CentOS 5.0 Review

First off, this review isn’t the easiest to do since I have tried so many other distributions before this one: Vector, Xubuntu 6.06 – 6.06.1, Ubuntu 6.06 – 7.10, Fedora 7, OpenSuSE 10.1 – 10.3, and now CentOS. Which if you count all of them up they add up to eleven!

Though I have used so many distributions I have been able to see the good and the bad in all of them. (good, bad)

CentOS was an easy install (1,0). However, I needed to add some kernel options (like noapic, pci=routeirq) to get the system to boot on my laptop (1,1). There were a few nice things that I noticed in this Linux distribution, including: ease of use (2,1), good graphics (3,1), and very good themes (4,1).

One weak point in CentOS is installing Nvidia drivers. I did the manual install from Nvidia and it took a while to find out how to stop X.org (4,2). Booting CentOS is a very slow process without the extra kernel options for my particular computer (4,3).

So far the score is 4 good and 3 bad.

Next on my list of things to talk about is the interface. The interface of CentOS is not unlike any other GNOME desktop. It is always customizable (5,3), easy to look at(6,3), and easy to use(7,3). I mean easy to look at since it doesn’t look boring at all (8,3). Customizable is always a good thing (9,3) and since it’s easy to use, it will be able to bring you the preferred feeling that you have customized it (10,3). The only thing is that the interface if you have used it for a long time without configuring it so that you like can become a little bit boring, (10,4) though if you look at it for a little while you can see that its really almost like the Ubuntu panels (11,4).

Now the score is 11 for good 4 for not so good. I will now rate the ease of use, customizability, and ease to look at: overall a 5/5 on ease of use, 5/5 on customizability, and **3/5** for how the desktop is on the eyes.

Over all the final score on the CentOS is a 24/30. This is exactly 80%.

** Please leave a comment if you wish to comment on the ease of use to look at it. I only gave it a 3/5 because I have used this structure before and I am going to have to change it. **