
> it. And then I went looking for an RPM for Xine, and they're all for Red 
> Hat or Fedora. I tried installing an RPM for Fedora anyway, reasoning 
> that maybe they were the same in more than just looks, but no dice.

It all depends on the shared libs used by the OS and the package
compiled against.

>     As I looked around the net, it seems that applications all seem to 
> have specific builds for Red Hat, Fedora, a couple of Debian builds... 
> but no CentOS. Going by the amount of available information and support, 
> Fedora is the primary Linux distribution, and CentOS hardly even exists.

Please ask on the CentOS list. There are several places to look for
packages CentOS itself does not come with. Someone is even rebuilding
Fedora Extras packages for CentOS.

>     Can't I have it all? Stability, the ability to read my DVD drives, 
> *and* a variety of applications?

Fedora is pretty stable for me. And I am not just a part time user.

>     Further, why is everything being built for Fedora if it's some kind 
> of experimental build not ideal for consumer use (as was explained to me 
> on this very list)?

I don't know who told you that or maybe in a different way. Certainly
Fedora is targeted for users requesting leading edge technologies and
desiring cutting edge software / close to development versions (written
down on the main Fedora page:

http://fedora.redhat.com/about/objectives.html

http://fedora.redhat.com/about/index.html#whatis

). In the one or other case that can lead to programs not acting as they
should. Typically enthusiastic Linux desktop users have other goals than
an enterprise market for which RHEL/CentOS is targeted to.
If you are in the position to demand specific features, then please
review the first URL I mentioned above and decide yourself: contribute
and make Fedora even better or to choose a different distribution, maybe
RHEL where you pay for the subscription and where you can demand things
to functions which are guaranteed to function in a specific way.
Said that, I do not say Fedora users can't expect to have a fully
functional and stable OS. They can and very much is done to qualify
Fedora with high standards.

>     What's the deal here?

Here in Fedora land or there in CentOS?

> Dave

Alexander


-- 
Alexander Dalloz | Enger, Germany | GPG http://pgp.mit.edu 0xB366A773
legal statement: http://www.uni-x.org/legal.html
Fedora Core 2 GNU/Linux on Athlon with kernel 2.6.11-1.35_FC2smp 
Serendipity 14:38:24 up 11 days, 19:10, load average: 0.10, 0.14, 0.10 
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