14 DAY TRIAL // CentOS, touted as a '100 percent compatible' rebuild of RedHat Enterprise Linux has reached version 5, as it was announced on the CentOS mailing list. The new version features a fresh release of the Gnome Desktop and a 2.6.18 kernel. This distribution targets enterprise customers who need a stable operating system without the cost of certification and support.
CentOS 5 has been released in full compliance with RedHat's redistribution requirements, said Karanbir Singh, the CentOS chief maintainer. The distribution is based on the 5th release of RHEL and includes packages from all variants, such as Server and Client. Moreover, all upstream repositories have been combined into one, to make it easier for end users to work with, Singh added.
Major changes in CentOS5 include:
￭ numerous updated software versions ￭ better desktop support with Compiz and AIGLX ￭ virtualization provided by the Xen hypervisor with Virtual Machine Manager and libvirt ￭ simplified construction of user profiles
You can view the original CentOS 5 release notes here.
CentOS standard features include:
￭ Pidgin (formerly GAIM) 2.0 beta 5 messenger ￭ OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 ￭ Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 email client ￭ GIMP 2.2.13 graphics editor
CentOs is a distribution maintained by a community of open source contributors and users. Typical CentOS users are organizations and individuals that do not need strong commercial support in order to maintain successful operations.
The newest version of CentOS is being distributed as individual CD ISO image sets for i386 or x86_64 architectures, which consist of six or seven CD images, depending on the architecture. You can download the CD sets from one of the world-wide mirror.
Alternatively, you can download the complete DVD image from SOFTPEDIA.