CentOS Operating Systems

CentOS is a community-supported, freely-available operating system based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It exists to provide a free enterprise class computing platform and strives to maintain 100% binary compatibility with its upstream distribution. CentOS stands for Community ENTerprise Operating System.

• Pros: Extremely well-tested, stable and reliable; free to download and use; comes with 5-years of free security updates; prompt releases and security updates

• Cons: Lacks latest Linux technologies; by the time of release, most software packages are outdated

• Software package management: YUM graphical and command line utility using RPM packages

• Available editions: Installation DVDs and installable live CDs (with GNOME) for i386 and x86_64 processors; older versions (3.x and 4.x) also available for Alpha, IA64 and IBM z-series (s390, s390x) processors.

• Other RHEL clones and CentOS-based distributions: Scientific Linux, SME Server, StartCom Enterprise Linux, Fermi Linux, Rocks Cluster Distribution, Oracle Enterprise Linux