R i g h t a r d i a: Linux Magazine: CentOS 5.6 Finally Arrives and is suitable for Business Use

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Linux Magazine: CentOS 5.6 Finally Arrives and is suitable for Business Use

I stopped using Ubuntu 10.10 because the network driver for an Atheros Gigabit Ethernet card was flaky. It would come and go. I had an older but very hot 3.0 gigahertz gaming MB left over from one of my children. After working out some BIOS settings, I tried loading both the current versions of Ubuntu Linux and Linux Mint without much success,

Linux Magazine had arrived with a CentOS 6.2 disk. CentOS is the community rebuild of of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and it rocks. It loaded the first time and had none of the pesky bugs that have to be worked out after Ubuntu is installed.

Ubuntu got upset with the Gnome developers and developed the Unity interface which didn't earn it new followers.

CentOS is amazing. First, the flash and video CODECS work if you install the "third party" option, a problem with Fedora Linux. The network driver works flawlessly and downloads and Linux updates are at warp speed. It is a bug free installation that is far faster than Windows 7. the OS loads in less than 10 seconds and the connections to the Internet are immediate.

Some other good news

Canon has release Linux drivers for the Imageclass MF4570DN printer. This printer has worked flawlessly and I much prefer it to comparable Brother MF printers that have front panels that come and go to voltage issues. Linux printing on this machine is incredibly fast. This laser multifunction printer costs $200 or less.

In addition, AVAST has a great anitvirus/malware program for Linux without incident. I prefer AVAST over CLAM AV because Clam installs frequently bomb out even using the Synaptic package manager, You also have to install the CLAMTK front end if you wish to avoid command line virus scans.