I recently participated in a discussion in a CentOS group I belong to about the suitability of CentOS for ordinary laptops. These were my thoughts, mostly taken from various points in the discussion and edited into a coherent whole. Is CentOS really good for laptops? Like so many things it depends on what you intend to do and what software you're going to use.
I use CentOS 8 on several laptops and it mostly works well. It may be missing some drivers you might need. If so, ELRepo is a good source for those. You definitely won't find the number of apps you do in Ubuntu's repositories and will need to go with third party repos. The best of them is EPEL, maintained by the Fedora project. You can leave both ELRepo and EPEL enabled to get updates as needed probably 99.8% of the time. The rare conflict can be avoided by setting repo priorities in dnf to insure official repos have precedence.
If you need to go to third party repos beyond that pull packages manually. Some repos conflict with each other or, on rare occasions, with CentOS packages. If you can stick with EPEL you avoid that.
One thing Ubuntu does that CentOS does not do is automatically download and install proprietary packages required by some hardware. For example, I use an Epson all in one printer/scanner/copier. I had to get drivers and apps directly from Epson's website and install them manually. The good news is that Epson provides rpms for Red Hat Enterprise Linux that work perfectly well with CentOS.
In my opinion CentOS is more difficult to setup and configure than Ubuntu on a typical laptop and to the find and install all the apps you want. However, if you do that work it's rock stable and reliable. It's also every bit as easy to keep up to date and secure as you will get notifications when updates and patches are available and can install them with a click.
I never recommend Fedora. I don't like being forced to upgrade the OS as a whole frequently. For me laptops are for getting things done, not tinkering. I've also had too many problems with packages being updated without the requisite dependencies causing breakage in Fedora. I recommend either CentOS or Ubuntu LTS for those reasons.
I haven't found any reasonably modern hardware on which I couldn't make CentOS work. The question is how much work does it take and how difficult is the process. That varies widely. One caveat: I've been working with Linux professionally since 1995. What's easy for me may not be easy for someone who has limited experience. Of course, for them, working through issues may be a great learning experience.
I have yet to have a clean install of CentOS on a laptop that requires no further action, including laptops by ASUS, HP, Lenovo, and Toshiba. That may be because of hardware or because of how I use my laptops. Usage patterns make a huge difference. In general, for most people, Ubuntu LTS is going to be easier to install, configure, and add software to than CentOS. Once installed both are stable, reliable, and reasonably easy to use. Both work well.
Showing posts with label Linux desktop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Linux desktop. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
Sunday, September 30, 2018
New version of Culmus (Hebrew) fonts released
For those of you who do some Hebrew computing, I received this from Maxim Iorsh on e-mail via the Culmus announce list. For those who don't know Culmus is an excellent set of Hebrew fonts that I've used on Linux for many years:
Many popular Linux distributions have Culmus packages in their repositories. Whether they update those packages during a release cycle and how quickly they adopt new version varies widely from distribution to distribution.
Friday, September 7, 2012
Linux on the Desktop: New Opportunities
Lately we’ve been treated to (or bombarded by) a slew of articles and blog posts proclaiming the failure and/or the death of Linux on the desktop. I could describe what I really think of these articles but my language would be a bit more colorful than would be appropriate. Suffice it to say it’s all bunk as far as I am concerned.
I have written about why I believe Linux remains under 10% of the desktop market: the lack of preloaded systems available in stores and the slow uptake of Linux on the enterprise desktop. The enterprise desktop is critical if Linux is to make progress on the consumer desktop without a presence in big box stores. People use what they know and like. If they use and like Linux at work they may well want to use it at home as well.
During my recent travels I had the opportunity to talk to a manager in a cash strapped part of government. Linux has been making inroads there not only on servers but also as a thin client solution. One high point of the discussion was when he showed me a magazine article, one I had already read, about how unsuitable Linux is for the desktop. He had read several articles like that one and had bought the oft repeated conclusion that Windows is still the only option for doing real work. Once again, it’s all bunk.
I was able to seize upon the opportunity, talking about my experience with Windows to Linux migrations I had seen in companies I have worked with. I also could point to a few large corporations that had made the change and had saved millions of dollars in the process. There is a real possibility I may be able to do a demonstration project using openSUSE. If that is successful it could lead to a significantly large enterprise migration, one I would get to participate in. This particular piece of government already has largely replaced Microsoft Office with OpenOffice so that’s one piece of the migration which would be simple for them.
Of course, if this did go forward, which is by no means a certainty, it would not be unique or in any way ground breaking. I’ve dealt with any number of companies and organizations that have done it already. Linux enterprise desktop penetration is still small, but there are some very large deployments out there. I’ve seen a few that have been absolutely successful in terms of lowering costs and increasing stability and security.
As anyone who reads the news knows, the economy in the U.S. is recovering slowly and the economy in much of Europe is back in recession. As businesses, governments and organizations look at ways to survive and even thrive in what is still a difficult financial climate it is very likely that Open Source solutions will get another serious look. If adoption grows in any meaningful way, even in a relatively small way, yet more consumers will be aware that there is an alternative to Windows out there, one which may well be superior for their particular needs. Once they’ve used Linux at the office, and perhaps Android (which is just a Linux distribution after all) on their phone or tablet, the fear of trying a different OS than Windows may be gone. The explosion of tablets and smartphones that generally don’t run Windows coupled with some expansion in corporate adoption may give Linux one perhaps final opportunity to gain traction on the consumer desktop as well.
I have written about why I believe Linux remains under 10% of the desktop market: the lack of preloaded systems available in stores and the slow uptake of Linux on the enterprise desktop. The enterprise desktop is critical if Linux is to make progress on the consumer desktop without a presence in big box stores. People use what they know and like. If they use and like Linux at work they may well want to use it at home as well.
During my recent travels I had the opportunity to talk to a manager in a cash strapped part of government. Linux has been making inroads there not only on servers but also as a thin client solution. One high point of the discussion was when he showed me a magazine article, one I had already read, about how unsuitable Linux is for the desktop. He had read several articles like that one and had bought the oft repeated conclusion that Windows is still the only option for doing real work. Once again, it’s all bunk.
I was able to seize upon the opportunity, talking about my experience with Windows to Linux migrations I had seen in companies I have worked with. I also could point to a few large corporations that had made the change and had saved millions of dollars in the process. There is a real possibility I may be able to do a demonstration project using openSUSE. If that is successful it could lead to a significantly large enterprise migration, one I would get to participate in. This particular piece of government already has largely replaced Microsoft Office with OpenOffice so that’s one piece of the migration which would be simple for them.
Of course, if this did go forward, which is by no means a certainty, it would not be unique or in any way ground breaking. I’ve dealt with any number of companies and organizations that have done it already. Linux enterprise desktop penetration is still small, but there are some very large deployments out there. I’ve seen a few that have been absolutely successful in terms of lowering costs and increasing stability and security.
As anyone who reads the news knows, the economy in the U.S. is recovering slowly and the economy in much of Europe is back in recession. As businesses, governments and organizations look at ways to survive and even thrive in what is still a difficult financial climate it is very likely that Open Source solutions will get another serious look. If adoption grows in any meaningful way, even in a relatively small way, yet more consumers will be aware that there is an alternative to Windows out there, one which may well be superior for their particular needs. Once they’ve used Linux at the office, and perhaps Android (which is just a Linux distribution after all) on their phone or tablet, the fear of trying a different OS than Windows may be gone. The explosion of tablets and smartphones that generally don’t run Windows coupled with some expansion in corporate adoption may give Linux one perhaps final opportunity to gain traction on the consumer desktop as well.
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