CentOS(RHEL) and Suse difference from Ubuntu and Debian

Basically all this systems are GNU/Linux systems.

The main difference from the point of desktop user is set of applications that already present on fresh install, default configuration of desktop (graphics and theme mainly) and kernel version used.

All these distributions support kernel upgrade (through update manager, and manually, through recompilation of kernel downloaded from kernel.org (but in different recommended way for this distro's; however, seems

make oldconfig; 
make all 

works on all distro's).

Main way of installing applications on the distributions is installing from packages.

Debian (with Knoppix) and Ubuntu are .deb-based distributions, where .deb is extension of package on these systems.

RedHat (CentOS, Fedora) and Suse are .rpm based distributions. Package extension is .rpm.

Also these systems support user-friendly layer for installing applications.

For .deb-based distro's main tool is apt (also different graphical front-ends used), and for .rpm based such tool is yum.

Both yum and apt provide similar functionality, such as installing, removing and searching for package.

Thats way, if you are migrating from .deb to .rpm – based system or from .rpm to .deb following matching for commands have to be considered:

RPM       DEB
--------------------
yum  <-> apt, apt*
rpm  <-> dpkg

Look into the man's for details.

If we consider applications packaged for distro's, traditionally, Debian has more opensource applications packaged and considered to be fast, however .rpm based distro's (as RedHat) has more Enterpise-Level applications (for example Sybase ASE database engine doesn't work on new Ubuntu's due to incompatibility in glibc).

Also, software for clustering, virtualization, logical volume group management is installed from box on CentOS5.1 with GUI and documentation.

However, watching movie or using some new cheap desktop hardware can be a problem on CentOs or RedHat, when on fresh Ubuntu it will work from Box.

There some .rpm-based desktop distributions like Ferdora, or Mandriva that repositories could be used for fresh drivers for video card or some other hardware. These distributions are more friendly on user side.

For my hardware, I use CentOS 5.1 for AMD64 desk (sometimes it works as home server), and Xubuntu's on my Laptops (eeePc, and 15.4 ' laptop from HP).

I was happy with my Xubuntu's and installed CentOS just to play with Sybase, and other enterprise-eevel products that are not supported by vendors for Debian (and Ubuntu).