Linuxman's Ratings Guide
Required User Level: Beginner/Intermediate
Installation: Not Bad - fully graphical for systems with 512mb. See below notes.
Support: Excellent - forums & online documentation
No. of CD's or DVD's: 2
Media: DVD-R

Enterprise class power & stability without the cost of certification and support!!

CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by RedHat. CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendors redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork.) CentOS is a pure GNU Linux and therefore an excellent choice for the cost conscious business.

Major changes in CentOS 5.7 compared to CentOS 5.5 include, OpenOffice.org Update to version 3.1.1, PostgreSQL84 in version 8.4, Freeradius2. Other upgrades include newer version of the wireless drivers suite, including newer versions of the ath9k driver and the iwlwifi drivers. The GNU Debugger gdb, Valgrind and SystemTap also have been updated.

Major changes in CentOS 5.7 compared to CentOS 5.6 include: Several updates to network and storage drivers, the cmake build system has been added, openldap24-libs have been added, tcsh617 has been added as an update to tcsh, virt-what has been added to find out if a machine runs in a virtual instance.

CentOS Goals:

• easy maintenance
• self hosting distribution (one that can build on itself)
• suitability for long term use in production environments
• friendly environment for users and package maintainers
• long-term support of the core
• active development
• community infrastructure
• open management
• open business model
• commercial support - offered by partner vendors

Tech Spec:

• Linux Kernel 2.6.18
• GNOME 2.16.0
• Firefox 3.6.18
• Thunderbird 2.0.0.24
• GCC 4.1.2
• The GIMP 2.2.13
• Libreoffice 3.1.1