At Mon, 25 May 2009 15:02:28 +0200 CentOS mailing list <centos@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Content-language: sv
>
>
> ---Executing: recode
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: centos-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:centos-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx] On
> Behalf
> >Of William L. Maltby
> >Sent: Monday, May 25, 2009 2:24 PM
> >To: CentOS mailing list
> >Subject: Re: Auto-installing security updates?
> >
> >> >Probably not the best distro for Laptops,
> >> >but many people on this list are using CentOS on their laptops.
> >>
> >> So what's considered to be the "best" choice for laptops? I understand
> >> mileage may vary and so on, but I think there might maybe be a general
> >> consensus at least?
> > ^^^^^^^^^
> >
> >Not likely on this list. More likely, a "preponderance", maybe even a
> >"majority", but I wouldn't be surprised if even those aren't achieved.
> >BTW, "general" is redundant with "consensus".
>
> I'm sorry. I'm not a native English speaker or writer.
>
> Ok, so what would you guys suggest using on a laptop, if CentOS was not an
> option? I read in an earlier post where somebody suggested chosing distro
> based on the hardware. Suppose this hardware is a Dell Latitude a few years
> old, with no built-in wifi, but rather either a Dlink DFE-680TXD or a 3com
> 3CRWE154G72.
CentOS will work just fine. (Probably *any* distro will work just
fine.)
CentOS will work with older hardware. The only hardware that will be
problematical will be winmodems -- *ALL* linux distros do badly with
winmodems. It is a combination of lack of documentation about what is
going on inside the winmodem and a serious lack of motivation: most
Linux developers have real internet connections and no longer have an
interest in dialup, plus *real* (RS232-based) modems are cheap and ALL
of them work out-of-the-box. From many points of view, winmodems are
pointless hardware.
CentOS only has these problems WRT laptops (or desktops to a lesser
extent):
It is an 'conservitive' distro (same can be said about all of the
RHEL-based distros). This means three *main* things:
1) Support for bleeding edge hardware might be a problem. Mostly things
like sound cards, WiFi NICs, and (cheap) digital cameras. Most other
hardware is 'standardized' enough to work on some level (eg video
cards will work at basic resolution levels, etc.) RedHat does back
port critical hardware drivers (things like mass storage
controller drivers (SATA, SCSI, RAID, etc.)).
2) You won't get the most recent, hot, bleeding edge version of
software. You also won't get buggy software either. No great loss
IMHO.
3) RHEL distros will lack most of the flashy toys (eg fancy
multi-media), including flashy eye-candy.
Only 1 is really a 'problem' for laptops, since fresh off the showroom
floor laptops tend to have all sorts of bleeding edge hardware. With a
desktop one can mix-and-match compatible PCI cards, etc. and avoid or
cure these problems. One *could* just snarf a suitable kernel from
FC-land if one knows what one is doing, etc.
2 & 3 can be solved with a combination of CentOSPlus, epel, rpmforge,
and lots of fun with rpmbuild and srpms from FC-land (or even more fun
with tar & make and related tools). I've even dropped in RPMs from
Mandrake and SUSE onto my system (rpmfind.net can be quite useful at
times). I've even snarfed srpms from other distros and bashed them
though rpmbuild, usually after tinkering with the .spec file.
--
Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933
Deepwoods Software -- Download the Model Railroad System
http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Binaries for Linux and MS-Windows
heller@xxxxxxxxxxxx -- http://www.deepsoft.com/ModelRailroadSystem/
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