CentOS isn’t all that friendly to standard desktop use, but it can be tamed. It has become my choice because once I get things working, I can pretty much expect it will continue working for the next couple of years, at least, with full security and bug-fixing support. Meanwhile, anything I build or add from outside the repositories will continue to work for just as long.
While I don’t really like Flash media junk, entirely too much of my interaction with people important to me requires I be able to run a Flash player. The Open Source projects — swf and gnash — just aren’t there, yet. I’m doing my best to keep everything 64-bit, especially multimedia stuff — better sound and better video quality. Not too long ago, Adobe released native 64-bit Flashplayer for Linux, so my excuses were gone. The tar.gz just opens to a single plugin file, and you have to make the appropriate symlinks yourself. I can handle that.
Firefox won’t use it. The about:plugins page shows it, and so does the Plugin Manager, but all I get is a blank spot in the webpage. So I decided to try Opera, which also recently released a full 64-bit version. Oddly, I’m not getting the spastic unexpected mouse gestures I complained about previously. What I am getting is a very smooth integration of Flashplayer in Opera. So for now, Opera has redeemed itself on my system.
