CentOS 5.0 LiveCD

The CentOS team released a liveCD based on version 5.0 on July 10. It's a 679MB download and was created so that a prospective user can test it on their hardware. It comes with enough applications that it could be used as a portable workstation as well.

After descending into the labrynth they call a boot menu, I gave up and just hit enter at the boot screen. The boot process locked up when trying to start the graphics on my Hewlett-Packard dv6105 laptop with NVIDIA Go 6150 graphics. I had a bit better luck on my desktop with an NVIDIA 6800 as the system didn't fully lock up. I was able to ctrl+alt+F2 and edit the xorg.conf file to start X. Afterwards, CentOS looked fairly attractive with a professional quality background and tidy desktop and menus.

The CentOS 5.0 liveCD ships with GNOME 2.16 and IceWM. In the menus one finds ample applications for basic tasks. For example for internet and communications we have Firefox and Thunderbird 1.5.0.10, gFTP, Gaim, Ekiga, and XChat. For graphics they have included gThumb, Xsane, and The GIMP. Server applications include php 5.16, MySQL 5.0, and Apache 2.2. Office tasks can be handled by OpenOffice.org 2.0 and Scribus. Multimedia apps are CDPlayer, K3b, Totem, and Sound Juicer. Some system tools include Baobab, Network Tools, NmapFE, QTParted, and Traceroute. Under the hood we have Linux 2.6.18-8, Xorg 7.1.1, and no GCC.

CentOS also ships with AIGLX and Compiz for those with graphics chips that are supported. NVIDIA owners won't be able to use it as neither the kernel source nor headers are included, and most of the booted system is read-only, precluding any hope of installing the NVIDIA 3D graphic drivers.

Hardware detection hit a sour note with me with its poor graphics detection and configuration. I found their boot menu very confusing even for an old Linux user like myself. There's no install option (that I could find) and given my luck with Anaconda, the installer is the main thing I'd like to test. Otherwise, it was fast performing and stable while providing a decent starter application stack to test. Some of the applications are quite long in the tooth, but the server apps are newer versions. All in all, I wasn't really impressed. For the Red Hat, Fedora, or CentOS fan, it might make a nice portable system. As far as newcomers, this liveCD will not likely result in new CentOS users.

from: distrowatch.com