eWEEK Labs Puts CentOS 5.3 Through Its Paces
by Jason Brooks
Virtualization Focus
Many of the enhancements in CentOS 5.3 focus on virtualization.
Spartan Tool Set
As with the Xen implementation that ships with Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, CentOS offers a more Spartan feature set compared with purpose-built virtualization products such as VMware’s ESX Server.
Paravirtualization or Full
I was able to roll out new, fully virtualized Linux or Windows guest instances very easily, as well as install Linux guests in higher-performance paravirtualized mode.
SystemTap
I was able to use SystemTap, a Linux answer to Sun’s DTrace, to generate disk and CPU utilization information and pipe that data to Gnuplot to visualize the information.
Desktop Use
CentOS 5.3 can also work well in a desktop role, although the software packages that ship with CentOS trail those that ship with the faster-moving Fedora and Ubuntu Linux by a couple of years on average.
