Containers! Containers! Containers! And RHEL 7.2. Employ as you wish

Red Hat closed 2015 with an update to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that bumps the venerable distro to version 7.2. That might sound innocuous but don't let the minor version number fool you, with huge leaps in software versions, a newfound love of all things cloud container and systemd updates under the hood, this is one of …

[Nate Amsden]

brings back memories

Seeing version 7 of RHEL reminds me of Red Hat 7 (non RHEL), and a big migration I did from that to RHEL 2.1 back in the day (I believe both were basically the same binaries at the time).

[TrevorH]

CentOS 7.2 "any day soon"

CentOS 7.2 has been out for more than a month.

[chasil]

Oracle Linux 7.2 is already available.

For free, with free patches.

Why wait for CentOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Oracle Linux 7.2 is already available.

Because Oracle are pricks.

[AdamWill]

nitpick - not 'fallback mode'

"That said, RHEL makes a compelling workstation, particularly if you like GNOME's fallback mode, which RHEL uses to make the desktop feel a bit more like GNOME 2.x. "

Nitpick - that's not a "fallback" mode. It doesn't have any lower graphical (or other) requirements than the regular mode. It's just an alternative UI for people who prefer a more Win98-style desktop. It's officially called "Classic mode".

Back in the early days of Shell there was a "fallback mode", which actually used the old GNOME 2 components (more or less) and was explicitly intended for hardware which couldn't handle Shell, but which some people forced in order to get a more old-style desktop. Classic mode is not fallback mode, they're different animals.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome

The only time Gnome will be exciting in RHEL, is when they drop it.

There are much better interface's around, with developers worthy of joining and contributing to. Gnome isn't one of them.

[batfastad]

Re: Gnome

+1

XFCE, Cinnamon, MATE are all better suited to being both a server desktop and a daily-use workstation desktop and would all be worthy defaults over Gnome 3 IMO.

[Richard Lloyd]

MATE desktop recommended

If you're coming from RHEL/CentOS 6 like I was, then I'd recommend the MATE desktop (yum groupinstall "MATE Desktop" then select MATE via the cogwheel icon you'll see when you're about to type your login password) for the smoothest transition to CentOS 7 - it's the closest look and feel you'll get to GNOME 2.

One slightly annoying thing recently - the latest MATE updates turned on the software compositing window manager by default without even asking me. This put annoying shadowing (on all 4 sides!) for windows/menus and an "exploding" task bar icon when you clicked on it. Luckily, you can turn it off via the main MATE menu -> System -> Preferences -> Look and Feel -> Windows -> General -> Compositing Manager (yep, pretty buried...).