From Ubuntu to CentOS

January 21, 2014

[ UPDATED: JANURAY 2016 — I have since abandoned CentOS and moved back to Ubuntu. CentOS caused massive issues when rebuilding my site that required me to reinstall with Ubuntu. All the issues immediately went away (RSS, WP Permissions, Caching, etc.). I recommend if you’re doing a LEMP stack you stay with Ubuntu as of 2016. ]

After around five years on Ubuntu I’m moving to CentOS.

It’s bittersweet.

I develop a relationship with every distro I spend time with. Gentoo, for example, will always conjure fond memories for me. I ran it as my first long-time server OS for around seven years.

Then I went to Ubuntu, and it’s been grand. I can’t say much bad about the platform or the community. I just feel like it’s time to move on.

Reasons

Like leaving a lover, one owes an explanation.

  1. I’m an IT professional, not just a hobbyist. Enterprises don’t use Ubuntu. They use Redhat, and Redhat is very similar to CentOS.

  2. I feel like I’m fighting inevitability with respect to adoption, unification, and standards. I think Redhat is going to win, and if I’m going to know one distro inside and out, I want it to be the one that’s most commonly used.

  3. While the Ubuntu community is good, I’ve found recently that the CentOS community is even better. I think it is due to reasons 1 and 2.

In brief, Redhat/CentOS is the professional’s Linux distro, and that’s where I think I need to be.

Notes

  1. For a breakdown of how CentOS compares to Fedora and Redhat, check out this resource I put together a while back.

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