How's it compare to ubuntu or fedora?

All of them are all most the same, CentOS uses recycled code made available to them from Red Hat, but Red Hat is not officially affiliated with them. Fedora is fully sponsored by Red Hat and it has the 2nd largest community after Unbuntu. But both Unbuntu and Fedora are affiliated with actual companies, Canonical for Unbuntu and Red Hat for Fedora unlike CentOS, which helps with updates and error management. I personally prefer Unbuntu because the community is larger and with my experience I had great error help from the community and because Ubuntu offers several different distributions like Kunbuntu and Xubuntu. But Linus Torvalds, author of the Linux kernel, says he uses Fedora. But it really doesn't matter because they have very similar characteristics. so basically CentOS is an independent fork of the Red Hat Linux?

I HEARD Ubuntu was one of the better linuxes if you wanted more of a GUI interface rather than having to use the terminal commands so much ....I'm fixing a laptop for my brother right now, and I decided to force him to LEARN linux by installing Linux Mint along side his XP. It seems pretty nice. It has a highly customized version of gnome, which makes it somewhat more unique looking than other distros that use standard desktop environments. Also it's based on ubuntu and supposedly one of the most user-friendly of distros along with pclinuxos.Quote from: 2x3i5x on January 06, 2010, 11:14:59 PM

so basically CentOS is an independent fork of the Red Hat Linux?

I heard Ubuntu was one of the better linuxes if you wanted more of a GUI interface rather than having to use the terminal commands so much ....

All the big distros have GUIs. Generally it comes down to KDE or Gnome. Ubuntu has go a reputation because it has been aimed at people who are used to Windows.

So Ubuntu would be the most windows-like linux distro out there?