Submitted by Daniel de Kok (not verified) on Sun, 2008/05/18 - 17:03.
So my believe is that CentOS, RHEL, Ubuntu LTS and SLES are a much better fit for desktop and appliances in general because they do not require the same level as maintenance as most bleeding-edge distributions.
Exactly. Look at the main competition: one can install Windows or OS X once, and use it for many years. People want to surf, e-mail, and do word processing. They are not interested in the latest compiz or Rhythmbox, as long as it works well.
Though, I think there is one problem with the current enterprise distributions: the driver backports are server-oriented. You'll mostly see new drivers for NICs and disk controllers. The enterprise distributions do not work well with, say, the latest MacBook.
Of course, this is a gap that CentOS can partly fill through driver packages.
Still one problem
So my believe is that CentOS, RHEL, Ubuntu LTS and SLES are a much better fit for desktop and appliances in general because they do not require the same level as maintenance as most bleeding-edge distributions.
Exactly. Look at the main competition: one can install Windows or OS X once, and use it for many years. People want to surf, e-mail, and do word processing. They are not interested in the latest compiz or Rhythmbox, as long as it works well.
Though, I think there is one problem with the current enterprise distributions: the driver backports are server-oriented. You'll mostly see new drivers for NICs and disk controllers. The enterprise distributions do not work well with, say, the latest MacBook.
Of course, this is a gap that CentOS can partly fill through driver packages.