The CentOS Development Team has released CentOS 4.0 (Beta) for three architectures (i386, x86_64, and ia64).
CentOS 4 (Beta) is a rebuild of Red Hat, Inc.’s Enterprise Linux 4.0-Beta2 Source RPMS that conforms fully with Red Hat’s trademark and redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS mainly changes RHEL packages to remove RedHat branding and artwork.)
For more information about CentOS 4.0 (Beta), see the official release announcements for each architecture:
CentOS-4.0(Beta)-i386
CentOS-4.0(Beta)-x86_64
CentOS-4.0(Beta)-ia64
This is a good thing. It seems to be along the lines of White Box Linux, another RHEL redist. http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/. Compiled from source, having removed Redhat-specific info.
Does this new release fix the infamous USB malloc() bug that plagued the previous releases?
Personally, it caused me much grief with my USB webcam.
Chuck-
Whitebox is no more, more or less. Look at the message on the WBEL homepage — Donavan has joined forces with CentOS as far as I can tell. If this is the case, it’s great all around. CentOS is a very good alternative for people who want a stable redhat-like distro, but cannot afford the redhat support fees. Whitebox was very good as well, but the updates were few and far between.
This is the official Whitebox site
Whitebox Enterprise Linux
Founder: John Morris
Web: http://whiteboxlinux.org
The Donovan you are talking about is Donovan Nelson, registrant of http://whiteboxlinux.net, which is a different site that is not affiliated with whiteboxlinux.org.
I was just getting ready to ditch whitebox on one of my test servers and install centos. Whitebox updates just don’t come out fast enough for me. My question is what are the centos guys basing this beta on? Did they get the RHEL 4 beta source rpm’s and use those to come up with this beta release? I looked around there site but couldn’t find any info on this beta.
All the hard work the cent OS guys did to build us such a stable innovative OS, Id love to donate, but id rather just get centOS and call it nocents-OS.
Yes, I am not a fan of making a carbon copy and trying to get donations from it.. a fork is great, but this is just a rebuild.. hell, did they even code the tools to make the rebuild or just wget rhat/downloads/srpms/* then rpmbuild -ba the whole thing..
It’s within the word of the GPL just tastes alittle sour to me is all. I see RedHat created a heap of tools the last couple years which are now thrown in all ‘desktop’ distros like Ubunto (hijack this thread too please?) Yet RedHat doesn’t get the credit it deserves for the whole utopia thing, hal, dbus, selinux. All this new work they did is just coming to RHEL and they may not even get a decent profit from it because of these ‘free’ distro’s just copy everything. Yet they say RedHat just survives off free software.. One company has hundreds of employees working around the clock on quality software, company B has 4 employees who supply bug fixes on the weekends if they’re not doing anything.
> Did they get the RHEL 4 beta source rpm’s and use those to come up with this beta release?
Yes. Red Hat did the hard work :
http://www.redhat.com/archives/nahant-beta-list/2004-November/msg00…
Perhaps they use “yet another GPL software” from Red Hat.
Application Build Environment ;
http://www.redhat.com/archives/nahant-beta-list/2005-January/msg000…
I disagree. W/o even plunging into a GPL discussion, all the centos guys are asking for is money to cover hosting and bandwidth. It’s not like they are going to get rich for a few dollars a pop, and it’s just a request, not a demand. FWIW, rhel and fedora are full of all kinds of stuff redhat had nothing to do with as well — this is how OSS is supposed to work.
<sarcasm>
Who in the hell do the Red Hat people think they are doing? They package KDE in their system and yet provide very little back to the KDE team. I mean, what are they thinking, taking code released under the GPL and redistributing it? That is NOT!!! what the GPL was designed for! And that bloody Novell, I don’t see them contributing much to Nvu but they bundle it with their system. Hello people, free software wasn’t designed for you to redistribute it!
</sarcasm>
If anyone is wondering why I posted this, I am just showing Bitterman how stupid he sounds.
Uhm, they’re contributing to the community, and they’re doing so under the GPL. I think we have to assume that their intention is for their improvements to be adopted everywhere it would be fitting. If that’s not their intention, then is this really the sort of company, as a freedom loving community, we want to be supporting?
As for people releasing free distributions around the Red Hat sources, they submitted to this when they decided to build their operating system on GPL’d software. Honestly, the vast majority of the source isn’t anything they’ve written, and the people who did deliberately released it under a free license. Why should Red Hat be able to use this code for their own gain, when the original developer likely isn’t getting jack, and then tell the people the developer developed it for that they can’t have it anymore?
I do not have problems with other distro’s packaging software, of course thats what its all about. But I think a company that dumps every R&D penny into OSS software should be a higher priority for us OSS users, we should be standing in line to help this company out instead they are ridiculed for not being more free, or cheaper or not ‘stable’ enough or having too good of a kernel. I think redhat is entitled a decent return on their investment. Something like delaying a CENT OS release for 6 months I would find ‘moral’. Not releasing them both the same week its just like uploading divx for a movie the week it comes out except, its not some crappy copy nobody wants, its an exact copy minus commercials.
redhat does what it wants to do (ie) provide srpms and not an ISO image which is still free software and sells subscriptions
centos does fill in a gap by adding several things
(ie) adding extra repository for software not available in RHEL, providing single cd server software for use in data centers and so on. so its just not immmoral to modify and use free software. go find something else to whine about
Adding an extra repository?
Go find a better point to back your argument.
What did they do add a dag’s line to the yum config?
I still stand by my statement that these guys do nothing other than blatant RIP of someone elses work then ask for donations, the audacity.. Fork it, do something, don’t just take RedHats RPM’s every 18 months and ask to be paid for it. Now they offer ‘commercial support’ This isn’t some starving programmer its obviously a money making scheme off someone elses name and products.
Based on your understanding … REDHAT stole KDE, OpenOffice, and GNOME’s hard work …
You obviously don’t understand how open source software and the GPL work.
RedHat has a distrubution policy … and RedHat releases the Source, with specific reditrubution requirements. They do so because they want to give back to OpenSource software.
There are many benefits that RedHat gets from this as well … people who need support are going to continue to use RedHat EL.
People who initally start on CentOS will move to RHEL when they need support.
AND CentOS routinely submits to RedHat bugs and other issues that are encountered with the packages, and even submits patches to fix problems.
Personally, I would like to thank RedHat for releasing their source code and for their redistrubution policy, so that we can make CentOS available to the community.
“I still stand by my statement that these guys do nothing other than blatant RIP of someone elses work then ask for donations, the audacity.. Fork it, do something, don’t just take RedHats RPM’s every 18 months and ask to be paid for it. Now they offer ‘commercial support’ This isn’t some starving programmer its obviously a money making scheme off someone elses name and products.”
And, BTW, you are an idiot as well…
CentOS is absolutely Free … if someone chooses to donate, they may do so. If they don’t want to, great.
The whole purpose of CentOS is to be exactly compatible with RHEL … so that people can use it to develope and test products for deployment on a RHEL system.
Bitterman – If it is so easy to do … you rebuild the RedHat sources and produce the ISOs and send me a link to bitterman OS so I can check your work …
I wanted to build a community site around whiteboxlinux.net which I registered in good faith, built a website, and offered to run and maintain it. The good folks at the library don’t want a community around whitebox linux, they want to maintain control over the flow of whitebox information. Fair enough I guess.
I’m bitter, yes, it shows at times. Nothing I can do about it. Whitebox had a chance to be THE rebuild project. That’s not what whitebox linux is about. It’s about having enough users (AKA beta testers) to ensure that updates/new versions don’t blow up the libraries computer systems.
I’ve pretty much left whiteboxlinux.net on auto pilot, usually answering questions about wbel and/or the website as they arrive via contact the webmaster.
The CentOS people and Caosity Foundation have accepted my contributions to CentOS with open arms (in most cases). The current notice on the front page of whiteboxlinux.net offers my honest thoughts on WBEL and merely provides an option for WBEL users who feel they need more timely security updates or like to talk to the developers.
For anyone who doubts the CentOS project’s intentions … please see this interview:
http://www.linuxtimes.net/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=40…