Jim O’Halloran’s Weblog

Published September 27th, 2004 by Jim O'Halloran

Ubuntu, White Box and CentOS

In the last couple of weeks I’ve run across two new Linux distributions, which I thought I should link to and say a bit about. First up is Ubuntu Linux.

“Ubuntu” is an African word, meaning “Humanity To Others”. The Ubuntu Linux distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.

Ubuntu is a pretty bleeding edge distribution based on Debian. It features the latest Gnome (2.8) including Evolution 2.0. Ubuntu’s release cycle is tied to Gnome and promises releases much more often than standard Deb. The default install looks nice and slick (and a little apple inspired perhaps?). At a Linux advocacy event I was involved with last week we demonstrated Ubuntu alongside SuSE, Fedora and RedHat, and Ubuntu was the one everyone seemed to like.

I’d love to try Ubuntu on my laptop and see what happens. Although I’m really only just getting my Fedora customised the way I want it. Edd Dumbill’s Weblog also gives Ubuntu a good writeup.

Once concern that I’ve had with Fedora is it’s extremely short support lifecycle. For some desktops, and testing machines this isn’t a major drama, but for servers and some applications this is a major problem. Red Hat’s commercial offerings fit the bill well in that department, but not everyone can afford them.

There’s a couple of solutions though. White Box Enterprise Linux aims to…

To provide an unencumbered RPM based Linux distribution that retains enough compatibility with Red Hat Linux to allow easy upgrades and to retain compatibility with their Errata srpms.

White Box shows some real promise, but looks to be in reasonably early stages. Along a similar line, CentOS is a similar idea…

cAos also hosts two Enterprise Linux solutions, CentOS-2 and CentOS-3, based on Redhat Enterprise Linux 2.1 AS and 3 ES respectively, and in full compliance with RedHat’s redistribution requirements.

Both White Box and CentOS exist to bridge the gap between Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise products. While I haven’t used either, CentOS has received strong recommendations from people I trust. I’ll try and check both out in the months to come.

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