> OK ... this is silly
>
> CentOS is an Enterprise distro and works great as a workstation. In
> fact, it is just as good as Ubuntu for a desktop. I would argue that a
> stable, supported for several year desktop is much better than a distro
> that upgrades every 6 months.

I've been starting to ascribe to your opinion.

For several years now, I've used CentOS on my servers and fedora on my
laptop and desktop computer.
However, F6 and onwards have been a bit flaky to install, with myriad
little things going wrong which needed some TLC which no beginner could
possibly do.
And just last month when I went to install F8 on my laptop since F7 was
EOL, the darned thing consistently segfaulted, despite the media passing
OK, and my laptop being a bog-standard 4 year old HP corporate
centrino-powered which is certified RH3-compatible. The only way I could
do it was via the LiveCD :/
And then I had lots of little things going wrong on the install like
vital rpms not being installed by yum which I had to do by hand since
yum refused to even acknowledge they were available. :-X
In 6 months time I'll have to do it all again to install F9 which by
many accounts is a POS, freezing up for several minutes at a time for no
apparent reason.
So IMO, having used Fedora since about FC3, stability is getting worse -
each version is more and more on the bleeding edge, too unpolished, too
unfinished - definitely not suitable for beginners unless they have
someone to hold their hand and pick up the pieces.

Ubuntu has its own problems. While it is slightly less cutting-edge than
F9 and thus easier to install, the forums are huge and unwieldy. Every
problem that one can possibly have, has already been answered by 100,000
+ people in 10,000+ threads. The noobs outnumber the proficient users by
100 to 1, so finding the right solution to your problem is a real
challenge in that 95% (my estimate) of the answers are wrong. So you'll
spend a lot of time doing (and undoing) the advice given and
backtracking from dead-ends.

In stark contrast, this list has one of the highest signal-to-noise
ratios I have ever encountered, and the standard of contributors makes
me feel inadequate :/
However, IMO, CentOS is still slightly too old to be used on a modern
laptop, but probably fine for use on a desktop where standby and power
conservation is less important.
Stability of CentOS is outstanding, but still not perfect - I remember
one problem from last year when I was using CentOS on a desktop and
Evolution refused to start after an update. It needed a small tweak
which was supplied on-list. But this problem came from upstream so also
affected RedHat.

FWIW, I don't know what version of NetworkManager that CentOS uses, but
the one used by F8 not only doesn't require wpa-supplicant to connect
via WPA/WPA2 but many 'puters (such as my laptop) don't even need the
network service running, since NW is now managing wired connections as
well as wireless. It even integrates with OpenVPN now, although I am yet
to try this.

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D Steward wrote:

OK ... this is silly

CentOS is an Enterprise distro and works great as a workstation. In
fact, it is just as good as Ubuntu for a desktop. I would argue that a
stable, supported for several year desktop is much better than a distro
that upgrades every 6 months.



I've been starting to ascribe to your opinion.

For several years now, I've used CentOS on my servers and fedora on my
laptop and desktop computer.
However, F6 and onwards have been a bit flaky to install, with myriad
little things going wrong which needed some TLC which no beginner could
possibly do.
And just last month when I went to install F8 on my laptop since F7 was
EOL, the darned thing consistently segfaulted, despite the media passing
OK, and my laptop being a bog-standard 4 year old HP corporate
centrino-powered which is certified RH3-compatible. The only way I could
do it was via the LiveCD :/
And then I had lots of little things going wrong on the install like
vital rpms not being installed by yum which I had to do by hand since
yum refused to even acknowledge they were available. :-X
In 6 months time I'll have to do it all again to install F9 which by
many accounts is a POS, freezing up for several minutes at a time for no
apparent reason.
So IMO, having used Fedora since about FC3, stability is getting worse -
each version is more and more on the bleeding edge, too unpolished, too
unfinished - definitely not suitable for beginners unless they have
someone to hold their hand and pick up the pieces.

Ubuntu has its own problems. While it is slightly less cutting-edge than
F9 and thus easier to install, the forums are huge and unwieldy. Every
problem that one can possibly have, has already been answered by 100,000
+ people in 10,000+ threads. The noobs outnumber the proficient users by
100 to 1, so finding the right solution to your problem is a real
challenge in that 95% (my estimate) of the answers are wrong. So you'll
spend a lot of time doing (and undoing) the advice given and
backtracking from dead-ends.

In stark contrast, this list has one of the highest signal-to-noise
ratios I have ever encountered, and the standard of contributors makes
me feel inadequate :/
However, IMO, CentOS is still slightly too old to be used on a modern
laptop, but probably fine for use on a desktop where standby and power
conservation is less important.
Stability of CentOS is outstanding, but still not perfect - I remember
one problem from last year when I was using CentOS on a desktop and
Evolution refused to start after an update. It needed a small tweak
which was supplied on-list. But this problem came from upstream so also
affected RedHat.

FWIW, I don't know what version of NetworkManager that CentOS uses, but
the one used by F8 not only doesn't require wpa-supplicant to connect
via WPA/WPA2 but many 'puters (such as my laptop) don't even need the
network service running, since NW is now managing wired connections as
well as wireless. It even integrates with OpenVPN now, although I am yet
to try this.

_______________________________________________
CentOS mailing list
CentOS@centos.org
http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos

I agree with both posters 100% [especially about the Ubuntu Forums -
sometimes bigger isn't always better :-) ]
I started using linux with Red Hat 6.2 and I stayed w/ Fedora until
around FC3, and that's when things started going downhill. I ended up
being the classical distro-hopper for some time trying to find what
would work for me, and I ended up using CentOS on my desktop
workstation, and I use a small lesser-known distro called Foresight
Linux on my Laptop - it's very up-to-date, has a unique and wonderful
package manager and is far more stable than either Fedora or Ubuntu.


That combination works very well for me.
_______________________________________________
CentOS mailing list
CentOS@centos.org
http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos

I need to test 6* web sites for use with slow
internet connections, eg dial up,ISDN, GPRS wireless, etc

Are there any Fedora 16 apps
that would provide testing and reports please?

Thanks

Roger




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Roger wrote:

I need to test 6 web sites for use with slow internet connections, eg dial
up,ISDN, GPRS wireless, etc
Are there any Fedora 16 apps that would provide testing and reports please?

What exactly are you testing _for_? Do you just mean are they up, or are they
compromised, or penetration test? Or are you checking response time or ??? If
you want to know if they're usable on dialup to a large extent that's a human
judgement, and little trick to make a site feel faster make a huge difference.


People can give you better answers if you ask a better question. :-)

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the machinations of the wicked." - from Slashdot
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On 05/14/2012 12:53 AM, Bill Davidsen wrote:

Roger wrote:
I need to test 6 web sites for use with slow internet connections, eg
dial

up,ISDN, GPRS wireless, etc
Are there any Fedora 16 apps that would provide testing and reports
please?


What exactly are you testing _for_? Do you just mean are they up, or
are they compromised, or penetration test? Or are you checking
response time or ??? If you want to know if they're usable on dialup
to a large extent that's a human judgement, and little trick to make a
site feel faster make a huge difference.


People can give you better answers if you ask a better question. :-)



I have been asked to test whether sites we are building with Drupal 7
will load rapidly, and what the response time may be for each page when
accessed with a minimal or older style computer which is on dial up,
etc, possibly with less than optimal copper to exchanges and homes, etc.

Currently the sites are in test phase, not live.
Where there are images on the site, these are few and minimal, 72dpi and
not larger than 300px square, most are on or below 150kb in size.


I have built functional html/css sites in the past and have a basic
understanding of how to construct a site that loads and responds under
those conditions but have no idea whether Drupal/php provides similar
load times for pages.


Under the rule, Cheap, Fast Reliable, choose any two, I would also like
to test conditions with possibly less than reliable and/or cheap isps
I'm volunteering my time and resources, so I wondered whether there was
a test app or some method that I could use rather than go and purchase
an old computer and some dial up time which would be useless after the
sites go live.


Thanks
Roger

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On Mon, 2012-05-14 at 09:28 +1000, Roger wrote:
> I have been asked to test whether sites we are building with Drupal 7
> will load rapidly, and what the response time may be for each page
> when accessed with a minimal or older style computer which is on dial
> up, etc, possibly with less than optimal copper to exchanges and
> homes, etc. Currently the sites are in test phase, not live.
> Where there are images on the site, these are few and minimal, 72dpi
> and not larger than 300px square, most are on or below 150kb in size.
>
> I have built functional html/css sites in the past and have a basic
> understanding of how to construct a site that loads and responds under
> those conditions but have no idea whether Drupal/php provides similar
> load times for pages.

You've hit the nail on the head with regards to the usual culprits
(number of graphics on the page, and filesize of them). Usually they
have more of an effect on low-speed browsing than whatever generated the
page. Unless your dynamic generator has to do a lot of negotiation back
and forth to render a page; or your server is overloaded, then all
browsers get a slow experience.

There are throttling options for proxy servers, like Squid, so you could
try browsing through it (when throttled) to see a slower network
response. But that's not really a true test, slow networks have latency
issues, too, not just slower throughput. There probably are some
on-line tests for slow browsing. You could possibly see how it goes
browsing through one of those anonymising servers, as an external
throttler to your experience.

These days, you also test how a site will work on someone's mobile
phone. Since they're becoming more common, and they bring their own set
of problems. Whenever someone shows off their new phone toy to me, I
always have a bash at my own website on it. Horrid things, though. You
really need a magnifying glass and a tiny pointing stick to use them...

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On 05/13/2012 07:28 PM, Roger wrote:
> I have been asked to test whether sites we are building with Drupal 7
> will load rapidly, and what the response time may be for each page when
> accessed with a minimal or older style computer which is on dial up,

You can use "trickle" and/or "wget" to perform the tests. Check this out:

http://www.tuxradar.com/content/control-your-bandwidth-trickle

HTH,
Jorge
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Tim wrote:
> There are throttling options for proxy servers, like Squid, so you could
> try browsing through it (when throttled) to see a slower network
> response. But that's not really a true test, slow networks have latency
> issues, too, not just slower throughput.

You could have a look at
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/networking/netem#Emulating_wide_area_network_delays
which tells you how to emulate all sorts of networking problems with a
filter built right into the Fedora kernel and a one-line root command.

(This came in really handy demonstrating why a UK-based website with
lots of reasonably small graphics was slow when Australians were looking
at it…)

Tip: don’t forget to replace eth0 with whatever your network device is
called these days.

Hope this helps,

James.

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