[Sussex] CentOS impressions & RPM mysteries

[Gavin Stevens]

Hi all,

I've had a couple of opportunities to look at CentOS on my Debian/CentOS
dual boot setup.

CentOS got good brownie points for installing nicely, but then Debian is
just as good at installing now, only not so pretty. The GUI on the
CentOS installer is really the only difference.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that CentOS might actually have
recognised the DVD/CD-R/RW as a writer drive instead of a CD-ROM. That
would be a first if it has.

One other difference between CentOS & Debian is that CentOS will run
Gnome at 1024x768 on my 850MHz "learning" machine, but Debian Sarge
would only do 800x600 in the same environment, so I binned Gnome on
Sarge & installed my old friend Icewm, thus regaining my preferred
resolution.

My one big stumbling block with CentOS is RPM. Every time I explore it I
give thanks for apt-get & Synaptic (& even a nostalgic thought for
dselect).

So far, I have managed to get RPM to show what I have installed in high
speed, whizz-up-the-screen mode. Now, even if I got it to display in a
more controlled way, I can only see limited usefulness in seeing what I
already have.

My big question - & a week of searching the web has produced little -
is: How do I get to see other available RPM packages that are not
installed?

Any help much appreciated.

TIA

Gavin.