title: Why I stay with CentOS link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/why-i-stay-with-centos/ author: lembobro description: post_id: 253 created: 2009/09/09 17:11:18 created_gmt: 2009/09/09 17:11:18 comment_status: open post_name: why-i-stay-with-centos status: publish post_type: post

Why I stay with CentOS

By now very few people in the open source community don’t know that there’s been a bit of an issue over management of the CentOS Project in the last few months. Although the immediate crisis seems to have been resolved, the whole situation has caused many to question whether sticking with CentOS is a good idea or not.

After watching events over the last few weeks, and observing the continued excellent performance of the project team, it’s my assessment that at least for now staying on CentOS is the best choice for me and the computers under my control.

Rather than make some long speech here about the risks inherent in any software projects, and how weighing those risks against the value a particular project offers is an unavoidable part of life in the tech world, let me provide this excerpt from the CentOS mail list that sums things up nicely:

I’m a sysadmin by trade, so in my daily work I get to try out all kinds of new technology including operating systems. Over the last year I’ve noticed that many other distros won’t run on some of my hardware (e.g. a Thinkpad T61, Dell E510, GX620) at work and home. But CentOS does. Without fail. Every time (well, there’s that old Dell Inspiron 1200 that sits in the kitchen… but we won’t go there). Last night I had a hard disk crash on one of my home boxes, so I decided to use it as an opportunity to try out another well known RHEL clone that is also currently at v5.3. Although the md5sum on the disk checked out it wouldn’t even boot. I then tried their Live CD. Still no good. So for good measure I tried the latest (v9.x) from another project (you know, the one with the orange and brown color scheme). NG.

So the question is, what is CentOS doing right?

A very sincere thanks to the CentOS project team for all their hard work in making a distro I know I can always rely on.

and the response:

http://www.redhat.com/rhel/compatibility/hardware/
http://www.redhat.com/partners/hardwarepartners/

that’s at least part of the answer :)

-steve

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