Review: CentOS 5 (Page 2 of 6)
Written by
Steve Lake
Posted on: Jul 25, 2007 at 05:11pm
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Installation
CentOS can be downloaded as either a cd or dvd install disk, the latter of which
you’ll need to acquire via bittorrent. Of the two, the dvd is the better way to
install CentOS and it’s the version I used for this review. The only real difference
is that the dvd provides you with a list of packages you can install directly off the DVD
rather than having to go through the Yum installer to grab them off the internet when
you’re first installing the OS. Initial bootup and install of the OS was amazingly
simple. I initially booted the dvd and was greeted by a rather interesting surprise. The
CentOS installer gives you the ability to test your install cd or dvd for integrity before
installing the OS. This can be useful in two ways. The first is that it verifies the
integrity of the cd/dvd to make sure it’s usable, and second, it allows you to test
your hardware to make sure that it’ll be able to completely and properly read the
disk. I say that this is a good thing because nobody wants to have to deal with install or
post install problems caused by a bad disk or problematic hardware.
While CentOS doesn’t have a “live cd” from which to install the OS, as
some other distributions do, it still boots into a windowed install environment that
allows you to see if CentOS will work for you. IE, if the install fails to load,
you’ve got some hardware problems to work out before continuing. The install itself
was quick and only took about 20 minutes. There are a few questions that it will ask you
before installing, such as where to put the files, what users you want to setup, and so
on. All of the questions are easy to understand and give you some flexibility in how you
choose to do your setup. You even have the ability to do some expert configurations if you
want. During one part of the setup you’ll be given the chance to choose what basic
packages you want and what desktop you want. These include virtualization and storage
clustering as well as your Desktop Manager. CentOS 5 ships with Gnome 2.16.0 (latest
version as of this review is 2.16.2) and KDE 3.5.6 (this is the latest KDE version as of
this review) as Desktop Manager choices. By default, CentOS uses the Gnome desktop,
although KDE is also offered as a choice. If you want KDE rather than Gnome, or you want
both, just check or uncheck the appropriate boxes to tell CentOS which to install. If you
choose both, you’ll need to set your session type on first boot to KDE if you want it
as your default Desktop Manager. Otherwise Gnome is automatically chosen as the default.
One thing to note about the install is that you are required to enter passwords of at
least 6 characters in length, but the strength of the password isn’t enforced. So you
could get away with just using “123456” as your password if you wanted to. Being
one who thinks that good password strength should be enforced, I don’t feel this is
enough, but the developers believe it is, because they feel that while they can require a
password of minimum length, the strength of it is up to you. So I’ll say that’s
fair enough and leave it at that.
Since I decided to install both KDE and Gnome with CentOS, obviously since both were
offered, I’m also going to look through both and give their strengths and weaknesses
under CentOS. Mostly because both have been customized for use in CentOS and are not
running under their default configurations. It took about 20 minutes (plus about 10 for
the previous configuration steps) to finish the initial install. One the install is done,
it gives you a chance to retrieve the cd/dvd from the drive before reboot. This is a nice
extra feature, in my honest opinion, because few other distros do this and it can be a
pain fighting with your system to get the disk out before it has a chance to go through
its shutdown and reboot cycle if you don’t get it out before it does reboot. The
first boot of the system has a few extra questions it asks you to finish up the install.
But these are easy to understand and keep to the KISS principle, so there’s no need
to worry about them. In fact, the whole install keeps to the KISS principle, so even a new
user can easily complete the install.
After the mandatory post install shutdown and reboot, it took just under a minute to
bring me to a screen where I had to complete a few last steps to finish the install. The
first part was the firewall setup. Having a firewall setup on a Linux machine is a good
thing, especially when it’s part of the setup routine. So I give high props to the
CentOS developers for putting this in as a standard feature. Most people might say,
“But Linux doesn’t need a firewall!” That may be true to some degree, and
Linux is most certainly secure in and of its own right, but there are other programs on
your machine that may not be safe, or some new exploit may come along that’ll leave
your machine vulnerable for a short period of time. While the chances of this may be low,
it’s always good security practice to use a firewall anyways.
In the firewall setup you have the ability to choose which services outside users will
be able to connect to directly. SSH is automatically set as a trusted service, but you can
also add other services as well such as SMTP, FTP, Samba and more. If you don’t want
the firewall, you can disable it, but I feel that it’s better if it’s left on.
The next option is also something I give props to the CentOS developers for. It’s
called SELinux and is a tool for helping you increase the default security on your Linux
install. A great tool to have no matter how careful you are. A couple more clicks to
finish up some basic configurations and you’re on your way to the desktop. Just login
with the new user you created and you’re a go.
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Average vistor rating: 3.8 out of 5 (19 total votes) | |
