The structure and the content could both use improvement. If you have a question about how/where to find something please ask in a fresh topic.

Thank you, Phil.
I don't know about having a thick skin...
Still, i don't feel there would be a need of very large, much less fast changes.
I'd be glad to help, but mostly in the navigational issues i mentioned.
The data is available, and the 'structuality' is of course something that can be thought of in many different ways.
Actually i was 'talking' about a 'perceived structurality': the where i am and to what page should i go to find help with my problem/need,
issue.

The ministrations of a journalist could benefit the Wiki and other parts of the CentOS domain. Contributions are welcome, but fair warning - a thick skin is a prerequisite, as is a large helping of patience.

I would feel this is a 'navigation' issue. I would agree that the structure of the centos site is not the best possible.
However, i have not had much problem to find the information i have needed.
Of course, my needs have been very simple.
And my journalism background and the character of a mule have helped, too.
But there seems to be two problems.
1. The information is not really in a 'structural' order.
2. If it were, there is no guarantee people read it anyway.

(again my 2cents, hoping there would be at least some use of my posts.)

Welcome to the CentOS fora. Please see the recommended reading for new users linked in my signature.

I don't know who you define as insiders, but most of the core developers don't usually hang out on the fora, and nobody has control of how the media portrays CentOS. I agree (and don't miss an opportunity to say) that CentOS is fine for the desktop. It is my OS choice pretty much across the board, for work (well RHEL comes in there too) and home servers, scientific/engineering workstation, desktop/office/email/Internet, and multimedia.

Here is my three cents worth since I have three points...

1) I have to agree on the documentation issue. Since I'm not a system admin in any form, some type of straight up "Centos 6.2 Handbook" link would have been nice. The Wiki is admirable, but some of us aren't computer folks for a living and I'm man enough to admit that a little "hand holding" by you experts is downright helpful sometimes.

2) This Centos thing can't be too hard. I only found Centos 6.2 due to a little spontaneous anger. After using Ubuntu and Xubuntu for about eight months, I decided to get on the porch with the big dogs and install Debian on my Acer laptop. I attempted two different "testing" iso installs and one LiveCD install and all three failed. I immediately decided to divorce the .deb side of the family and, since I still wanted the concept of "stable," I thought I'd give Centos a look. Wireless, printing, and fonts were all perfect after five minutes and I realized I had found a new home.

3) This third point is a side note for all you Centos "insiders." I know that enterprise is in the name, but you guys are doing yourself a huge disfavor by allowing the linux media to classify Centos again and again in the news as a distro for servers. I do not have a home server, and I'm new enough at this that I don't even know how or why I would even want a server. I do run Centos 6.2 on a laptop and it seems to be pretty darn good enough for my non-server needs. With a little exploration on search engines on adding Times New Roman for my son's schoolwork, flash for Youtube, and three or four other extras, I am good to go. I think Centos kicks some rear end as an awesome non-server machine. I am even shocked on how many games this thing came with by default and I didn't know that marrying Gnome and KDE programs was even a choice before. You insider types are hurting yourself by not getting the word out that Centos can be great for non-servers with just a slight amount of work. I, for one, plan on doing my part to let some people know... Thanks, folks.

You are welcome.

Got it. Thanks pschaff. I saw those there (dvd1.iso, dvd2.iso) but didn't realise that is what they are.

Not sure where you ended up as what you provided is not a valid URL, but the Mirrors page has options that will lead you to the ISO directories. For instance on the European Mirrors (Countries N-Z) page one can find the United Kingdom entries and a mirror such as UK Mirror Service - Univ. Kent which, drilling down a few levels under the HTTP link, in turn has CentOS-6.2-i386-bin-DVD1.iso.

As this thread contained no CentOS-6 question to start with, and is wandering around in hijack territory, I'm going to follow the earlier suggestion that it should be moved to Social.

Thank you for the hint pschaff. But Where is the installation media? All the links that I see in www.centos.org>Downloads>Mirrors>CentOS>Public Mirror List pont to live CD's or live DVD's.

Quote:
When I know what I am doing I will try to contribute - promise. But, as you see from the above I am just an ignoramus and all I would do at present is confuse everyone.

I will bear you comments about threads in mind as well.

Your aggressive blanking of the disk was unnecessary. A fresh install will reuse all Linux partition space and format all partitions created, unless you explicitly prevent it from doing so, and will optionally overwrite all partitions. If you just want to start with an apparently clean disk then "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX count=64" [X in a b c d ...] will blank the partition table instantly.

The iX86/x86_32/IA-32 (32-bit) architecture, usually just labeled i386 will have both i386 and i686 (occasionally i486 and i586) packages. The AMD64/x86_64/Intel64 (64-bit) architecture will have x86_64 packages, unless the install is multi-arch (mixed 32 and 64-bit) in which case it may have any or all of the above.

If you want control over the installation use the installation media and not the live media. With CentOS-6 LiveCD/DVD you just get exactly what is on the live media installed to disk. Earlier releases are not installable from the live media. I suspect the screensaver is also due to the use of live media. If help is needed on getting the installed system working, then please ask about that in a fresh topic.

As far as documentation, if the upstream docs and the Wiki are not sufficient, then anyone is invited to Contribute improvements.

ManConan has my sympathy.

I am not a sys admin, just a regular desktop user. And a very inexperienced one at that. I have a working 5.7 setup that I was given lot of help with when it was started (5.4) but Samba is not set up properly so I cannot see all of my my old Windows files. As I have acquired a spare machine I thought that I would go for a clean install of 6.2 and play with that. Ran Killdisk to write zeros over the entire disk to ensure it was clean – there is only one 239 GB disk and 2 GB of memory in the box . So a visit to www.centos.org>Downloads>Mirrors>CentOS Public Mirror List. I then made the mistake of clicking on the mirror name and spent some time looking around for the download page. When I eventually went back to the list I realised that I should have gone to one of the HTTP, FTP or RSYNC links. My limited knowledge told me use FTP so followed the links throught to the list of available downloads. Opted for a i386 live CD. Having downloaded and checked the MD5 sum burnt it of to disk. Great.

When I booted the spare m/c up with the disk I was dismayed to find that there was no separate Verify disk disk option. Only Verify and run. I had wanted to verify the disk integrity then go straight to the install option but had to fiddle around with the Verify and run which takes ages. Got there eventually then went straight for the install option. It was quick, 20 minutes or so as I had accepted all the default options apart from location and language. I found the use of a screen saver every five minutes most off-putting during an installation; an odd choice. But, at the end when it said 'congratulations. I was offered just one choice 'Finnish'. So I clicked on it. The screen went black and stayed black for the next hour. I was unable to use mouse or keyboard so eventually just powered off the machine. Very poor. Not even any advice about removing the installation media. During the installation process there had not been any options to choose what software I wanted to have installed. ManConan is correct. Documentation is VERY hard to find, at least on the Centos site. When you can find it, via search engines as well as forums, it is frequently undated an often does not say which version it is relevant too.

To cap it all, I ran yum update after installation and all it pulled down were i686 packages. I had the 386 disk. I checked.

Blaming others is like a Pavlov reflex for the incompetent.

What was it Dirty Harry said?
A man's got to know his limitations.

I guess this belongs more in Social than in Support, by the way.
Should the mods agree, can you please move it?

My first impression is you're a moron.

If as you postulate, it's CentOS's problem for not providing enough hand holding, how do you explain the millions of successful installs?

Google has zillions of page hits for CentOS setup/config/howto articles - was google broke the day you tried to install CentOS.

I find it hard to believe that someone with your vast next gen development experience couldn't figure out which ISO to download. And isn't coding all about persistence, and focus, and attention to details - you seem more focused on whining, then figuring it out.

Next time buy a pre-configured server - you're not cut out to do even the most basic of SysAdmin tasks.

I have had the best success using the live cd install.

If you want to install Tomcat on Centos 6 Try: http://newpush.com/2011/10/how-to-install-tomcat-6-on-rhel-6-or-centos-6/ (about a 10 second Google search)

Also try googling: "install centos 6" You will find videos that show you how to do it step by step.

Centos is designed to be "plug-compatible" with the upstream vendor, so if you can't find your way around RHEL, you won't be able to figure out Centos.

BTW, Centos staff are all volunteer, so making insulting remarks in your posts for help doesn't make anyone want to help you.

How about checking out the Wiki: http://wiki.centos.org/ ?

First I'd like to say "hi" I am a system developer with over 15 years in programming and I work in some pretty next gen environments so I was unhappy to learn just how little simple information this website has.

Let me be clear I have wasted a WHOLE morning trying to install a simple apache tomcat install and I litterally CANNOT do this because I cannot get centos to install. So I am leaving this OS behind. Here is why

My first impression is:

- There is currently NO documentation for version 6.2. This is weak. I eventually found a forum post saying it's the same as red hat 6 but it's still FAR too hard to find. just a stub link at a url that said *go here* would have been fine. The general upshot of this makes me wonder how it's maintained from a admin point of view. Sorry. But it does.
- I had ZERO idea of which one of about 30 download files I needed. a dump of a directory is NOT sufficient. there really is no harm in doing an index.html page with links and explanations on the mirror sites. Very bad form. But even if you have no choice the folder structure was awful. I pulled down the 32 bit liveCD.iso (because it was top most and the biggest iso) and assumed it would let me install fully (NO WRONG, it also SAYS NOTHING about not being a full install it just "runs" so it's very counter intuitive, I was expecting to ask me root/disk options and then blam it had installed.. oh wait it's KNOPPIX! Dohh! Grrrr what a waste of life!) so then I did the network.iso install verison and assumed it would let me pull down all the stuff via the web -- DRRRR wrong another waste of life it just refused pointblank to work so balls to that.. so then I download the 3rd minimal install.iso which I know I don't want I want a "full" install.
- but once the minimal.iso install downloads will it bollhooks let me upgrade the "minimal" install to include a desktop gui.. No it won't...
- no guides
- no how to's
- no idea where to go
- no help in documentation
- false positives everywhere (red herrings of paintime wasteage EVERYWHERE)
- why why why why why why whyy make it so hard? There is obviously ONE REAL CENT OS that is the daddy that is the one "everyone" is using.. I just couldn't find it... Is it my fault? No I gave it 4 hours so, no not really, why make a mess of everything. All it takes is a blurb about thing snot just some lame "CTRL-V that*is*the*mirror" site structure. Please please please try to make it easy for people who HAVEN'T used your OS before...