RedHat 6.2 - RSN

It seems that Redhat 6.2 will be out Real Soon Now - the mirrors (at least at metalab) are starting to get it. The main Redhat FTP doesn't have it yet - but it should be there in the next few hours... I think that the beta idea was a really good one (and I know lots of problems have been fixed since the beta was out - look at the rawhide directory in their FTP server). I hope other Linux distributions will follow RedHat with a public beta test before releasing a new version. (Thanks Udi for the info).

Comments

Actually we do release ISOs

[bero-rh]

Subject says it all - don't judge a new version by what is on a mirror that's not done downloading (the fact that it's publically accessible while in this state is a bug).

Once they're finished downloading, the iso will be at
ftp://metalab. unc.edu/pub/Linux/distributions/redhat/redhat-6.2/ iso.

Also, if you don't like it, let me know WHY (not that I'd agree). We're here to fix things.

XFree86 4.0

[bero-rh]

We're not including XFree86 4.0 because it's not ready.
It doesn't compile at all on sparc (we're currently working on fixing this), doesn't compile out of the box on alpha (we've already fixed that), doesn't have all the drivers 3.3.x used to have (fixing that is a LOT of work), it doesn't have a working configuration tool yet (XFree86 -configure is a start, but it won't let you configure international keyboards and such), and there are a bit too many bugs for a stable release even in the drivers that are there.

In short, it's not even ready for Raw Hide.
I have put up RPMs at
http://people.redhat.com/bero/experimen tal though, for those who have x86es and don't like waiting.

Re:features..?

[bero-rh]

It is almost only stuff you can actually benefit of; aside from bugfixes (which should be the most important stuff in this release):

• Networking packages (telnet, ftp, etc.) split up in client and server packages
  
• Kerberos authentication stuff, gnupg and netscape 128-bit included (now that the export restrictions are gone...)
  
• Software RAID optimized for Pentium III (optional)
  
• sysctl program that takes care of /proc/sys settings
  
• more secure default installation (fewer running daemons)
  
• compressed man pages
  
• New xinitrc layout (xinitrc.d) for better maintainability
  
• New font installations recognized automatically, no need to run mkfontdir etc. anymore; simply restart xfs
  
• ISDN support
  
• Autodetect and support up to 4 GB RAM
  
• Beowulf added, piranha extended
  
• vim preconfigured to support syntax highlighting and other fancy stuff
  
• colorized ls used by default
  
• Termcaps fixed up to be more consistent (Backspace, Delete, Home and End now do what you'd expect them to do everywhere)
  
• New packages: Mesa, sawmill, anacron, docbook, joystick, rpmlint, stylesheets
  
• Better internationalization support (16-bit display support; Netscape now speaks French, Spanish, German and Japanese)
  
• updated base packages to latest versions (unless they're too unstable)
  
• More than 100 new packages in powertools; among others abiword, SDL, glxMesa, nasm, postfix, powertweak
  
• Probably more stuff I forgot to mention
  

Explanations...(Some packages are really outdated)

[bero-rh]

Outdated packages:
In 6.x releases, one of the primary goals is to remain fully compatible with prior 6.x releases, therefore we usually won't update libraries with API and ABI changes, such as current readline, slang or tcl/tk.
Stuff that was built for 6.0 or 6.1 must be able to run on 6.2 without having to recompile, which is not possible with a change like readline 2.2.1->4.0.
The current versions are all in our internal development tree (which will become rawhide on Tuesday).
SVGALIB
Deprecated because it causes a lot of problems on some systems (try switching terminals from X to SVGALIB and vice versa on a Matrox G200 card, for example).
DOSEMU
We needed more space on the main CD for more important packages, so we moved some not-so-important packages like dosemu to powertools. This doesn't mean they aren't available or supported through bugzilla.
Versioning scheme
lynx-2.8.3-2 means it's the second version of a Red Hat Linux RPM containing a 2.8.3 release of lynx.
The -2 indicates changes to the .spec file used to build the RPMs.
Other packages
Diskspace issue; some of the packages you mentioned are in powertools, I'll check whether it makes sense to add the others to powertools as well.

Re:ssh as well?

[bero-rh]

"Thanks" to the RSA patent, we can't ship SSH or OpenSSL (which is required by OpenSSH).
We are building RPMs for it at Red Hat Germany (where there is no RSA patent) though; they can be downloaded at
ftp://ftp.redhat.de/pub/rh-addons/s ecurity/6.2.

We will include them as soon as the RSA patent expires (later this year).

Re:did raster piss you off that bad ?

[bero-rh]

It's not a lame excuse. I'm a developer, not a marketeer. The general idea is to include the version that makes most sense.

In our default setup, enlightenment is used only when GNOME is running. e 16 does not have many new features that make sense in that environment, but it is a lot bigger, so it makes this environment slower on low-memory machines.

Including the Qt beta makes sense because almost nothing uses Qt 2.0, but some interesting stuff uses Qt 2.1 (which is compatible with everything 2.0 did).

If this were for political reasons, 'rm -f enlightenment*; sed -e "s,enlightenment,sawmill,g" $CONFIG_FILES' would be a much more consistent decision (so that would be what we would have done).

Re:Why not delay this some more?

[bero-rh]

That all will be in 7.0; check rawhide once the current version has been pushed on the ftp servers.

It's impossible to adapt to these changes that quickly without releasing a totally buggy distribution.

We're almost ready for Kernel 2.4 (2.3.99 is in the tree that will soon be rawhide), but I'd rather not expect 2.4.0 to be the most stable release we've seen, waiting for 2.4.5 or something before releasing a distribution that has to be 100% stable probably makes sense; XFree86 will definitely take a while because it needs fixing up (works ok on x86, but not on anything else), Xconfigurator and the X configuration part of the installer need to be almost rewritten, ...

By the time XFree86 4.0 has been patched enough to actually do something useful and kernel 2.4 has stabilized, it's time for the next Red Hat Linux release anyway...