Hello Producers
"Longevity of Support" is an attractive drawcard for CentOS if it means
the exact opposite of Fedora's "short support cycle" that does not
provide updating of infrastructural libraries for very long, libraries
which newer versions of applications (like Firefox, Thunderbird, Opera
etc) depend on and which wont install unless the libraries are also
newer versions? But is that what it means -- ie that those
infrastructural libraries (libpango, libcairo etc) are continuously
updateable to fairly recent versions?
If so, the problem is in reconciling that meaning with the reputation of
CentOS to only support older versions of applications (eg Firefox-1.5,
Thunderbird-1.0 etc). It does reconcile, of course, if the implications
are merely that the CentOS user must compile and install the later
versions of such applications from source, rather than having the luxury
of pre-packaged binaries. It doesn't reconcile if there is some other
critical reason why newer such applications just wont install. But which?
I ask here because the profusion of vague mission statements and
'target-enduser-profile' claims that litter the internet re '*nix
distros' seldom actually address those real issues. And hopefully
someone can enlighten. My complex production & developement desktop
takes months to fully port to a new OS (or OS-version), so OS updates to
get library updates (ala Fedora philosophy) becomes increasingly untenable.
Then there is a further question, I'm afraid. Since CentOS also does
specifically target the profile of a so-called 'enterprise/server-user'
what does that actually entail. Does it mean concrete security
strictures which bolt down non-'root' users or does it merely mean the
availability of SELinux (but which can be turned OFF)? For instance,
(with SELinux OFF), can a user still:
(a) su root via Kterm anytime?
(b) Access services-admin anytime via Menu+Pam to control printers,
modems, daemons etc?
(c) compile
(d) have 6 to 8 desktops running
(e) call up 'konquerorsu.desktop' (root-konqueror with embedded root-Kterm)
(f) have normal cron scheduling
.......................................................... maybe more,
but that's a start.
Thanks for listening.
Sean
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