CentOS 5 Released

jonesy16 writes "Only a few weeks behind the release of Red Hat Enterprise 5, CentOS announced today the immediate release of version 5 of the free derivative of RHEL 5. Torrents are available for both i386 and x86_64. New features include compiz and AIGLX support as well as better virtualization and thin-client support. Package updates include Apache-2.2, kernel-2.6.18, Gnome-2.16, and KDE-3.5."

Re:Does anyone even use this OS?

[Oxide]

I want an enterprise quality Linux to run a database server on it. But I don't want to pay the Redhat price tag; CentOS gives me the quality of Redhat Enterprise Linux for free. So it's running my database server and doing so quite well too.

Re:Does anyone even use this OS?

[Psychotria]

Strange. The last thing I'd want in an enterprise server is compiz.

Re:Does anyone even use this OS?

[tehSpork]

I used to use CentOS for my server boxes, however version 3 left a very bad taste in my mouth. I then attempted to roll out CentOS 4 on a new box I was preparing for a customer (seeing if it was any improvement over version 3) and it had some problem that prevented it from rebooting for the first time after the install. I've switched to running Fedora 5/6 on my servers and everything has been much more stable.

Re:yet another Fedora Core 6

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not yet another Fedora Core 6. Fedora and CentOS have different purposes. CentOS releases are supported for seven years, while Fedora usually supports just the current release and the previous release. After that, you have to upgrade to a newer release, or have no security updates. Fedora is great to try and use the latest technology, whereas RHEL and CentOS are useful for production boxes that should run for years without pain.

Re:Does anyone even use this OS?

[rm69990]

I would lend credence to what you say, but you don't even know Red Hat's name...

His point is that most of the code in Red Hat products is not owned or written by Red Hat, as is the case with every other distro. They simply feature freeze and stabilize it, and then sell support contracts for it. They are selling support, not the product.

If Red Hat did not want this to happen, they could simply not base their product on GPL software. Of course, if they did that, they would never have become profitable in the first place, because there is no way they could have built a product as capable as RHEL5 from the ground up completely on their own and stayed in business.

Red Hat, while contributing as you point out, piggyback's on other peoples' work, and CentOS is doing the exact same thing to Red Hat. I don't see an issue here.

Re:Only a few weeks behind...StartCom...

[hughesjr]

Right ... BUT ....

Try some some ldd compares between RHEL and startcom ... then do the same for CentOS

CentOS has nearly 200 mirrors world wide and a geoip enabled system to deliver updates and find downloads, startcom as about 10.

Though ... the more the merrier I always say ... and startcom is a fine distro too.

Re:Does anyone even use this OS?

[Hognoxious]

What about students, both formal and informal? Red Hat is the most popular distro when it comes to finding books. A free (as in beer) clone that you can work the exercises & examples on without the distraction and niggle of differences is a Good Thing(tm).

Re:Does anyone even use this OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, his "point" was very clear. He believes that Red Hat do not pay for the work they are using. This is demonstratively wrong, as Red Hat do employ a large number of high profile OSS developers and directly support some very important OSS projects. They obviously use other OSS projects that they do not support, but Red Hat are putting in just as much as they get out. So for Red Hat it is a zero sum game and they make all their money from support contracts.

Now, projects like CentOS are not paying for OSS developers and are not putting anything in to the OSS projects they are distributing, so lets not try and pretend they have the moral high ground or anything. All CentOS are doing is spending a couple of weeks deleting anything that is not redistributable, hardly time well spent. The net effect of CentOS is that it draws away customers from Red Hat. They are indirectly slowing funding to OSS projects.

Red Hat gives as much as it takes. CentOS just takes.

Re:Does anyone even use this OS?

[dubonbacon]

http://www.rocksclusters.org/ [rocksclusters.org]

ROCKS cluster at our university's department of economics.
There is a couple of clusters registered on the site, too.

Wikipedia says:
"Rocks Cluster Distribution is a Linux distribution intended for computer clusters. Rocks is based on CentOS, but uses a modified anaconda installer that simplifies mass installation onto many computers."

Re:Does anyone even use this OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the advantages that CentOS delivers Red Hat actually existed, Red Hat would be shipping their own free version instead of leaving it to a third party. They stopped providing free versions after Red Hat 9. The didn't stop and then say to themselves "Oh, what have we done! If only someone would come along and produce a freely redistributable version of our product for us!" If CentOS didn't exist people would use other distributions, many of which would be RHEL. The ones that didn't use RHEL wouldn't be a loss to Red Hat, because it would largely be cheapskates who were never going to pay for support anyway.

Red Hat have to publically be seen to support CentOS because it would be a bad PR move to do anything else. CentOS supporters love to squawk about their "right" to redistribute RHEL, because it is an effective method of drowning out any dissenting opinions.

CentOS exists because some people have a fundamental problem simply paying to obtain the benefits of the work Red Hat has put into producing their distribution.

Re:Does anyone even use this OS?

[rbanffy]

If Red Hat did not want this to happen, they could simply not base their product on GPL software. Of course, if they did that, they would never have become profitable in the first place, because there is no way they could have built a product as capable as RHEL5 from the ground up completely on their own and stayed in business.

They could have based their server product on *BSD, then close the source and live happily thereafter.

It's only GPL-ish licenses that prevent such behaviour

Re:Does anyone even use this OS?

[hasbeard]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Red Hat also make money from the contributions of others? I know Red Hat pays people to work on Linux, but don't they also benefit greatly from a lot of "free" labor from others? Not to knock Red Hat, but just trying to point out that this is the nature of the game with GPL work.

Re:Does anyone even use this OS?

[walt-sjc]

It depends on what you are doing with your enterprise server. One thing you can do with an enterprise server is run a FreeNX terminal server for many clients. Granted you don't need to run the server at runlevel 5 or run a LOCAL X-server, but having the xserver installed and usable by clients is not "always" a bad thing.

Re:Does anyone even use this OS?

[tobiasly]

I want an enterprise quality Linux to run a database server on it. But I don't want to pay the Redhat price tag; CentOS gives me the quality of Redhat Enterprise Linux for free.

And thus the beauty of free (as in freedom) software. Red Hat takes the work of others, adds a few features, a lot of stability and testing, and sells their result with a support plan for a nifty profit. They give those changes back to the community, which then takes their work and releases a free (as in beer) version for people who don't need the support.

Everyone wins. This is no longer a zero-sum game. I don't understand why that's still so difficult for so many people to understand.

Re:Does anyone even use this OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

CentOS benefits Redhat as pirating Microsoft Windows benefits Microsoft. They are the same concept, except CentOS is legal while pirating Microsoft Windows is not. If someone is using a nearly 100% compatible version of a particular OS for free, they probably will buy that OS when it comes to business needs.

Re:Red Hat and the GPL

[C_Kode]

They are a business. To help you understand why you have to do this imagine this.

You own a Open Source company and create software and release it with your logos and branding all over it. Now, I take it because it's GPL, alter it the way I want and release it, but fail to remove your logo and branding. Someone else downloads it and installs it see your logo thinking it's your product and it complete screws up their system because of the changes I made, not you. Now, all the sudden this Company attacks you publicly and in the courts. You're business has been damage by no fault of your own.

You have to remove everything, because they are protecting their company. The fact that CentOS exist you should be thanking Redhat. They made it possible to run a Enterprise tested OS for free. Because of that, I can run Enterprise applications and pay for the support I need. (Oracle on RHEL) and run the identical OS (minimizing documentation and training) with the ability to download updates for zero cost on other non-critical servers.

Re:Red Hat and the GPL

[rayvd]

Absurd. Obviously Red Hat is going to demand the removal of their trademarks. The fact of the matter is that RH is very helpful towards the open source community. I see plenty of RH devs and employees participating in Fedora. And there is a lot of bleed-over as far as package development and work on bugs between CentOS and Fedora. It's all connected and RH has been nothing but supportive.

They're a clear force for 'good' in the world of Linux in my mind.

Re:Who cares about X on CentOS

[Wdomburg]

I'd say integrated virtualization is a big feature. Likewise the updates on all the major infrastructure packages - apache, php, postgresql, mysql, etc. The inclusion of Red Hat Directory Serverer. Encrypted filesystem support. Extended SElinux support, including policy debugging. Installation on iSCSI devices. Better NUMA support. Blah blah blah, etc, etc, etc.

There's also new features on the desktop, but that's to be expected since Red Hat is pushing a desktop variant as well. (And for the record, I know plenty of people who ran RHEL or CentOS 4 on the desktop as well. Some of us appreciate not having to upgrade every twelve to eighteen months on our desktops as well.)

Re:Does anyone even use this OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using UNIX for over 13 years. Really using to the point where I write scripts like ls -l | awk '{print $5 " " $NF}' | sort -n | tail off of the top of my head. I use CentOS 3. Why? Because it keeps me off of the upgrade treadmill, and because Ubuntu is a slow pig on my 7-year-old computer (PIII 450 mhz, 450 megs of RAM).

CentOS is a very good "It just works" OS. Of course, I have customized CentOS with tweaks like the latest version of the Firefox browser, a version of FreeType with Delta hinting support, the Microsoft Verdana font (nothing beats Verdana for readability on a display where the fonts use only two colors), etc.

One of these days I will finish the distribution I'm working on and just use my own Linux distribution.