CentOS

Hello All,

I'm planning to build a new machine that will be running CentOS6. The machine will work 24/7 as a home server and MythTV backend - it's not business critical, but relatively high availability is still appreciated. At first I was going to wait for Intel's Ivy Bridge CPUs and 77-series chipsets to be released, I like the low-power 3770T or 3770S CPUs and "native" USB3.0 support in the chipset... But then I thought there may be issues with support of these in current CentOS. I don't mind installing some more packages from a repository, or even compiling a driver by myself (if the process is documented). But I wouldn't want to get in a situation where current CentOS doesn't work at all and I have to wait for a next release, like CentOS7, or use other distribution like Fedora to get it running... (I have no problem about Fedora - I use it now on my current server, but it gets old way too soon for me, therefore I'm looking towards CentOS).

What would more experienced people say about this? Shall I wait 2-3 months and get something fresh, or shall I go for the current Sandy Bridge? Waiting time is not the main factor in this case.

An Enterprise Linux release will, by design, never be as current in supporting new hardware as a bleeding edge distro such as Fedora. As Sandy Bridge support has just recently been solidifying on EL6-based distros, I would avoid bleeding edge hardware and go with current generation.

Ok, thanks for the answer!

I completely understand what you're saying, but just out of curiosity: is recent CentOS release likely not to boot up at all on a bleeding edge hardware (Ivy Bridge in particular), or are there chances that it will work - perhaps, with some limitations?

I never tried to run any Linux on a very new HW, therefore I ask... I understand that Fedora has more chances to have it running, but ... well, we're in CentOS forum and I wonder how CentOS is likely to behave in this situation...

Again, this is just a theoretical question at the moment... :)

After reading a result or two from a google on [url=http://www.google.com/search?q=Intel+Ivy+Bridge+Linux+Kernel&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a]Intel Ivy Bridge Linux Kernel[/url] my guess is that support will be pretty good with 3.2 kernels and later drivers, but native EL6 support will probably be a while coming.

Running `rpm -q --changelog kernel | grep -i "\bivy"` on a fully updated CentOS 6 box shows that there have been some changes integrated into the RH kernel already to support it. However I have no idea which video driver the embedded graphics chip uses and the same command against xorg-x11-drv-intel shows no such mention... but it doesn't list Sandy Bridge either so this is not conclusive.

I should have said - [url=http://elrepo.org/tiki/mesa]ELRepo Mesa[/url] and [url=http://elrepo.org/tiki/xorg-x11-drv-intel]xorg-x11-drv-intel[/url] will track the Intel drivers as long as they can be made to work with EL6 kernels. I suppose [url=http://elrepo.org/tiki/kernel-ml]kernel-ml[/url] compatible versions might be considered, but are not currently offered or AFAIK planned.

Sounds quite promising - at least for those who isn't looking for a perfectly stable system right out of the box.

Thanks a lot for your answers! :-)

Sorry to hijack the thread, but I'm also planning to build a number of Ivybridge systems based around Intel Z77 chipset and Core i7 3770 CPU's for use with CentOS 5.

I'm using Adaptec 5805 RAID cards and Intel NICs so I'm not worried about SATA driver support or network support, will the this be a usable/stable setup or am I best using older hardware?

I suspect you will have a problem if you really do intend to use [i]CentOS 5[/i]. If you are set on using that version of the OS, then using older (and proven to work) hardware would be prudent.

Please open a thread of your own, in the [i]CentOS 5[/i] section of the fora, if you wish to discuss this matter further. Provide a link to this thread for context, if required.