5 ms·

As a user who wants an OS that 'just works' so that I can work on other things, why wouldn't I choose CentOS over Fedora for my laptop?

xena 9y ago
driver compatibility.
- chowyuncat 9y ago
  RHEL provides a stable kernel ABI. "Once a symbol has been introduced into the Kernel Application Binary Interface (kABI) for a particular major release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux it will not be removed, nor will its meaning be changed during that kernel major release's complete life cycle." SLES is another distribution with a stable kernel ABI. Additionally, in practice a module (driver) that ignores the kABI will usually work for all patched kernel versions on a given minor release (~service pack). e.g. A minor release 6.X introduces a new kernel X' (2.6.32-X'.Y) and a module built against X'-0 will work for all Y.
  - noselasd 9y ago
    What xena means is that Fedora comes with more and newer drivers compared to CentOS, this means there are new hardware that might not work with CentOS, but does work in Fedora. (CentOS/RHEL 7.x is new enough that this isn't a big issue yet, but it normally does become a pain point the older the RHEL/CentOS major release gets - there are a lot of drivers that does not get backported to the RHEL/CentOS minor releases)
TheDong 9y ago
You wouldn't. CentOS is aimed at servers which are maintained by sysadmins who know RHEL well (e.g. RHEL certified), or who just want really friggin' stable shit. A developer usually wants someting that has a tradeoff closer to "newer" on the "stability vs upgrades" tradeoff. For a dev laptop, absolutely use fedora over centos.
- Sir_Substance 9y ago
  >or who just want really friggin' stable shit. Critically for potential desktop users, this means you can't necessarily expect things like touchpad drivers to work. Hardware support, especially consumer hardware support, can take years to trickle into centos releases. That stability may well be deeply desirable in a server that has to undergo security audits every so often, but it won't help you install it on a laptop.
  - bonzini 9y ago
    > consumer hardware support, can take years to trickle into centos releases. Not necessarily, after all non-technical Red Hat employees run RHEL on bog standard Lenovo ThinkPads and model choice includes pretty recent hardware (and even some models with Optimus, lately). Technical employees mostly run Fedora, though some use RHEL and others are die hard Debian or Gentoo fans.
  - justinclift 9y ago
    Many ALPS touchpads (very common) should work well in CentOS 7 these days. Back when I worked at Red Hat, making that happen was a side project that had good results. Main due to my using a Dell laptop with an ALPS touchpad at the time, and getting fed up with the crappy support it originally presented. ;)
- rrauenza 9y ago
  I haven't used Fedora in years -- how does Fedora make it easier for people who don't know RHEL well, vs. CentOS? (I had expected the sysadmin experience to be very similar.)
- SEJeff 9y ago
  I'm running a RHEL 7.3 desktop to type this comment on with 3 30" Dell monitors. I'll have you know that CentOS 7 and RHEL7 make a fantastic desktop.
SwellJoe 9y ago
If it's an old laptop, you might not. But, I can't run CentOS on my laptop as a third of the hardware, including the GPU, wouldn't work. At least, I couldn't when I got it. But, Fedora is pretty darned good about Just Working, in my experience. Because my laptop was a super new design when I got it, things were a bit shakey (I ended up using the Windows it came with for about a month because GPU drivers weren't working under Linux and running at any high res caused it to lock up frequently). But, once I was able to get all the right drivers and everything was working, I haven't had to do anything, even through a Fedora 25->26 upgrade (I have the nvidia drivers, but I got them from the rpmfusion-nonfree repo, so they update in the normal way).
yebyen 9y ago
Not just to be contrarian, but because this is how I have lived for a while... Why wouldn't you run Debian Sid on your laptop? (FWIW I have also experimented with stable versions of Debian and, when I am not seeking the newest software which has been the case in the recent years, it works just as well for me as unstable distribution. But FWIW2, the Debian Sid on your Workstation paradigm has only bit me twice in nearing twenty years, and both times were valuable learning experiences.) My advice would be to use whatever you're most comfortable with. With an addendum to use whatever you have running in production if possible, because that will maximize the chances that you discover a bug in production before it bites you hard.
- ohazi 9y ago
  I used sid on my laptop for several years with similar results. These days I use testing. Testing is usually only behind sid by a few weeks, but I've found that the more annoying breakages tend to get resolved in sid before anyone in testing sees them, so the already infrequent headaches are basically non-existent now.
  - yebyen 9y ago
    They must have improved testing then, or improved their processes, because the last time I evaluated testing it was properly "half unstable, half unusable" Admittedly that was a while ago! Testing, depending on what part of the release cycle you are in, can be a few weeks behind Sid or significantly more, though. Most upstream release managers probably pay some attention to the release cycles nowadays so, with luck you wouldn't notice this too much. (The start date of the testing freeze is well publicized in advance and known, so competent release managers should avoid potentially breaking/broken updates immediately before that date, if I remember correctly how this works.)
- Avshalom 9y ago
  RHEL (and thus usually centos) and Ubuntu (not Sid, not debian stable) are the two distros that companies distribute for. It's rarely but occasionally important depending on what your doing with your computers. As to why not to use CentOS/RHEL: they're not supported by half the companies that Ubuntu is so if you buy commercial software (indie video games at least) Ubuntu is the better option.
rrauenza 9y ago
I ran Fedora on my home server for years -- and found the upgrade process between FC's really difficult over time. Stuff I'd configured and had working would break. FC upgrades would take days of fiddling to get stable again. Not upgrading left me open to security vulnerabilities. Some examples are major changes to config files by certain apps - like rsyslog or squid. I also went through the transition from init.d to some other one I can't recall and then to systemd. But I also had a pretty heavily configured/customized system... In the end, I decided it was too bleeding edge for continuous upgrades in my specific environment. I switched to CentOS7 and I keep my configuration in ansible scripts. I also use EPEL and ELRepo for the mainline kernel. But if you're just running a laptop desktop ... and you're willing to reinstall at major revs, or you just don't customize it that much, yeah, give it a try!
- lima 9y ago
  Been using Fedora since 24 and every upgrade went flawlessly.
  - rrauenza 9y ago
    I don't remember what I was at, but I think I'm talking single digits to teens. It also might have migrated through rhel free to FC. It was a very battered OS when I was done :) Again, Fedora is great -- but for my use case, I wanted something with a longer life cycle. CentOS7 is great!
    - Avshalom 9y ago
      I'm a centos user, not fedora, but from various threads here and elsewhere I gather that most people agree upgrading fedora was a garbage fire up until like 20 or something and since then it's been fantastic.

xena 9y ago

driver compatibility.

chowyuncat 9y ago
RHEL provides a stable kernel ABI. "Once a symbol has been introduced into the Kernel Application Binary Interface (kABI) for a particular major release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux it will not be removed, nor will its meaning be changed during that kernel major release's complete life cycle." SLES is another distribution with a stable kernel ABI. Additionally, in practice a module (driver) that ignores the kABI will usually work for all patched kernel versions on a given minor release (~service pack). e.g. A minor release 6.X introduces a new kernel X' (2.6.32-X'.Y) and a module built against X'-0 will work for all Y.
- noselasd 9y ago
  What xena means is that Fedora comes with more and newer drivers compared to CentOS, this means there are new hardware that might not work with CentOS, but does work in Fedora. (CentOS/RHEL 7.x is new enough that this isn't a big issue yet, but it normally does become a pain point the older the RHEL/CentOS major release gets - there are a lot of drivers that does not get backported to the RHEL/CentOS minor releases)

TheDong 9y ago

You wouldn't. CentOS is aimed at servers which are maintained by sysadmins who know RHEL well (e.g. RHEL certified), or who just want really friggin' stable shit. A developer usually wants someting that has a tradeoff closer to "newer" on the "stability vs upgrades" tradeoff. For a dev laptop, absolutely use fedora over centos.

Sir_Substance 9y ago
>or who just want really friggin' stable shit. Critically for potential desktop users, this means you can't necessarily expect things like touchpad drivers to work. Hardware support, especially consumer hardware support, can take years to trickle into centos releases. That stability may well be deeply desirable in a server that has to undergo security audits every so often, but it won't help you install it on a laptop.
- bonzini 9y ago
  > consumer hardware support, can take years to trickle into centos releases. Not necessarily, after all non-technical Red Hat employees run RHEL on bog standard Lenovo ThinkPads and model choice includes pretty recent hardware (and even some models with Optimus, lately). Technical employees mostly run Fedora, though some use RHEL and others are die hard Debian or Gentoo fans.
- justinclift 9y ago
  Many ALPS touchpads (very common) should work well in CentOS 7 these days. Back when I worked at Red Hat, making that happen was a side project that had good results. Main due to my using a Dell laptop with an ALPS touchpad at the time, and getting fed up with the crappy support it originally presented. ;)
rrauenza 9y ago
I haven't used Fedora in years -- how does Fedora make it easier for people who don't know RHEL well, vs. CentOS? (I had expected the sysadmin experience to be very similar.)
SEJeff 9y ago
I'm running a RHEL 7.3 desktop to type this comment on with 3 30" Dell monitors. I'll have you know that CentOS 7 and RHEL7 make a fantastic desktop.

SwellJoe 9y ago

If it's an old laptop, you might not. But, I can't run CentOS on my laptop as a third of the hardware, including the GPU, wouldn't work. At least, I couldn't when I got it. But, Fedora is pretty darned good about Just Working, in my experience. Because my laptop was a super new design when I got it, things were a bit shakey (I ended up using the Windows it came with for about a month because GPU drivers weren't working under Linux and running at any high res caused it to lock up frequently). But, once I was able to get all the right drivers and everything was working, I haven't had to do anything, even through a Fedora 25->26 upgrade (I have the nvidia drivers, but I got them from the rpmfusion-nonfree repo, so they update in the normal way).

yebyen 9y ago

Not just to be contrarian, but because this is how I have lived for a while... Why wouldn't you run Debian Sid on your laptop? (FWIW I have also experimented with stable versions of Debian and, when I am not seeking the newest software which has been the case in the recent years, it works just as well for me as unstable distribution. But FWIW2, the Debian Sid on your Workstation paradigm has only bit me twice in nearing twenty years, and both times were valuable learning experiences.) My advice would be to use whatever you're most comfortable with. With an addendum to use whatever you have running in production if possible, because that will maximize the chances that you discover a bug in production before it bites you hard.

ohazi 9y ago
I used sid on my laptop for several years with similar results. These days I use testing. Testing is usually only behind sid by a few weeks, but I've found that the more annoying breakages tend to get resolved in sid before anyone in testing sees them, so the already infrequent headaches are basically non-existent now.
- yebyen 9y ago
  They must have improved testing then, or improved their processes, because the last time I evaluated testing it was properly "half unstable, half unusable" Admittedly that was a while ago! Testing, depending on what part of the release cycle you are in, can be a few weeks behind Sid or significantly more, though. Most upstream release managers probably pay some attention to the release cycles nowadays so, with luck you wouldn't notice this too much. (The start date of the testing freeze is well publicized in advance and known, so competent release managers should avoid potentially breaking/broken updates immediately before that date, if I remember correctly how this works.)
Avshalom 9y ago
RHEL (and thus usually centos) and Ubuntu (not Sid, not debian stable) are the two distros that companies distribute for. It's rarely but occasionally important depending on what your doing with your computers. As to why not to use CentOS/RHEL: they're not supported by half the companies that Ubuntu is so if you buy commercial software (indie video games at least) Ubuntu is the better option.

rrauenza 9y ago

I ran Fedora on my home server for years -- and found the upgrade process between FC's really difficult over time. Stuff I'd configured and had working would break. FC upgrades would take days of fiddling to get stable again. Not upgrading left me open to security vulnerabilities. Some examples are major changes to config files by certain apps - like rsyslog or squid. I also went through the transition from init.d to some other one I can't recall and then to systemd. But I also had a pretty heavily configured/customized system... In the end, I decided it was too bleeding edge for continuous upgrades in my specific environment. I switched to CentOS7 and I keep my configuration in ansible scripts. I also use EPEL and ELRepo for the mainline kernel. But if you're just running a laptop desktop ... and you're willing to reinstall at major revs, or you just don't customize it that much, yeah, give it a try!

lima 9y ago
Been using Fedora since 24 and every upgrade went flawlessly.
- rrauenza 9y ago
  I don't remember what I was at, but I think I'm talking single digits to teens. It also might have migrated through rhel free to FC. It was a very battered OS when I was done :) Again, Fedora is great -- but for my use case, I wanted something with a longer life cycle. CentOS7 is great!
  - Avshalom 9y ago
    I'm a centos user, not fedora, but from various threads here and elsewhere I gather that most people agree upgrading fedora was a garbage fire up until like 20 or something and since then it's been fantastic.