Suse 10.1 or RH FC5?

[Patrick]

if you want something like a headless server and if that is what your redhat 9 is and depending on how many custom apps you have I would recommend centos ...

I keep hearing really good things about CentOS. It's basically RH that's been recompiled from the GPL'd source code right? So basically you get RH for free minus the technical support. The next time I do a server install I might have to check it out. I must add that Debian on the server has been a very positive experience for me. Our Asterisk server was installed via Asterisk@home which is built on CentOS.

[jsusanka]

I keep hearing really good things about CentOS. It's basically RH that's been recompiled from the GPL'd source code right?

From reading on their web site yes - they have to remove all the logos and what not.

it is just like redhat enterprise - I admin some rhel3 and rhel4 boxes for work and I use centos on my workstation and it is just like it except with different logos - which I don't care for because of the sky blue but no big deal.

one funny thing I like about is when you install centos the license page comes up and all it says is one line

this is licensed under the GPL

that's great - anybody can build redhat enterprise you can dowload the source rpms from their ftp site.

I also have been reading that centos is starting to become real popular for isp's - (the tuttle oklahoma incident - where it is legal!!).

[gordonmarkus]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all your responses.

I'm going to take a look at centos definately now, I'd not heard of it before, but the fact that it's built on RH enterprise source and it's going to be support until 2012 sounds really attractive!

Thanks again.

-Gordon.

[hellonorman]

I have Ubuntu with KDE on my laptop. You have to 'apt-get install kubuntu-desktop' and should be good to go. My experience is that Ubuntu+KDE is more stable than Kubuntu.

I tried kubuntu and found it buggy. This was right after kubuntu was supposed to touted as an equal partner of ubuntu and before the bruhaha of halting development.

Kind of ass backwards that kde on ubuntu is more stable. does kde on ubuntu come with that second rate syanptic clone? Is there any loss of functionality or integration by using kde?

[Tsuroerusu]

Renaming applications to things like "music player" in menus.

SUSE does this in a kind of funky way, if you have a menu structure like this:

Code: Select all

KMenu
  - Multimedia 
    - Music Player
      - amaroK

Then you will not see amaroK, the menu ends at Music Player. I think the reason they do this is to help the average user figure out what the different apps are for, for example they install only one music player, one video player and so forth, so labeling the apps on their task seems like a good idea to me, but if you install multiple apps, it will automatically show you the names of the apps and extend the structure of the menus.

I followed the guide to installing nvidia drivers, xgl and compiz from the link in Pat's blog. Everything went as the guide described but afterwards I didn't have direct rendering. I got the spinning cube but it would only show desktop 1 in the kicer panel. I would configure it for four desktops and apply but it wouldn't change and still only showed 1 desktop.

That is because when you run XGL on KDE, you're using the GNOME window manager, which KDE can't integrate with. This is the case because a Qt/KDE extension for Compiz, the compositing manager, has not been developed yet.

LOL, KDE with the GNOME window manager, that's just like sausage!!

I wouldn't choose it over ubuntu. I'd probably be a huge ubuntu "fanboy" if kde was the native desktop. Anyone have experience installing kde on ubuntu?

I hate the customizations they do to KDE, and I hate even more the fact that you can't get rid of them with manually going into the sourcecode, and system-wide config files and hacking them back to what they should be, that drives me absolutely insane.

I think that's a bug. Others including myself are having the same issue.

It's not a bug, it's a feature!
But seriously, if you look at the .desktop shortcut you need to make for Compiz to be executed on KDE startup, you will notice that the long command for it contains "gnome-window-decorator", which is because Compiz can't use KDE's own window manager. Since XGL is a technology develop by Novell, for their upcoming enterprise products, try and guess why it's pretty GNOME specific in terms of how usable it is.

I have Ubuntu with KDE on my laptop. You have to 'apt-get install kubuntu-desktop' and should be good to go. My experience is that Ubuntu+KDE is more stable than Kubuntu.

Isn't it the same packages though? I remember reading that on the Kubuntu website, oh well, since the next release is classified "enterprise quality", I think it's gonna be OK. Pat please grill Mark about the KDE customizations they do, when you talk to him.

I tried kubuntu and found it buggy. This was right after kubuntu was supposed to touted as an equal partner of ubuntu and before the bruhaha of halting development.

Kubuntu Hoary, even the final release, this has this odour of alpha-state, Kubuntu Breezy didn't use enough soap to get rid of that odour. Since Mark talks about Dapper being their first enterprise release and blah blah blah, I would that would be more stable.

Kind of ass backwards that kde on ubuntu is more stable. does kde on ubuntu come with that second rate syanptic clone? Is there any loss of functionality or integration by using kde?

The Ubuntu folks are sponsoringa project called Adept, which is a KDE frontend for apt-get, the one in Breezy looked OK, but it still needed a cleaner interface, and more features (To the GNOME developers out there reading this, YES IT CAN BE DONE!).

[Gomer_X]

Despite Pat's constant slagging, yum is a good package manager, and getting better all the time.

It may be good and getting better all the time but it's still horrendously slow. That's just my opinion.

Having read Seth Vidal's justifications as to why he did the caching the way he did, I think he made the right choice. Yum does not download all the headers everytime you do an update, and hasn't since FC4. You can run yum with only local data and not download headers (man yum for details), which speeds it up, but then you miss updates.

There's just no way to get all the latest updates without communicating with a server. They've optimized it to do what people want, which is keep their systems completely up to date. That takes time, especially when you've got a lot of packages. Faster package managers have just picked a different set of compromises.

[Gomer_X]

This is where I think SUSE does a very good job, every single release is supported with security fixes for at least two years...

Fedora Legacy still supports Red Hat 7.3, which is nearly 5 years old. They support every release since Red Hat 9, which is over 3 years old.

You can get security fixes for releases, you just aren't likey to get new packages after EOL.

[Patrick]

Fedora Legacy still supports Red Hat 7.3, which is nearly 5 years old. They support every release since Red Hat 9, which is over 3 years old.

You can get security fixes for releases, you just aren't likey to get new packages after EOL.

I know Progeny (Ian Murdock's old company) offers support for EOL RH products.

I'ts really interesting that Ubuntu seems to want to get into the commercial server space as well with their 'partnership' deal with Sun.

[Gomer_X]

Then you will not see amaroK, the menu ends at Music Player. I think the reason they do this is to help the average user figure out what the different apps are for, for example they install only one music player, one video player and so forth, so labeling the apps on their task seems like a good idea to me, but if you install multiple apps, it will automatically show you the names of the apps and extend the structure of the menus.

I was under the impression that this was a freekesktop/usability thing. If a new user wants to play music, they're not going to be looking for "Amarok," because they don't know what that is. Gnome does the same thing. They use a generic name like "music player" or "word processor" for the default app, then use the actual names for any other apps with the same functionality.