Fedora, CentOS, & Scientific Linux

[nujinini]

Hi!

Fedora was my first distro but sad to say I had a hard time keeping up with the 6 month cycle. My Fedora 10 was not supported anymore after a year.

Then I tried CentOS but I had a hard time in configuring wireless.


I have been reading so much about Scientific linux lately and must say it caught my interest.

Can anyone please share some info re SL6 please?

My concerns are specifically:

1) Is the life cycle as quick as Fedora?
2) Can it run wireless in my Lenovo and relatively easy to configure like Fedora?
3) Do I get it right when I say the cli of SL would be the same as Fedora or CentOS?

I already have already downloaded an ISO and will be trying it on my VB perhaps anytime today.

Thank you for your time,

regards,

nujinini

[meton_magis]

As I understand it, the pure SL is a strict rebranding of RHEL (same thing CentOS did before it started getting slow on updates.) From the base SL, you have derivatives that are used by various labs.

If you're reformatting, you may as well get the iso and test it out. If it works for your wireless, hooray, if not, oh well.

I'd stay away from CentOS, the state of the project is in question lately, and SL is just as good from what I've heard.

the cli should be exactly the same as RHEL, which fedora takes after (or the other way around if you want to get picky)

[nujinini]

As I understand it, the pure SL is a strict rebranding of RHEL (same thing CentOS did before it started getting slow on updates.) From the base SL, you have derivatives that are used by various labs.

If you're reformatting, you may as well get the iso and test it out. If it works for your wireless, hooray, if not, oh well.

I'd stay away from CentOS, the state of the project is in question lately, and SL is just as good from what I've heard.

the cli should be exactly the same as RHEL, which fedora takes after (or the other way around if you want to get picky)

Thank you meton_magis!

Anyway, I just ordered some DVDs from the US. Since I found the price quite manageableand somebody can hand carry it to me.

I was hoping to speed up my learning a few steps forward, I hope what I learn here can also be applied to SL, or if I may not be too ambitious, to RH

[reed9]

Anything you learn for one of the three (CentOS, SL, or RHEL) should be transferable to the others. Similarly, any difficulties you have in one you will almost certainly have in the others as well. (Though SL/CentOS 6 should alleviate some of the wireless issues. From what I've seen a lot of the problems were just due to the very old packages version 5 was using.)

Institutionally, SL has better support than CentOS, since it has the backing of CERN and Fermilab. But that is probably a larger concern for Enterprise users than home users.

[nujinini]

Anything you learn for one of the three (CentOS, SL, or RHEL) should be transferable to the others. Similarly, any difficulties you have in one you will almost certainly have in the others as well.

Thanks reed9. That's a relief

...(Though SL/CentOS 6 should alleviate some of the wireless issues. From what I've seen a lot of the problems were just due to the very old packages version 5 was using.)

I also read that unlike Fedora, the releases are a year apart.

[reed9]

Minor releases can happen more frequently than every year, major release far less frequently. For example, RHEL 5 came out in 2007 and RHEL 6 was just released recently, around 4 years later. The minor point releases are for support and maintenance, but don't introduce any major new features.

You can find more info on the RHEL website, and compare to the Scientific Linux roadmap.

[Phred]

Hi!

2) Can it run wireless in my Lenovo and relatively easy to configure like Fedora?

Wireless support in SL6 is pretty much a nobrainer - VASTLY improved over SL5.

I originally played with SL5 last summer or last fall, but gave up on it when I couldn't get wireless working on my HP 6910P laptop. It seemed to detect the wireless card but for whatever reason wouldn't connect with it - I suspect it just wasn't reading the button above the keyboard that turned the antenna on, but I don't know for sure. Maybe a pro could have figured it out but to a newbie like me it wasn't intuitive as to where to even begin.

SL6 comes out, I load it on the same laptop, and it works. Not much more to say about it, it just works. I've also loaded SL6 an an HP 6220 and an older "IBM" thinkpad T23, and the wireless works without a hitch.

[lomcevak]

This thread got me interested in SL. I have CentOS 5.5 installed on a virtual machine in VirtualBox. So I created another VM and install SL6 on it. Problem is DNS isn't working. On CentOS there's a box that's checked for 'Automatically obtain DNS information from provider'. On SL6 I don't see any such option for DNS.

How do you get DNS to work on SL6? The PC is connected via Ethernet cable to a LinkSys router then to a DSL modem.

[Phred]

This thread got me interested in SL. I have CentOS 5.5 installed on a virtual machine in VirtualBox. So I created another VM and install SL6 on it. Problem is DNS isn't working. On CentOS there's a box that's checked for 'Automatically obtain DNS information from provider'. On SL6 I don't see any such option for DNS.

How do you get DNS to work on SL6? The PC is connected via Ethernet cable to a LinkSys router then to a DSL modem.

On SL6 I can go to, from the top menu bar, System > Preferences > Network Connections > Wired > System eth0 > Edit, and my "method" is currently set to "Automatic (DHCP)" and the DNS server list is greyed out but if I chane the method to "Manual" I can then manually put in the DNS servers.

[Rubberman]

On SL6 I can go to, from the top menu bar, System > Preferences > Network Connections > Wired > System eth0 > Edit, and my "method" is currently set to "Automatic (DHCP)" and the DNS server list is greyed out but if I chane the method to "Manual" I can then manually put in the DNS servers.

With network IP address obtained via dhcp (not a good idea for desktop or server systems), the DNS address (found in /etc/resolv.conf) is set to the router and/or gateway address. If you are using a static IP address, then you can specify the DNS server addresses you want. In the DHCP case, you CAN modify /etc/resolv.conf, but that will be reset on SL6 the next time you boot the system (or VM in this case). I have the same problem on some recent Ubuntu systems I have, so it is not limited to RHEL and clones. I was previously running CentOS 5.5 and indeed changes to resolv.conf would be maintained between boots. Not so any longer.