作为一个团体，CentOS是一个开源软件贡献者和用户的社区。典型的CentOS用户包括这样一些组织和个人，他们并不需要专门的商业支持就能开展成功的业务。CentOS是Red Hat Enterprise Linux的100%兼容的重新组建，并完全符合Red Hat的再发行要求。CentOS面向那些需要企业级操作系统稳定性的人们，而且并不涉及认证和支持方面的开销。
Patrice Guay has announced the release of CentOS 5.1 live CD: "The CentOS Development team is pleased to announce the availability of the CentOS 5.1 i386 live CD. This CD is based on our CentOS 5.1 i386 distribution. We used the tools from the Fedora livecd-tools project to create the CentOS 5.1 live CD image. It can be used as a workstation, with the following software: OpenOffice.org 2.0.4, Firefox 1.5.0.12, Thunderbird 1.5.0.12, Pidgin 2.0.2, Scribus 1.3.3.2, XChat 2.6.6, K3b 0.12.17, GIMP 2.2.13. It can also be used as a rescue CD with the following tools: Memtest86+ 1.65, full set of LVM and RAID command line tools, QTParted, Nmap and NMapFE, traceroute, Samba 3.0.25b with CIFS kernel support to connect to Windows file shares, System Log Viewer, GUI Hardware Device Manager." See the release announcement and release notes for further information. Download: CentOS-5.1-i386-LiveCD.iso (687MB, SHA1, torrent).

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