Centos 6 as a desktop OS

Khannie

Anyone doing this? If so, how do you find it?

I'm considering the move to a red hat distro on my work desktop because I'm going for certification soon enough and it seemed like the obvious choice.

croo

I have done, but I found the hardware support of ubuntu & the dependency determination of apt-get better than yum - this was a while ago though (centos 4 & 5!) so perhaps things have improved. I still run centos though because it's the easiest to setup oracle on! I just run it in VM. These days it's practically the same as running on the metal itself. A VM might still be the way to go for learning too because you can easily start again if you mess it up or just to practice making the changes on a clean install ... or, if need be, to configure multiple VM to test some features!

Khannie

I'll probably use VM's for the arsing around alright. I just thought doing the day to day stuff on red hat, instead of using the debian way would probably be beneficial when it came time to do the actual exam. I could go with fedora I suppose. Hardware support isn't a big thing for me at the moment. My work machine is old enough (6700 processor, 4G and nvidia graphics) and I don't actually use it for much processing. Nearly all of my grunt work is done on servers.

croo

I just thought doing the day to day stuff on red hat, instead of using the debian way would probably be beneficial when it came time to do the actual exam.

I think it would do no harm. And the last time I did install Centos 5 on a HP Laptop directly all the basics worked without problem. I guess so long as you had common hardware (not too new) you should not run into any issues.

Also, when I think of it... I found, if I did have issues often it was to do with the SELinux aspect of Centos and I don't think this is part of fedora so I think I'd stick with centos (rh) so you do run into these issues around tighter security... then you'll learn to address them!

Have fun...

Khannie

Nice one. Didn't think of the selinux bit. Good tip that.

Khannie

Well...I made the change today. It's a pretty crappy desktop OS compared to newer versions of Ubuntu. It just feels so old. Of course all the functionality for day to day is is more or less there just because it's linux. Some other minor gripes :

No amarok and no filezilla in the default repo's, no "oh you might like to install this package if you're looking for that command" thing that ubuntu has (lovely touch that). Editing gnome menus requires the installation of alacarte manually (no right click->edit menu). Other stuff like that. I have gotten over these for the most part (still no amarok, but I'll get to it).

The install went well. Setting up my reasonably complex raid / partitioning went well. Networking took some fluting but is working fine now.

New version of chrome installed and using backed up settings = good news.

New version of Libreoffice installed = good news.

Gnome system monitor applet not working = bad news.

Khannie

Khannie wrote: »

Gnome system monitor applet not working = bad news.

Found a fix for this here = good news.

Tom Dunne

Are you integrating with Active Directory, by any chance, Khannie?

I'm pulling what little hair I have out trying to get my Ubuntu machine talking to Sharepoint and the office printer.

I am debating switching distro to see if I can get these things working.

Khannie

I don't plan to, though I plan on studying to get certified. I don't think that's part of the certification though. I currently know next to nothing about Active Directory unfortunately. Switching distro is unlikely to get you what you want. If it doesn't work in a new version of Ubuntu, it's unlikely to work in RedHat IMO. What version of Ubuntu are you using?

As for the printer: What type of printer is it? We have HP laserjet printers in the oifig and there's a super cross platform feature that they have built in.

Tom Dunne

Khannie wrote: »

I don't plan to, though I plan on studying to get certified. I don't think that's part of the certification though. I currently know next to nothing about Active Directory unfortunately. Switching distro is unlikely to get you what you want. If it doesn't work in a new version of Ubuntu, it's unlikely to work in RedHat IMO. What version of Ubuntu are you using?

I'm on 11.04. The IT guys want me to do it too, as they no absolutely nothing about Linux and want to see what all the fuss is about.

Khannie wrote: »

As for the printer: What type of printer is it? We have HP laserjet printers in the oifig and there's a super cross platform feature that they have built in.

It's a Konika Minolta (which the laptop correctly identifies on an SMB/Print Server share). It's just that when I go to print, it gives me an authentication error, which suggests it is a CUPS/AD problem.

Khannie

Ah the fuss. Unfortunately any expectation is usually met with "what now?". For most tasks it's much the same as windows. It leads to a bit of underwhelming.

Can't help you with the windows stuff unfortunately, though it might worth firing up a thread. There's a lot of knowledge in here. About the only windows-ey thing I ever do is access a network share in work with samba and that's always just been flawless for me. My own network printer I access through the hp feature. I do remember having a pain in my face trying to use it through samba though. That would have been a few years ago though on Ubuntu 8.04.

croo

I'm on ubuntu 11.04 and can access a couple of windows networked printers in the office I'm working at without issue. Both are HP printers though and they seem to have little linux issues.

Tom Dunne

croo wrote: »

I'm on ubuntu 11.04 and can access a couple of windows networked printers in the office I'm working at without issue. Both are HP printers though and they seem to have little linux issues.

That's the thing - I can actually connect to the printer, but when I go to print, I get an authentication error, which is why I suspect it is related to Active Directory. Even if I hard-code in my username/password (shhh, don't tell the IT department), it still doesn't work.

Same with Sharepoint. I started a thread here some time back about my problems and again, I believe it is related to AD, not specifically with Sharepoint.

I'm currently trawling the net for solutions and looking more closely at Kereboros.