>Not to add to this meta-discussion, but forming an opinion of
>a distribution based on its installer is really narrowminded.
> Most people get Windows and other OSes pre-installed, so
>Linux reviews should focus on a pre-installed Linux
>distribution.
>
>
I'm not a reviewer, and this is not a comparison to Windows.
Also, I'm not judging the merits of whether or not Ubuntu is a good or
bad distribution. What I found as a newbie was that the effort of trying
to get it to install far outweighed the effort of considering other
Linux distributions. Especially considering that the shades of
difference between each distro were seeminly slight and overly technical.
>??? Linux is free.
>
Perhaps I misunderstood something along the way. What I thought was the
case was that while Linux is free, some distributions aren't. They
charge for their installer, support, and added features. I wanted to
select a distribution that was a free. open source, distribution for
various reasons to do with my antipathy towards the methods of paid
software companies in trying to generate profit by offering "upgrades".
Anyway, to keep this on focus with CentOS, if CentOS is designed more to
be a "server", and "desktop questions" are beyond the scope of this
list, then why did the installer offer me "personal use", "workstation",
and other varieties of installation other than "server"?
More to the point, am I being illogical by assuming that if I have a
distribution of Linux, and I go to a web page that offers Linux
software, that I would assume that I can download and run it? Why am I
running Linux if I can't run Linux applications?
Are distributions really different enough that one can't run some
applications and another can't run others? Wouldn't that be kind of
insane? I mean, I can understand a specialty build that has clear
warnings on it that it is built for some specific platform or purpose.
But why does CentOS have a desktop (two, in fact) if it's not designed
to handle "desktop" problems?
Dave
