May be moving to CentOS at work

A 5 star hangout for overworked and underpaid system admins.
Post Reply
dragonbite
Posts: 37
Joined: 2006/04/07 12:52:30

May be moving to CentOS at work

Post by dragonbite » 2016/09/12 13:38:39

Hey all! :D It's been years since I have been on these forums!

It is looking like at work we may be moving our webserver from FreeBSD to CentOS so I am looking to install CentOS on my personal laptop (coming from Fedora/Ubuntu/openSUSE ... whatever catches my fancy at the time, currently Fedora). Then I'll use that to test and tinker with setting up a web server and general use.

I know a lot has happened with Linux in the 5+ years since I was here before and I would like to think I've learned a thing or two since then too ;)

For the laptop scenario, I have a few questions.

Repositories
In Fedora I have used RPMFusionrepository to add fairly common applications not included in the default repositories? Unfortunately it looks like it has an RPM and instructions for CentOS 6 (6.1) and the current version of CentOS is 7 (equiv. to RedHat 7.2 I think).

I usually add Chromium, Pithos, Geary, Variety and non-free codecs.

Is there a different repository that works well with CentOS?


UPDATE: Ok, I see a few different repositories like CentOSPlus, CR and many, many more. But which ones do people reguarly use and do not trip over each other? For example in Fedora I only added RPMFusion, and openSUSE I only added Pacman so I didn't have to worry about them tripping over each other.

What repository(ies) do you recommend?


Updates

I know CentOS is commonly used for servers, and servers aren't expected to be updated as often as desktops.

But how often does CentOS update fast-moving applications like Firefox in-between CentOS point releases?

UPDATE: Should I use the CR (Continuous Release) repository for packages until the next point release, then just update CentOS?

I know a lot of questions will be answered once I get it installed and get my hands dirty. I'm just hoping to not have incorrect expectations.

Any advice for a transfer (from Ubuntu, Fedora and/or openSUE)?

Thanks!
To err is human ... to really foul up requires a computer! :lol:

User avatar
TrevorH
Site Admin
Posts: 33202
Joined: 2009/09/24 10:40:56
Location: Brighton, UK

Re: May be moving to CentOS at work

Post by TrevorH » 2016/09/12 14:18:29

CR is only useful between the release of a new point release upstream and the release of the same point release by CentOS. It provides advance access to the packages that will be in the next point release before the actual release (which takes longer for things like media mastering and testing etc).

All CentOS supplied repos should be safe to enable though CentOSPlus will replace packages from upstream with CentOS-modified versions.

Multimedia support can be found in nux-dextop. EPEL is another useful one.

You are encouraged to learn about and use yum-plugin-priorities to stop third party repos overwriting packages from base/updates.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

dragonbite
Posts: 37
Joined: 2006/04/07 12:52:30

Re: May be moving to CentOS at work

Post by dragonbite » 2016/09/12 15:26:11

Thanks! I'll check those out.

I think most of my questions will be answered with the good-'ol "poking around" (also known as "trial-and-error" ;) ) but this will give me a starting point.
To err is human ... to really foul up requires a computer! :lol:

dragonbite
Posts: 37
Joined: 2006/04/07 12:52:30

Re: May be moving to CentOS at work

Post by dragonbite » 2016/09/13 13:44:14

Installed CentOS 7 last night and find it interesting.

While some of my programs are not available in binary form for CentOS, I'll need to look at installing from source code (Pithos, Variety). Some are available, such as the ownCloud client which is good. Also, Files looks like it is still able to access my Google Drive.

I also find since I was coming from Fedora, a number of extensions are not available with the version of Gnome in CentOS.

On the other hand, closing the lid and suspending works with CentOS, which has not worked in Ubuntu and Fedora. I think it may be because of the kernel version but we'll see.

Otherwise, Gnome Classic on CentOS is responsive and better than regular Gnome shell and Unity. Except for a little blacking out of the title bar.

So far, so good. Now I need to outline what I want to experiment with (web server, docker images, etc.)
To err is human ... to really foul up requires a computer! :lol:

Post Reply