What a shock - CentOS.

[coffee]

Probably about 2/3 years ago I made the big decision to drop out of Fedora land and move to Ubuntu. This quickly erroded with the Gnome3/Unity/spy-on-me issues and I landed at Linux Mint. Linux Mint was the shinning light at the end of a long tunnel. I have been sitting comfortably with it running my servers and workstations and laptops.

Now, I wanted to investigate a replacement for Exchange on Windows. The software in question is Ice Warp. But in order to install IW I had to be running either Redhat/CentOS, Debian or Ubuntu. Well, I still have a festering sore with Ubuntu. So that was not going to happen. I really was not too keen on Debian and besides my old time experience was Redhat. So, I decided on CentOS.

Anaconda. The installer app for Redhat/Fedora/CentOS and other smaller flavors. I was shocked. I thought I was back in the old days. Anaconda just seems poorly thought out and archaic at best. This installer looks like it hasnt improved in over 2/3 years. Its still a poorly thought out installer that actually helped me move away from such OS's that used it. Well, Then the gnome desktop loaded. Now, This alone would scare anyone away. My gosh! Iam back in the enlightenment desktop days! I used the basic DVD install of CentOS. Its not some pre-packaged server version. I took a gander thru the menus and programs are missing sections that evidently they felt needed to be removed. Looking at System Monitor there is no tab for information on your system - as an example. Oh, I am logged into CentOS with TV and evidently there is a locking screensaver but its not in the menus - lol! Incase anyone is interested, To get past the screen saver on it you have to swipe your mouse from bottom to top and then you can log in. Hey, Maybe I am logged into someones smart phone instead? lol...

Gnome Sucks.



I guess it takes something like this to make you really appreciate all the great work Clem and the developers have done with linux Mint.

 

[Markverhyden]

Yep, CentOS is not for the faint of heart. When I went to virtualize my email server, Axigen, I probably spent 8 hours trying to get it installed because of all of the dependencies. Could never get it to work properly. So I just moved back over to FC.

 

[myleso]

We currently use CentOS Linux for our web servers. They are all hosted remotely so I do everything from a command prompt. I have managed web servers for companies for several years and have never even seen a CentOS GUI. I have never had any problems with CentOS, it's great for web servers but I doubt I would consider it for the office. I started many years ago as a system admin for some Solaris machines so CentOS seems pretty simple in comparison.

 

[4ycr]

@myleso , I had CentOS for my freePBX on a local server and it still did not have a GUI but that might have been the one that came with freePBX. I was going to look at Zimbra for email hosting. Not looking to do it for clients just as a project.

 

[TAPtech]

Yeah I think CentOS is mainly used for servers. I use 6.7 for my webserver, and for PIAF setups.

 

[NETWizz]

Probably about 2/3 years ago I made the big decision to drop out of Fedora land and move to Ubuntu. This quickly erroded with the Gnome3/Unity/spy-on-me issues and I landed at Linux Mint. Linux Mint was the shinning light at the end of a long tunnel. I have been sitting comfortably with it running my servers and workstations and laptops.

Now, I wanted to investigate a replacement for Exchange on Windows. The software in question is Ice Warp. But in order to install IW I had to be running either Redhat/CentOS, Debian or Ubuntu. Well, I still have a festering sore with Ubuntu. So that was not going to happen. I really was not too keen on Debian and besides my old time experience was Redhat. So, I decided on CentOS.

Anaconda. The installer app for Redhat/Fedora/CentOS and other smaller flavors. I was shocked. I thought I was back in the old days. Anaconda just seems poorly thought out and archaic at best. This installer looks like it hasnt improved in over 2/3 years. Its still a poorly thought out installer that actually helped me move away from such OS's that used it. Well, Then the gnome desktop loaded. Now, This alone would scare anyone away. My gosh! Iam back in the enlightenment desktop days! I used the basic DVD install of CentOS. Its not some pre-packaged server version. I took a gander thru the menus and programs are missing sections that evidently they felt needed to be removed. Looking at System Monitor there is no tab for information on your system - as an example. Oh, I am logged into CentOS with TV and evidently there is a locking screensaver but its not in the menus - lol! Incase anyone is interested, To get past the screen saver on it you have to swipe your mouse from bottom to top and then you can log in. Hey, Maybe I am logged into someones smart phone instead? lol...

Gnome Sucks.



I guess it takes something like this to make you really appreciate all the great work Clem and the developers have done with linux Mint.

CentOS is fine for a server. In fact, it is more or less what you would want, IMO. That said, it is NOT at all ideal for a desktop.

Personally, I really like Gnome and Enlightenment... Used to use those back in like 2006 a LOT. That said, right now it is a toss-up between Cinnamon and Mate when I use a Linux system.

Oh, and I completely agree that Unity stinks. If you want something that has been out forever, KDE or GNOME. I started way back when with Mandrake (before it was Mandriva), and I ran KDE. Eventually, I ran XFCE... and Enlightnement.

At some point, I dumped Mandriva for Ubuntu, and ran with GNOME, Compiz/Beryl and had all that fancy fire, fish tank, and similar goofy desktop effects....

Got board with the desktop effects, and at some point Ubuntu came out packaged with Unity, and I pretty much simply went with Windows 7, 8, and 10 never looking back. Somewhere in the mix, one of my clients gave me a free 27" iMAC, which I am also enjoying... Fast forward... Bought a new house in late 2015, and I have a home-office the size of a Bedroom now!

I have an old, leftover computer with 16 GB of DDR3 and an old i7-2600k, /w some NVidia card in it... Thinking about getting another desk in my office and running Mint on it. What do you think?

 

[coffee]

I have an old, leftover computer with 16 GB of DDR3 and an old i7-2600k, /w some NVidia card in it... Thinking about getting another desk in my office and running Mint on it. What do you think?

Most definately agree on mint. Start with the mate desktop.

You can tell how good Mint is because of my rant that started this thread. I have Mint doing everything for me - even on my server. Its really great to work with and I dont mind donating the ram for the desktop. I use shorewall for my firewall. If you want to get into that I have the config files you can use as examples to get it up and running quickly.

coffee

 

[coffee]

Thanks everyone for the posts,

I think the problem is that I got so spoiled on using Mint for desktops and for a server that I just assumed other flavors would have improvements in their desktops also. Not the case.

I used Ubuntu server for a while and before that I did Fedora but the upgrade cycle leaves you updating in what seems a lot. So, I took Linux Mint and installed it on the server and added in what I needed - DHCP, DNS, NFS, SAMBA, Apache, and what not. Runs great of course.

 

[NJW]

I really was not too keen on Debian ...

Why not? It's the foundation of Ubuntu and Mint, so most of your experience with those two is transferable. Either install a DE (if you must ) or use Webmin for management if you don't want to use CLI for everything, though between mc, nano and apt-get most day-to-day stuff is really straightforward.

What's your upgrade strategy with Mint, bearing in mind that in-place upgrades are not officially supported?

I'd strongly recommend installing Debian in a VM, just to give it a try – you may be surprised. Oh, and with two or more machines, install aptcacher-ng somewhere on your LAN: a great time and bandwidth saver, guaranteed to put a smile on your face when the routine updates are downloaded at full LAN speed.

 

[coffee]

Why not? It's the foundation of Ubuntu and Mint, so most of your experience with those two is transferable. Either install a DE (if you must ) or use Webmin for management if you don't want to use CLI for everything, though between mc, nano and apt-get most day-to-day stuff is really straightforward.

What's your upgrade strategy with Mint, bearing in mind that in-place upgrades are not officially supported?

I'd strongly recommend installing Debian in a VM, just to give it a try – you may be surprised. Oh, and with two or more machines, install aptcacher-ng somewhere on your LAN: a great time and bandwidth saver, guaranteed to put a smile on your face when the routine updates are downloaded at full LAN speed.

Why not Debian? Because I became a spoiled little brat with Linux Mint. I got so used to modifying it to do all my needs and have a snappy desktop environment that I just assumed the other flavors would catch up.

One other thing, I was some how under the assumption that IceWarp ran in its own windows and not access thru a browser. Bearing that in mind I can fully see no using a desktop. The desktop would just be a waste of RAM. Its things like this that some software glosses over and tends to hide it in the print a bit. Anyways, I am up and running Icewarp on CentOS. I plan on doing a write up on IceWarp if anyone is interested.



"What's your upgrade strategy with Mint, bearing in mind that in-place upgrades are not officially supported?"

Not a particular fan of inplace upgrades. Some changes can in upgrades can be effected. Things like SAMBA configs, Apache and others. Not a very big issue for me and an operating system or software.

Thanks for the post

 

[NETWizz]

Ironically, I can now run Linux Software on Windows... Once you fire up the XORG server you can more or less run Linux software. Heck, even the Ubuntu repositories work.

 

[coffee]

Ironically, I can now run Linux Software on Windows... Once you fire up the XORG server you can more or less run Linux software. Heck, even the Ubuntu repositories work.

Kinda quietly, MS has added bash terminal support to Windows

 

[nlinecomputers]

Kinda quietly, MS has added bash terminal support to Windows

Which is really a vm running ubuntu.

 

[fencepost]

have never even seen a CentOS GUI.

This. We have phone systems and some other stuff running on CentOS, but I'm not sure any of it even has X installed. When I play around with desktop Linux occasionally it's generally Kubuntu, though next time around it'll probably be either FC or CentOS with KDE.

I was going to look at Zimbra for email hosting.

You might also look at Kolab, and efa-project as an almost drop-in email filter.

 

[coffee]

Nice feedback everyone - thankyou.

Since this is the slower season for me in the biz, I set out to tackle AD and Exchange. I just never had a strong foothold on them and need to get into it more. So, rewinding about a month ago I came across IceWarp. IceWarp is a direct replacement for Exchange. What intrigued me was that it can run on linux. Then I remembered hearing about SAMBA supporting Active Directory. Unfortunately, I got busy with service calls and it sat for a month. So, Now things are slow I was able to dig into this.

Just the other day I took a simple Dell dual core box and put 2 drives in it and setup a bootable RAID1 in it with centos. Then a bit of research into samba and I now have AD running thru SAMBA I then fired up my Win7 VM and logged into the domain I setup and BOOM. I was connected

Now, I will be playing with IceWarp and finally learning a lot more. In case anyone is interested here is the link to IW:

https://www.icewarp.com/

For me, It brings up some great possibilities in the server area. Of course there is going to be a lot of studying going on in the months ahead but its worth it to me.

 

[trevm999]

Time to ditch the GUI. Traditionally I'm a Ubuntu Server user, but I used CentOS for my last project and I was quite pleased.

 

[putz]

IceWarp is a direct replacement for Exchange. What intrigued me was that it can run on linux.

Don't take this the wrong way, but thats sort of like saying Google Email/Apps is a replacement for Exchange. Its not. It tries to replace it but it can never come close to providing the same functions that Exchange can natively to all client devices.

One of the few linux distro's that has native support for Exchange is Zentyal Server. It uses a piece of software called OpenChange. All these other linux apps that do mail, contact, and calendaring always need extra addons loaded on the client in order to sync all the extra data (everything other than email) back and forth between the client/server. Its just more garbage to have to deal with when I can just take any device that supports activesync and add my Exchange account info and have it sync all that out of the box.

check it out:

http://www.zentyal.org/server/

 

[MDD1963]

As Zentyal is based on recent Ubuntu releases but with simply a new web-based headless interface, one wonders if the same packages and functionality could be run with Ubuntu? (EDIT: their documentation says can be run on top of Ubuntu Server install) (Zentyal only claims to offer support for Outlook 2007/2010, which although nice, sort of leaves out the poor sods using Outlook 2013?)

Someone needs a good alternative to Exchange, given it's licensing expense for putting it on a decent server. (I think I crunched some truly outrageous hypothetical costs of for installing it on a quad socket 18-core Xeon?)

 

[trevm999]

I don't recommend Zenytal, the web interface is super buggy. I think it is better to install what you want (SAMBA, OpenChange) separately. Then you will also know something about what you just set up.

 

[NJW]

Not a particular fan of inplace upgrades. Some changes can in upgrades can be effected. Things like SAMBA configs, Apache and others.

You configure from scratch every time? My LAN Debian server installation is 10 years old and has had two in-place upgrades. I have changed the motherboard, migrated to RAID-1 for /home and an SSD for / during that time. Config file changes are flagged by the installer (the same as happens during updates, if the .conf changes) and you have the opportunity to stick with the old, change to the new or edit as you go.

I have approached each upgrade with trepidation and allowed a full weekend, but it has always (so far ...) been back in use in under two hours, start to finish. That's including a full image of the root drive (/home was imaged the day before – it's 2 GB). One of those upgrades included a change from sysv to systemd and from i386 to amd64. I did a test run in a VM before starting that one for real.