Nice as desktop
Although CentOS is primarily a server - and now cloudy - OS it works very well on the desktop/laptop(*). The RHEL Beta/RC and lately the prerelease CentOS builds have worked almost without flaw on an old laptop.
EL7 marks a new departure in other possibly less welcome ways...
Redhat have previously chucked the source code on ftp.redhat.com as a series of srpms. Now the source is deployed via a git repository, in fact a whole collection of repositories, one for each of the 9000+ packages. If I have understood the situation correctly, updates to the source code will be pushed as commits to each of the git repositories. RedHat push the commits, CentOS (and anyone else) can get the modified code. The git account represents the only connection between RedHat and the rest of the EL food chain.
The CentOS team have written scripts to allow package source to be harvested and the time line of changes to each of the git repos to be tracked so others can establish what is pushed over the wall by RedHat. This means that the other EL clones (Scientific Linux, Springdale Linux and, well, yes, Oracle Linux) will have to assemble the code in the same way or use the CentOS binaries to build on...
...Scientific Linux (CERN) have already started working with CentOS
http://linux.web.cern.ch/linux/docs/Hepix-Spring-2014%20Next%20Linux%20version%20at%20CERN.pdf
Free software is developed in public, and the CentOS team are genuinely proud of buildlogs, seven.centos.org and the various exchanges on centos-devel with much more information available.
One of the slightly more entertaining moments for Reg readers may have been the 'professional discussion' around version numbering that took place on centos-devel. See
http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-devel/2014-June/010444.html
and the subsequent replies. I think there is enough of a narrative in that thread to keep a couple of sociology PhDs going for some time.
(*) You will need EPEL and the NuX Desktop (http://li.nux.ro/repos.html) repos enabled to get the usual codecs/video players going. You might need the Centos-Plus kernel to get wifi drivers for some older wifi cards. The stock kernel has been slimmed.
Pint: for all involved.