CentOS, a derivative of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, was started back in 2002 with its first beta versions appearing in 2003. The first full version appeared in late 2003 as CentOS 3.0, which was updated a few months later to 3.1. The version number then changed to 2.1 to match the version number of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux version being used as the base for the distribution. In 2005 version 4.0 came out followed by 5.0 in early 2007. CentOS is designed to be a high end server OS that runs on a wide variety of different architectures, including x86, Intel IA-64 (Itanium 64-bit), x86-64, PowerPC/32, IBM Mainframe, Alpha, and SPARC. Given all this versatility, and its roots as a server OS, some may be lead to ask the question, “Does it make a good desktop distribution?” We’re about to find out.

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.

Gnome

Gnome loads up very quickly from the login screen and gives you a rich, clean desktop that is surprisingly well setup for a Gnome install. The applications, places and system menus are reasonably well organized, giving you a choice of a fair number of default Gnome apps along with a few pre-installed apps the developers thought you’d need. Load times on most apps are respectable and are for the most part without hitch. I did find some issues with the interaction of the mouse with the system, including complete hangs, but I’m not sure if those were OS related or Gnome related. I was also surprised at the number of Kapps in the Gnome menus. That might have something to do with having KDE installed as well, so I can’t say that was intentional despite their prevalence in the Gnome menus. One thing I found that I didn’t like is that the system tools are a little sparse, considering there as only three items available, but I guess that’s ok, because there’s more than enough items under the system menu to give you everything and the kitchen sink in system maintenance and administration tools. The rest of the Gnome interface is everything you’d expect from Gnome.

The icon scheme seems to be centered around a cartoony, cell shaded design that reminds me more of an airline safety sign than a desktop icon. The quick launch has a nice selection of five basic application icons to get you started and the update manager located next to the clock to notify you of any updates or upgrades you should do to your install. One thing that did stand out that drove me nuts is the load time of apps under the Gnome desktop. A few were fairly snappy, but the rest felt like they didn’t want to load, or were fighting to do so. Even on applications that should have loaded instantly, especially some of the Gnome native applications, they took a very long time and there was way more disk activity than should have been necessary. And I can’t blame that on my system, because my test machine is no slouch.

KDE

KDE also loaded up very quickly, was very clean and good looking, and interestingly enough, presented me with a customized taskbar that contained the same five quick launch icons found under Gnome. The icon scheme used under KDE was also identical to the one used under Gnome. Another thing is that the KDE theme is consistent with the Gnome theme, which some might not care about, but it does show that the developers were striving for consistency, so I give them props for that. The KDE menu was also interesting. I found it relatively untouched and while slightly reordered for ease of use, it was for the most part a true, untouched KDE menu. Well, except for the fact that the developers changed the KDE menu icon to the CentOS logo and a few stray Gnome apps found their way in. One thing that really impressed me was to find the control center almost totally untouched! If there’s one thing that drives me nuts, it’s when a distro group goes in and messes around with the control center. There’s a couple that do that. Kubuntu is one that does that to the point of being rediculous. They so hack up the control center that it becomes essentially useless in my opinion. The KDE developers did a splendid job creating the control center in the first place and the CentOS developers did the right thing by pretty much leaving it alone and not changing it.

Compared to Gnome, application loading was surprisingly snappy and even loading Open Office was fast. Surprisingly fast really. Especially after the painful experience of trying to load it under Gnome. And this isn’t because of my having first loaded it under Gnome to give it a head start. If I rebooted and did things the opposite way by loading KDE first, running the test apps, then going back to Gnome, I got the same results. One complaint I do have about the KDE install however is the lack of an easily identifiable or accessible package manager or method (aside from Yum in the console) to install applications. I did eventually find the package manager (which, interestingly enough, is the same program in both Gnome and KDE), but it took some hunting through the menus to find it. So that is something the developers will need to fix in the future. New users and people fresh to Linux need to have a package install icon out in front of them on the desktop where it’s easy to see. Otherwise they’ll never know where to look. If the more experienced users don’t like having that there, then it’s just a simple case of right click and delete to get rid of the icon. But first and foremost, installing, upgrading or removing software needs to be as simple as possible for users.

General System

A welcome sight in the general system install, regardless of Desktop Manager, was the list of common applications that were installed. Things such as Open Office, Firefox, and a wide list of popular Linux mini-games. One thing that bugged me though was the clock. For some reason it got stuck on military time at the beginning and no matter which Desktop Environment I used, or how much tinkering or restarting I tried, I couldn’t get it to switch to normal AM/PM time display. Not sure why, but it didn’t. Aside from the failings listed above, the general system well in both a windowed, and console environment. Disk usage seemed quite low overall and I hardly ever saw the drive light come on except when I was loading an application. Top showed CPU usage to be very low, swap usage to be non-existent, but memory usage was surprisingly high. It hovered around 90% usage the entire time I was testing the machine. I don’t know why, as I typically don’t see memory usage on an idle system go beyond 512meg normally, unless I’m doing something. Package management was a mixed bag. Yum support is weak and the graphical package manager needs some work. Finding any commonly used applications in the Yum or package manager repositories was like having a book sale at an empty store. There was just almost nothing I could find in the package system to install. I personally would think that the KDE or Gnome default package managers would be best to use until the development team gets the current universal package manager in a more developed state.

Also, the mounting and use of DVD’s was a lost cause. I couldn’t for the life of me get the disk to mount, play or be accessible. I could mention more about my futile efforts to find any multimedia support in CentOS, but suffice to say, it is really lacking in general. MP3’s played thanks to Noatun, but that’s about all that worked in respect to multimedia applications or attempts to play files or listen to music. Now if you’re considering using this for an office environment, then I think it’d be fine. Productivity wise, it’s a good operating system, especially for the business user. But certainly not for the home user looking for more out of their machine.

Hardware support does seem to fall well into the norm for most mainstream distros as all my hardware was detected and properly installed as it should have been. Only hardware that was not produced by a mainstream hardware manufacturer had any issues. Wireless in general was a mixed bag and depended on what device you were using to how well it was supported. Suffice to say, wireless lan is going to be a hair pulling experience for anyone not familiar with setting up wireless from the console in Linux.

Conclusion

CentOS 5.0 gets high marks from me for a lot of what they do, but looses a few points for some of the things they either forgot to do, or chose not to do. For business use, it’s a well rounded Linux distribution that’s ready for the desktop for certain. But for the portable user and the home user, I feel that it needs to grow a bit more before it will find its way onto my shortlist of recommended Linux distributions. With what I’ve seen, I’d really love for it to reach that level at some point, but for now it’s not. But I must say, the developers have done well and I look forward to future versions and all the great new things that they will be bringing about in the years to come!