The main difference is that CentOS is free. Users don't pay for or get their support from Red Hat--rather, they tap the community or one of the many consultancies out there offering support for a price, if they so choose.

Most CentOS users, however, are organizations that don't need a lot of outside help to use Linux successfully.

Full Support for Ext4

This latest version of CentOS, which was released on Friday, updates the distribution to reflect what's in RHEL 5.6, which was rolled out in January. Available for i386 and x86_64 architectures, the software includes packages for both server and client versions, and all upstream repositories have been combined into one.

Perhaps the biggest change in this new version is that the Ext4 file system is now incorporated as a fully supported standard, just as it is . Other improvements include updates to Bind, PHP and Python, to name just a few; a full list can be found in the for the distribution. The software's , meanwhile, provides details on how to get it.