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Does anyone here have experience installing and using Centros or Scientific.

I am currently using LMDE xfce 2012.

But I getting ready to learn those two distros.

Any comments or advice would be appreciated.

I had Scientific Linux 6 running here for awhile last year. The package management seemed kinda tricky because you have to be careful about using different repos together. Nice distro if "stable" is a priority.

What is meant by "stable"?

I mean is stability mean that the OS doesn't crash?

Or what are examples of OSs that are "unstable"?

Stable generally means software that has been tested through-and-through and has stood the test of time on production servers. There are very little known problems with it, and generally security is good. The downside of having something be stable is that it has been tested for a long time. That means all the flashy new versions of Firefox for example, you won't get for a long time and you are stuck on older versions of everything.

Stable is a good word if you are a conservative user or running a production server. If you are a enthusiast user, stable equals boringly old and outdated (IMHO ).

Also I think that SL is like Debian Stable in that you won't see many package upgrades, which might mean less potential for breakage. With Debian Stable, all you get is security updates. Not sure if that's the case with Scientific, but things move slowly there, too.

animaguy wrote:Does anyone here have experience installing and using Centros or Scientific....

CentOS or SL:
If you know yum, you're good to go.
If you know rpm, you're good to go.

Any Debian-flavor:
If you know apt-get, you're good to go.

When considering a Desktop Distribution Change, I'd stick with the package-manger you already know.
But if you are interested in learning more, that would be a journey best taken in a VM.

As a general rule, I wouldn't use CentOS for any desktop machine.

Habitual wrote:As a general rule, I wouldn't use CentOS for any desktop machine.

Why would you not use CentOS on a desktop?

Would CentOS make a good OS for a server?

Does anyone have an opinion as to what purposes CentOS is best suited for?

animaguy wrote:

Habitual wrote:As a general rule, I wouldn't use CentOS for any desktop machine.

Why would you not use CentOS on a desktop?

It's a better Server than desktop.

animaguy wrote:Would CentOS make a good OS for a server?

animaguy wrote:Does anyone have an opinion as to what purposes CentOS is best suited for?

See above reply.

CentOS rocks because it is very stable and represents the C in Community very well.

centos 6.2 is awsome running it now! its easy to install and configure. this is a good write up on it here. http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/centos-6-2-ssd.html