“CentOS is an enterprise-class Linux distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American enterprise Linux vendor. CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendor’s redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork).”
Origin – Home Page: USA – CentOS
Desktop: None by default. CentOS is a server-oriented distro
Price: Free to use and distribute. Open Source.
Comments: As with that “prominent North American enterprise Linux vendor” from which it is derived, CentOS supports LVM, and it is the default partitioning scheme. Currently it supports x86 and x86_64 systems. Support for ia64 (Itanium),PowerPC, and SPARC platforms is underway.
CentOS is a server distro, which means that you don’t get an X window after installation. However like all Linux distros, it is fairly easy to transform a CentOS server to a desktop. In the case of CentOS, use yum as detailed here
“yum grouplist” (without the quotes) to get an overview of the yum groups (package categories) avialable. Then to install the KDE or Gnome desktop, for example, use the following: yum groupinstall “X Window System” “GNOME Desktop Environment” or yum groupinstall “X Window System” “KDE (K Desktop Environment)”. Use the same format to install other groups returned by the “yum grouplist” command. |
Download/Buy: You may download CentOS iso images or buy CDs.
Tutorials/Tips: Access CentOS docs