CentOS vs ClearOS

[Nikolai D.]

Hi guys,

Im quite if using Fedora and CentOS already. And a new collegue of me started to talk about Zentyal. So i was wondering whats that for something. Wouldnt it be some king of CentOS. After some littlebit of searching ive found that there is ClearOS to. Kind of same but closer to CentOS then the other one. p.s. The collegue prefers Debian. But i honestly dont care alot. I was also using ubuntu for view years but after i discovered Redhat documentation on CentOS website. About installing any kind of server on CenotOS i tough. Whatever then i use this one. And i also wondered for some time to what would be so different about redhat and debian and wanted to try out. So whatever.

But now i wonder, whats the point of ClearOS compared to CentoOS. I mean:
1) Can i install all the same desired functionality that ClearOS offers on lets say CentOS or my Fedora workstation?
2) Is it then just kind of pre configured and bundled together already for you in ClearOS to make it a littlebit easyer, right?

Would like to get some explanation. Maybe about Zentyal vs ClearOS (or/and Debian vs CentOS) as of 2010 (or 2011).

Thanks in advance,
Nikolai

[hunter067]

Difference between ClearOS and CentOS? ClearOS is sort of security distro that serves as a firewall and features no desktop. CentOS is essentially Redhat Linux, but without the technical support. To contrast, they are both based on Redhat.

[bbfuller]

Hello Nikolai D.

I use one ClearOS machine here and I also have used CentOS in the past.

CentOS is a general purpose distribution very much like an older version of Fedora or the 5.xx series of Redhat. You can make it do anything, but once you have the desktop you have to configure it to provide network shares, web servers etc.

ClearOS is, I think, based on CentOS, but it is intended to be a server/security distribution. hunter067 is correct as far as he goes, however ClearOS comes with a web based interface that takes a bit if getting used to, but is aimed at providing:

Local DNS/DHCP server
Web Server
Mail Servers
Gateway
Network Firewall
FTP shares
Windows/Samba shares - that can of course also be accessed by Linux.
Many other things.

You get to specify how many of those services are installed and running with a few mouse clicks and, at least basic, configuration is laid out for you.

You wouldn't use it as a desktop machine though. That defeats the object of the exercise.

[Nikolai D.]

Thanks for the replys guys,

I mean,
basicly, why would i want to use ClearOS if i can install all the same functionality on CentOS?
Is it because of webinterface and a view less clicks?

Nikolai

[bbfuller]

If you want to set up a server just once and use it a a learning exercise then maybe you wouldn't want to use ClearOS.

If you want to do it several times you might appreciate all the help you can get.

After all, you can buy kits of parts to make cars, but most of us don't bother in that particular case.

[Nikolai D.]

Hi bbfuller,

Thats not that im against it. ClearOS all around out of the box server, kind of. Even opposite. I quite like the idea. Why would i need to set it all part by part on CentOS, if i can have it all gathered together. It's just that i wanted to clarify that i am clearly understanding the situation.
Your analogy clarifyed it i think.

Thanks,
Nikolai

[steelaworkn]

ClearOS actually installs very fast and has a lot of uses. It is pretty powerful. I think the best use of it would be to give it its own dedicated machine and let it run as the firewall/internet gateway/router/ and then run your web/email server from it. It can be remotely accessed from any where in the world. Actually you always remotely access it.

The question is, can a person something like a home "cloud" from it? That would be cool.

[bbfuller]

Hello Nikolai D.

Just a heads up if you do decide to use ClearOS.

Although it is powerful, and takes a lot of the drudge out of creating a server, it does have its oddities. Though that's no different to most Linux distributions.

Just to give an example, if you create a new user in Clear OS and then log out and try to use that identity you won't get anywhere. What the documentation doesn't appear to say is that you can restrict users by which of the configuration pages they see. By default a user gets to see no configuration pages. Once you have created a user, you have to access a menu item from a completely different menu to define those.

Once you've got over the hurdle that for most things you want to enable/configure, you have to set options in two places it works very well.