The folks over at CentOS released v5.2 on Tuesday June 24, 2008. I’ve been running six different HP Proliant DL360s over the past 24 months acting as a public WiFi Hotspot portal servers. The solution has been met all my expectations and almost manages itself entirely (I still need to apply patches and security updates). CentOS 5.2 adds the same functionality that RHEL 5.2 adds including the latest virtualization support. If you’re looking for a Linux distribution for that brand new server hardware and you don’t have the budget to afford RedHat then CentOS is for you. CentOS is essentially a clone of RedHat Enterprise Linux compiled from the RHEL source files provided under GPL licensing terms. If you’re looking for a Linux distribution to run on that brand new laptop/desktop then I don’t think CentOS if for you. I would probably suggest Ubuntu as a solution for any laptop/desktop.
Just visit the current Mirrors list to start downloading today.
Note: Just be warned that if your running CentOS v5.0 or v5.1 you will be upgraded to CentOS v5.2 if you issue a “yum update“. I believe the release notes indicate you need to issue a “yum upgrade” in order to upgrade but that wasn’t my experience.
Cheers!
Hello, I want to install CentOs5 in a laptop.
It has to be a laptop, because I want to show it running when visiting the clients.
The laptop acts as a server and it needs RHELv5 (or CentOS5) because of the software it runs. I think Lenovo ThinkPad T61 is the best option (and almost the unique one), but do you know if it can run in other laptop with a cheaper price ( ThinkPad T42 for example ).
Thanks for your time. Hope not to bother you so much.
Hi Mitch,
I honestly can’t tell you what specific Lenovo ThinkPad models will run with CentOS v5.2. I’m sure there are other resources on the net that could probably reveal that answer. At any rate I would be surprised if it didn’t work. You might have issues with the some of the hardware that might require some special tweaking (eg. graphics drivers, wireless drivers).
I did a quick Google and found the following reference on the CentOS Wiki; http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Laptops/IBM/Thinkpad-T42p
You could also set up the laptop to dual boot between say Windows XP and CentOS. Or you could use a desktop virtualization solution such as VirtualBox (free) from Sun to run CentOS within Windows XP.
Thanks for the comment and Good Luck!