CentOS Pros and Cons
I want to know the basic CentOS pros and cons.
It is based on Red Hat’s Fedora Linux.
But I’m asking about CentOS.
It has absolute compatibility with Red Hat Linux, if you want something compatible with Fedora without the need to upgrade six months after the next release comes out. Well, CentOS is in many ways the older version of Fedora.
I do not want to use Fedora because they turn off support around six months after the new version comes out, and it comes out every year or so.
CentOS is generally really reliable, compared to Arch or even Fedora, because Fedora likes to be just behind the bleeding edge. CentOS is more stable some say because it has more dedicated testers.
CentOS is run by volunteers, and if those people find a different hobby, the OS version could die.
It is an open source OS, so you’ll find more home grown experts on it than Ubuntu or Mint.
I can find people telling me to use Haskell and Lisp, too, because there are so many dedicated fans. How is the support, really?
It does not have commercial support as Amazon does Ubuntu or Red Hat for Fedora.
Novell supports OpenSUSE, and they are not obtuse about it.
CentOS eliminates the cost of installing a licensed Linux OS.
Pretty much any Linux PC license is cheaper than Windows these days. And by repackaging the Red Hat Linux, you may end up with outdated software.
CentOS keeps the Red Hat administration techniques and instructions, so if you learn Red Hat Linux or like Fedora, you essentially avoid the learning curve by switching to CentOS.
That’s at least a plus in its favor.
Install CentOS once and you won’t have to update drivers until you change out the hardware.
Assuming the drivers exist for Fedora and CentOS yet. A lack of drivers for everything but the most common hardware is a problem for Fedora that CentOS may inherit.
They have lots of security testers in the volunteer community, so it often finds and fixes security holes before other versions.
And that takes time when you’re a volunteer. The slower release schedule means it is not using the latest version of PERL or PHP.
You’re not using those languages, but having the same OS version for two years could make your own development projects less buggy because you are not updating the OS in the middle of it.
The main desktop environments are KDE and Gnome. Neither is spectacular.
It’s Linux. Ask and you will receive instructions on how to turn it into anything but the Windows desktop.
They’d laugh me out of the chat room for that before telling me how to set up a virtual Windows emulation to keep as a pet.
