[TriLUG] CentOS status

Cristóbal Palmer cmp at cmpalmer.org
Wed Aug 26 16:07:58 EDT 2009


On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Michael Kimsal<mgkimsal at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sure, of course.  You could also compile them by hand.  You're not using the
> 'official' standard repos if you go looking for other stuff though.

There's a middle ground: rpmforge.

http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories/RPMForge

This is especially useful if you set up priorities so that you don't
clobber the official packages with updates from rpmforge willy-nilly.
You can also set up a personal repository in this manner and use it
for multiple clients. This is valuable in debian/ubuntu land, too, and
is still valuable even if the official packages are more recent in
your distro than they are in RHEL/CentOS. There are any number of
reasons--eg. custom configuration files; many packages ship with
"development" defaults--that you might want your own custom package.

>  If
> you're not going to stick with official repos, and just start adding
> whatever RPMs you need from various places, what, again is the benefit of
> using CentOS?  Why not just use a distro that has more of what you need in
> its official base?

Because working with CentOS gets you in faster with clients who run
RHEL. Because many providers (eg. slicehost, linode, rackspace, etc.
etc.) have support staff trained on RHEL.

I guess it depends on "you" and "need" in context. I use RHEL, CentOS,
Ubuntu, FreeBSD.... each have their strengths in various contexts. The
kerfuffle that started this thread is over, and I don't suspect it
will stop me from using CentOS again in the future--in the same
contexts where I would have used it in the past.

Cheers,
-- 
Cristóbal M. Palmer
"The fun thing is to try to persuade others to share your opinions
about what rules and what sucks. Nothing is more fun than evangelism."
  --Larry Wall



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