Review: CentOS 6.0

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.0 was released a little less than 9 months ago, while RHEL derivative Scientific Linux 6.0 "Carbon" was released a little less than 5 months ago. Yet, it took 8 months after the release of RHEL 6.0 for CentOS 6.0 to be released. Two weeks after that, the CentOS 6.0 live medium was released, so I'm trying it out and reviewing it now.

So what is CentOS? Well, before I say that, it's important to know that RHEL is the flagship product of Red Hat; it's an OS meant for business and server environments, and its price is almost entirely for technical support, which can be purchased at different levels. It isn't available for home users for free; that's where Fedora and CentOS come in. Fedora is basically like RHEL's upstream, in that every few Fedora releases, a new version of RHEL based on that Fedora version is released; for example, Fedora Core 6 formed the basis of RHEL 5, while a combination of Fedora 12 and 13 formed the basis of RHEL 6. CentOS, on the other hand, is RHEL's clone; it is 100% identical to RHEL, except that all Red Hat branding is replaced by CentOS branding, and all references to Red Hat and RHEL are replaced by references to a more generic "upstream" or "Enterprise Linux", due to Red Hat's policies regarding its logo and name. Replacing the branding and rebuilding the packages is not trivial, and as far as I can tell, this release was particularly problematic, which is why it took a full 8 months (as opposed to the typical 1-3 months) after the corresponding RHEL release for the new CentOS version to be released.
Unfortunately, this unprecedented delay irritated some of the more vocal members of the Linux community, and as Scientific Linux 6.0 "Carbon" was released many months before CentOS 6.0 (while typically the newest Scientific Linux version is released after the corresponding CentOS version), former users of CentOS started switching to Scientific Linux. Well, CentOS 6.0 is finally here, so hopefully those disgruntled users are happy.

I tested CentOS on a live USB made with MultiSystem. I did not test the installation because I did that with Scientific Linux, and I don't see any reason why the installation should be any different; this is the same reason why I don't test the installation for every Ubuntu derivative I try out. Follow the jump to see what it's like. Also note that I originally wanted to do a direct comparison between Scientific Linux and CentOS, but I got impatient in waiting for the CentOS 6.0 live CD to be released, so I went ahead and tested Scientific Linux 6.0 "Carbon" by itself. Therefore, this article will make frequent references and comparisons to Scientific Linux. Finally, as was the case with the Scientific Linux review, though CentOS is really targeted at enterprise users and servers, I'm going to be reviewing it from the perspective of a home desktop user. Why? Well, Microsoft Windows 2000, the first home version of Microsoft Windows to be based on Microsoft Windows NT, which was previously just for servers and enterprise users, was very well-received among home users despite it targeting enterprise and server use. I'm reviewing CentOS from that same perspective.

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