Talk:CentOS/Archive 1

Platform Support

I don't think CentOS supports the IBM pSeries platform, as RH does...

Use of "Red Hat"

Isn't this page breaking the law by using red hats' trademark without permission? They just sued centos.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.16.74.233 (talk • contribs)

No. You just said "Red Hat" without permission. Do you think you broke any law by doing so. Of couse you didn't. And neither did I by including the information that CentOS is based on Red Hat.

Laws concerning trademarks (the right of both sellers and buyers to distinguish one product from another), copyright (the right to make a copy), patents (the right to publish then use useful new inventions and processes), and trade secrets (protected by contract law, I think) are all very different and complicated and refered to genericly as intellectual property.

NONE of these laws prevent ANYONE from stating KNOWN basic truths about a product. (That said, anyone can sue anyone over anything. Winning is another matter.) - by FREEDOM_LOVER—Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.250.132.122 (talk • contribs)

NONE of these laws prevent ANYONE from stating KNOWN basic truths about a product.

You obviously either don't live in the USA or haven't heard of parts of the DMCA law yet. This alaw already says that stating many simple truths about a product can land you in jail. Of course this has nothing todo with this particular discussion but just thought I should warn you about it. Canderra 11:39, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

---

Why are there lots of links to dates? Since they don't add to the article they seem like links for links sake. Eg: "(as of October 20, 2005)." doesn't explain why or what changed on that date...

If I want to know about 2005 I'll lookup 2005 not CentOS and follow a link to 2005.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.63.49.225 (talk • contribs)

You're supposed to link "as of" dates, so that, for instance, people can check what links here to "As of 2005", and find stuff that's no longer true and update it, or find stuff that's still true and change it to "As of 2006".—Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.194.111.170 (talk • contribs)

Actually, you really need to only link dates when they are notable dates for the article's subject. Check out WP:MoS. //Ae:æ 23:57, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

The Logo

It's necessary to add the CentOS logo. Probably this is CentOS Icon. There is no license info on their home page, it is necessary to ask them to upload the image.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Koyaanisqatsi@narod.ru (talk • contribs)

I agree. After reading http://centos.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=49, I have sent an email to the CentOS team requesting permission. If it is granted, I'll upload a logo from http://mirror.centos.org/centos/graphics .--Ktdreyer 21:46, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I have received word from Karanbir Singh, one of the CentOS developers. After a brief email exchange, I communicated the standard type of license tag typically assigned to various Linux distributions' logos. He has told me that the inclusion of the logo in Wikipedia is not a decision for him to make alone, and that he will discuss the matter with those higher up in the CentOS organization.--Ktdreyer 23:37, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Any news on this? — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 11:34, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Haven't heard anything new. Since it was almost a year ago, I'll send another email. --Ktdreyer 04:41, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Typo?

The version sections say that 2 was released after 3. Is this a typo? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.140.209.184 (talk • contribs)

For people whom later see this... Yes, it was a typo and is now corrected. //Ae:æ 23:58, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

CentOS vs Fedora

Besides not being Red Hat sponsored, the article does not make clear what's different between CentOS and Fedora Core. What are the important differences? Twinxor t 06:07, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

The same diff between Core and RHEL. CentOS (free) = RHEL ($). This article explains Core vs. RHEL. — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib Reverts} 10:07, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes. CentOS is just RHEL - redhat. //Ae:æ 22:48, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

There is a page in portuguese about CentOS

I don't know how to link it, I hope you apreciate the information and do it.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.198.136.237 (talk • contribs)

Done. --Mperry 22:21, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

cPanel spam?

CentOS and other linux server distros are used by lots of major ISPs with a lot of different proprietary and open source control panels. Why mention the proprietary, commercial cPanel in particular? Is Wikipedia endorsing this particular combination or something? :-) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.85.4.12 (talk • contribs)

I believe a good chunk was just ripped out yesterday... — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 22:23, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

The mere mention of cPanel seems unneccessary as it's not part of CentOS. I'd imagine the installed userbase is trivial when compared with more readily- (and freely-) available tools like Webmin. I suggest completely removing the cPanel references. Anyone disagree? Gskuse 07:51, 1 February 2007 (UTC) Talk

I replaced "Many big name" with "Some". I still feel cPanel should be completely removed. Gskuse 08:34, 1 February 2007 (UTC) Talk

I think it's fine now; it's only one sentence. A whole section was uncalled for. — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 11:34, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

"You'd imagine" wrong. CPanel is dominant among hosting providers that offer a non-homegrown panel. --38.100.212.21 (talk) 07:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Server and Desktop Usage

"CentOS can be used for a X Window based desktop, but is targeted primarily as the server market, like RHEL."

This seems incorrect. Red Hat markets RHEL for desktops and servers. Gskuse 08:10, 1 February 2007 (UTC) Talk

I didn't know that. I've always seen it as server class stuff. — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 11:35, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

There's RHEL Server and Desktop, RHEL isn't just a server OS.--80.6.85.54 15:33, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

CentOS vs RedHat again

Does anyone know if RedHat is suffering losses as a result of the CentOS project? Reliable source? Pgr94 18:13, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

no, the majority of redhats revenue is from the technical support they offer, not the OS media itself —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.16.152.50 (talk • contribs)

Quite the opposite. Red Hat views CentOS, the product, as a "try before you buy" version of RHEL; while it sees the team as a community bug reporting and patch submission team for RHEL. The CentOS team has a stated aim of not forking from RHEL, therefore all patches are submitted upstream, and the cycle begins again. I don't have time to edit the article right now, so here's some references:

• http://www.linux.com/feed/61438
• http://www.interopnews.com/analysis/how-badly-is-centos-hurting-red-hat.html

  — good article, good quotes from Red Hat

Additionally, the Red Hat mailing lists and support forums are full of references to CentOS. It wouldn't be this way if Red Hat wanted CentOS to go away. Perhaps at this level, Red Hat's support of CentOS is tacit, but certainly there are quotes that show ideological support. --Rfsmit (talk) 17:29, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Advertisement of Support

The article mentions Sparc and Alpha support, but I've not seen it appear -- and the mention is very old. To avoid the concern that it may be vapourware or misleading, at least until something tangible materializes, can we modify or remove the section? I'd like to change it to use the words 'planned' or 'development', and I propose changing it so if it's more accurate, especially because it doesn't preclude good news down the road. Bishop 16:44, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

It's a little bit confusing: on their about page [1] they stated for support for ppc, alpha, and sparc - with ppc and sparc beging beta. When looking down to the mirrors [2], there is only a version for alpha (and not for ppc and sparc)? Can anybody explain this? --Sophis 21:13, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Intentionally Misleading statement, or not?

"As required, Red Hat releases all source code for the product publicly under the terms of the GNU General Public License and other licenses."

There is a considerable bit of code that Redhat creates that is 100% novel. They protect their trademark, which they should, but CentOS folk do what they do with RedHat's quiet blessing (short of any trademark issues), as RH releases all such code GPL. Read that carefully. They do it, but they don't have to. Meaning, the "As required" at the beginning there is very wrong.

I have to believe this discussion has been brought up before, yet no talk on it exists? Was it just deleted, and the line left as is? Was such done simply to be contrary? Brianlamere 17:11, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Not misleading, If you licence your product under the GPL as Red Hat is, you are REQUIRED to make the source code available. The misconception is that it has to be freely available. You are only required to provide it to anyone who asks, and you can charge a small fee to cover your costs in making it available and no more, eg cost of DVD and postage. It is just that it usually works out cheaper to have it available on an FTP server 92.232.83.32 (talk) 11:41, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

What's misleading is suggesting that the entire product is released under the GPL. Some parts are MPL, some are BSD, etc.; and some parts are proprietary. That said, Red Hat opens all its source: it is possible to build any RHEL distro from the sources. What Red Hat disallows is redistribution of its product, which is the Red Hat branded GNU/Linux distribution with non-GPL additions both free and non-free. --Rfsmit (talk) 17:35, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

New look for Releases Section

Just changed the list to a table in the releases section. IMHO this looks better. Also added the architecture and release date of the RHEL release.

I did not find all the information - maybe someone know about these things and can fill in the empty spaces. --Sophis 08:07, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Release History table

Can someone add in support information on the 'Release History' table and colour code it like so:

Colour	Meaning
Red	Old release; not supported
Yellow	Old release; still supported
Green	Current release
Blue	Future release

Altonbr (talk) 03:20, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Releases Image

http://dag.wieers.com/blog/ubuntus-need-to-catch-a-wave (http://dag.wieers.com/blog/files/centos-intro-1.3-en.png) Altonbr (talk) 12:59, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

How CentOS team earn money ?

as you said in the article this is a free OS so do they get some subscriptions for CentOS support or some charity organization help them ? or they just spend their free time for developing CentOS :S —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.51.209.62 (talk) 08:36, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Donations and sponsorship. ~~ [Jam]^[talk] 08:55, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Bootable media version

Reference to UNetbootin in absence of any mention of a Live CD version was changed to be more general. It seems the reference to UNetbootin was added to several ditro articles with exactly the same wording. --Rfsmit (talk) 17:52, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

OS Family

I am no expert, but it appears reasonable to describe this as part of the GNU/Linux family, not "Unix-like". Please discuss before editing it again. Fences and windows (talk) 01:55, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

There is more of a difference between Windows 98 and 2000 than there is between Linux and UNIX. If you don't dispute that fact, then you must believe that Windows 98 is a separate family.--K;;m5m k;;m5m (talk) 03:53, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

"Unix-like" here is a compromise to prevent lame edit wars over the GNU/Linux naming controversy. I support leaving it at that nomenclature. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:15, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

CentOS 5.3 release date

CentOS 5.3 was available as a torrent and visible in the mirrors early March 31st (late March 30th some parts of the world); the announcement was on April 1st in some parts of the world and March 31st other parts of the world. I prefer marking the release date as "March 31st" because:

• It was widely available March 31st
• I don't like having a serious release have the April 1 release date (because of the internet tradition of practical jokes today)

The argument for an April 1st release date is:

• The announcement for CentOS 5.3 was dated around 3am April 1 UTC

What do people think? March 31st or April 1st? Samboy (talk) 14:37, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I think it should be 1st April since 3am UTC means that it is 1st April. Pmlinediter  ^Talk 07:23, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Confusing

I tagged this article as confusing due to the Structure part. It reads, "Red Hat Enterprise Linux is largely composed of software packages distributed under free software and/or open source licenses, but is made available in a usable, binary form (such as on CD-ROM or DVD-ROM media or download) only to paying subscribers." However it does not explain what is the meaning of paying subscribers, i.e., what do the subscribers pay for? For getting RHEL in a CD-ROM. Definitely they don't pay 100+ dollars for getting it in a CD or DVD; they pay it for the support. However, the article skips that Red Hat offers support as abruptly says, "CentOS is freely available for download and use by the public, but is not maintained or supported by Red Hat." instead of using something like this: "RHEL, though licensed at GPL must be bought from Red Hat since they provide full maintenance and support for it. However, CentOS is not supported by Red Hat and is thus freely available for download and use by the public." I will try to cleanup the article once I get the time for it. Pmlinediter  ^Talk 07:36, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

OK, I've done some cleanup to the article's wording. Let me know what you think; if I don't hear from you, I'll remove the "cleanup" tag in a week or so. Samboy (talk) 16:00, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Made some further tweaks. The third and forth paragraphs under the Structure section still need help I think....need sleep tho. I tried to move away from "RHEL" (see this faq, last sentence), and also attempted to change "RedHat" to "Red Hat" when referring to the company. UncleverOnion (talk) 07:04, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Looks good. If you feel the article is still confusing, let us know. Otherwise, I'll remove the tag in three days or so. (Tags like that are so editors can make changes; once said changes are made, the idea is to remove the tag. One of my annoyances is the number of Wiki articles with stupid tags) Samboy (talk) 23:41, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I read the OP more closely and made some additional tweaks. I'm still somewhat bothered by last paragraph in the Structure section... :/ UncleverOnion (talk) 00:24, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, maybe we should take the entire PNAELV thing and get rid of it; or mention the trademark issue in an entire section. Personally, while a lot of the Linux zealots feel the whole PNAELV thing was an "evil corporation trying to kill a community project" deal, the truth is RH had to do that, because if one does not protect one's trademarks, the trademarks can become diluted and unenforceable. My understanding is that RedHat doesn't really mind CentOS' existence; if they did they could have made it a lot harder to build CentOS than they do. Samboy (talk) 04:00, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Hmm...Personally I'm on the fence as to whether it would be better to go into detail in a separate trademark section or to just not mention it. I suppose a third alternative might be to have a Trademark section with just a "See also" link to the Trademark section of the derivatives article. Unfortunately, that section reads a bit opinionated right now, especially with that external link at the end... UncleverOnion (talk) 04:20, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I've removed the whole PNAELV thing. It's an opinion piece, and, quite frankly, a poorly-formed opinion piece. It's the kind of thing that belongs on Slashdot, not in a serious encyclopedia. Samboy (talk) 13:55, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I have removed the confusing tag. If people still feel this article is confusing, please share your concerns here. Samboy (talk) 03:22, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Good deal. :) UncleverOnion (talk) 11:46, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

up2date/yum

Didn't RedHat switch to yum with some proprietary plugins with RHEL version 5? I ran 5 on my desktop as well as 4 on a test box at my previous job, and I don't recall seeing any mention of up2date at all on the v5 box. UncleverOnion (talk) 22:36, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Correct; the up2date article explains all and I've update this article. Thanks for the heads-up. Samboy (talk) 19:03, 20 April 2009 (UTC)