Re:A little too much?
by
Jon+Peterson
·
· Score: 3
Shovelware
Shovelware is a bad thing, and it's a whole lot worse when you start shoveling server apps. It means that:
1. People run software that is not a best-fit because it works and it happens to be on the CD.
2. People run software that they don't understand and might be unsecure simply because it's there.
I can't think of anything worse than pre-installing Apache as a default web server. It's very big, very complicated and probably unecessary. Next you'll be telling me that the OS uses it to display help files or run some CGI based configuration utility.
This simply re-inforces my notion that someone REALLY should split a Linux distro into server, workstation and home user builds. If you want to shovel on 20 different CD-player apps so the desktop user can choose the one with the most eye-candy that's just fine but for God's sake I wish they'd stop doing it with daemons.
If I'm building a server, whatever OS it is, I do not want anything but the most essential (syslog, etc) services installed for me. I don't even want to have to de-select them on a setup screen. Actually I don't even want a setup screen - I want to build servers from my own install server over the network ala Solaris Jumpstart.
We all made/make fun of MS for building a Server with a GUI - hell most Linux distro's ship SEVERAL GUIs these days. Sure you can take them off but as a server admin why the hell should I spend hours removing garbage from distributions?
I used to work with Linux all the time, but now that I work with Solaris I can't say I miss it much. I'd rather spend time adding gcc, bash and friends to a Solaris box than removing Python and stuff from a Red Hat box.
It's easy to keep track of what you add, where you add it and when. It's very hard to keep track of what you've forgotten to remove because you don't know where it was put in the first place.
I tell you, the first distro that stops arsing about with 3D graphics support and actually fixes NFS* and creates a nice automatic network install system will get my support.
*Unless they've fixed NFS in Linux already - used to be a big weak point when I used it.
-- -----.sig: file not found
Typical. Just typical.
by
Mr.+Neutron
·
· Score: 3
I'm a desktop support guy (and CS major) for Professional and Technical Education in the IT department at the University of Wisconsin. They decided to let me teach a class, which begins tomorrow. The class is on installing and configuring Red Hat Linux.
Version 6.1.
--
-- dinner: it's what's for beer
Re:Typical. Just typical.
by
Bad+Mojo
·
· Score: 4
As a teacher, and important lesson you have the chance to teach is "A greater version number does not make a product greater."
Get your students to leave their MS centric ideas at home and concentrate on running good software that gets upgraded for a reason.
Maybe you can end the class with doing an upgrade to 6.2 and showing how easy it can be?
Just some ideas from a teacher-wanna-be.
Bad Mojo
-- Bad Mojo "If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
Well, according to their website, it now includes apache and sendmail... isn't that revolutionary?:-)
I realise that you are speaking with tongue in cheek, but this point is worth making anyway:
To us? Of course this isn't revolutionary. You must remember, however, that both Apache and Sendmail have been receiving a lot of press at the moment (at least, they have in the journals I am subscribed to). It would appear that RH are ensuring that 6.2 will be noticed by those PHBs who have heard of Apache and Sendmail - "Hey, Linux, Apache *AND* Sendmail in one package - must try that".
The thing which interests me though is the partionless installation - I can't seem to find any details about that. What is it? Why does the cynic in me think it just means it sorts out all your partitions for you, but that they still exist?
Anyways, a new Linux release is always good for the community, so raise your glasses ladies and gentlemen.....
- Encryption now included! Now that the US more closely resembles a free country, all versions of Red Hat Linux include:
o Kerberos authentication for mutt, pine, fetchmail, cvs, and imap. In addition, the following kerberos-aware versions of the following clients have been added:
o Kerboros network clients included for rlogin, rsh, telnet, ftp in krb5-workstation package
o GNOME-based Kerberos configuration tools added
o GNU Privacy Guard (gpg) included
o Netscape with 128-bit encryption included
Ok, what did I miss? Was there legislation that was passed that totally opened up the encryption issue, or did Redhat get licensing from the commerse dept. for these products? I thought things like 128-bit Netscape were still illegal to export. If not, this is great news! Someone please fill me in.;)
The partitionless install means that you don't have to partition your system for ext2 - it installs to a big file in a FAT partition via loopback. It's mostly for people who want to try Linux without the risk of repartitioning their system.
Once again Microsoft has demonstrated their superiority in software development and versioning. How could Linux possibly compete against Microsoft when their consumer operating system is version 98 and their server operating system is all the way to to 2000.
With that many versions, they probably don't have any bugs left at all !!! To think people would actually waste their time fixing all the bugs in a 6.2 release. Even Mandrake and Slackware are only up to 7.0.
And Enlightenment, they're not even up to version 1.0 yet! There's probably not even any code to run.
You Linux folks never cease to amaze me.
WARNING - THE PRECEDING POST IS AN ATTEMPT AT HUMOR. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO FLAMEBAIT IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.
Re:Red Hat 6.2 Officially Released
by
KaosDG
·
· Score: 3
Am I the only one that noticed that this is a Haiku?
Very nice. Creative. 8-)
-- "Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear, Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair...
Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy was he?"
Binary compatibility. Stuff compiled on 6.2 is supposed to run on prior 6.x releases, which is not the case if we had updated gcc (c++ changes). gcc 2.95.3 (or whatever is current by then, maybe 2.96, maybe 3.0) will be in 7.0.
-- This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
Debian Backspace Guidelines
by
Michael+Duggan
·
· Score: 3
Something/. posters seems to forget is that *NOT* everyone has (free an unlimited) Internet Access. Some haven't even access. Those pitiful lamers who can't afford huge phone bills (another thing most/. aren't aware: there are countries on the world where local communications aren't free (as in costless)). These guys need a CD (or about 2 or 3 kg of floppies) to install the nearly-latest version of the softs they uses.
And another advantages of a distro is that (if the distromaker do properly his job) new versions of all utils on the system (it's sometimes boring to consult 87-or-more homepages to look for a new version of something to install).
Well, you see, you're wrong. Red Hat, debian, slackware, and others have contributed lots of code and typically hire developers to work on products. Red Hat has been a big supporter of gnome, among other things. At the very least they've done lots of good work on install programs. Have you ever tried installing Linux using a cross-compiler? Not fun. Try downloading all the sources and using an NT cross-compiler and see if you can build a linux system. It's non-trivial to say the least. Much easier to install Red Hat, Slackware, or any other distribution.
Yup.... played with it last night. They moved all the.rpm and.src.rpm files that are only documentation (gimp-manual, howto, rhl-ig, etc.)off of the main CDs, and onto the docs CD. They also have unpacked versions of all the files so you can jujst broese it off the CD rather than install it.
Given the size of gimp-manual I think this is a good idea.
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 08:45:54 -0500 (EST) From: Erik Troan Reply-To: zoot-list@redhat.com To: redhat-announce-list@redhat.com, COLA submissions Subject: Red Hat Linux 6.2 (Zoot) now available! Resent-Date: 27 Mar 2000 13:46:45 -0000 Resent-From: redhat-announce-list@redhat.com Resent-cc: recipient list not shown: ;
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Red Hat is happy to announce the immediate availability of Red Hat Linux 6.2, Zoot, for the ia32 and SPARC platforms (Alpha is coming, really), with support for French, German, Spanish, and Italian.
You can get your hands on Zoot in many different ways:
1. ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/redhat-6.2 2. Order one of our many boxed set editions from www.redhat.com (shipping April 10) 3. Buy it at a retail outlet (available April 10) 4. Download from one of our many mirror sites. The following mirrors are known to be complete:
For help with this release of Red Hat Linux, subscribe to the Zoot mailing list by sending a message with a subject of "subscribe" to zoot-list-request@redhat.com, or buy a Red Hat Linux boxed set and take advantage of our support department.
The Zoot development team wishes to thank all of the developers who contributed to this release, our beta testers, and everyone who reported a bug or made a feature request.
Here's a (partial) list of new features in Zoot:
- The system can now be installed onto a loopback file on a FAT filesystem. This allows users to install Red Hat Linux onto an existing partition rather then having to repartition their system.
- The upgrade process recognizes Linux RAID arrays.
- Better rescue mode on CD and NFS, allowing improved disaster recovery.
- Networking services have had their client and server components split into separate packages to improve sysadmin flexibility.
- Pentium III support for improved performance
- Workstation installs no longer install networking daemons
- Many system daemons turned off by default
- MesaGL now included
- All man pages gzip'd
- Added support for/etc/X11/xinitrc/xinitrd.d for X startup logic
- Piranha clustering updates
o web based GUI config o 2-node service failover support o generic service monitoring/loadblancing o tunneling and direct routing support for IPVS
- Beowulf-style clustering added
o PVM 3.4.3 (Parallel Virtual Machine) o LAM 6.3.1 (MPI library environment) o make-pvm (PVM aware version of GNU make) o (Please note that mpich-1.2.0 is now part of PowerTools for Red Hat Linux 6.2.)
- Automatic support for up to 4 gigabytes of RAM
- ISDN configuration utility added
- Encryption now included! Now that the US more closely resembles a free country, all versions of Red Hat Linux include:
o Kerberos authentication for mutt, pine, fetchmail, cvs, and imap. In addition, the following kerberos-aware versions of the following clients have been added:
o Kerboros network clients included for rlogin, rsh, telnet, ftp in krb5-workstation package
o GNOME-based Kerberos configuration tools added
o GNU Privacy Guard (gpg) included
o Netscape with 128-bit encryption included
- More beauteous vim included --/usr/bin/vim supports syntax color and langauge-based indention
- anacron used for many system jobs
- termcap, terminfo, and various terms have been modified to support the Debian Backspace Guidelines for Backspace and Delete, as well as to make Home and End work consistently
- DocBook support included
- Colorized ls by default (remove/etc/profile.d/colorls.* to disable)
Red Hat 6.2 Officially Released
by
a+poor+scribbler
·
· Score: 4
Red Hat 6.2: Not playing the version game With Mandrake. Hooray.
Re:Why is this exciting?
by
Chuck+Milam
·
· Score: 5
If I want to upgrade something on my system, I download the source, compile it and install (I hate RPM's). Why wait several months to install all the fixes in one go, when you could have fixed them many weeks before?
Because not everyone is running a single-user system with the time to waste in the "search, download, tweak, compile, repeat" process. Those of us who use Linux as a tool (not a toy) enjoy the idea of being able to drop in a CD and have a relatively up-to-date system without the hassle of having to do it by hand. In a university environment, where good help is almost impossible to find, CD distros and RPMS are a life-saver:
It's a lot easier for me to say to a student assistant: "Upgrade the gcc RPMs on the Computer Science cluster" rather than "Download the GCC tarball, and compile it? What's that? Configure options? Here...do this. Hmm--dependecy problems. Ok, you fix it this way... Another question? Ok, here, I'll just have to do it myself, since we needed this done last week."
Also, RPMs are great for ansering the "what the heck is that file doing there?" question.
When I only had my home Linux box to play with, I used to be a "source tarball, compile your own is the only way!" guy. Then I started using Linux at work. There's a big difference when you have to manage multiple machines and users. Suddenly, RPMs don't seem so bad at all...
Frankly I'm a little sick and tired of some of the people that have just started using Linux, Ya, I know I should be kind and helpful and all that, and I will be helpful and kind, I'm ready to answer any questions I can, to help somebody get a solid understanding of linux and how it works, etc, etc, etc, etc, to my point...
There seems to be a group of you, and I think I know who you are... You've been using Linux for about a year, maybe eighteen months... You probably dual boot or have a Lose98 machine handy.. You pretend to know a lot about linux , You talk a lot when it comes to linux and boast how great it is, how it can do everything and anything, Well except for StarCraft and Quicken... and then you go on to bash RedHat, you know all the profane variations of the Redhat name (redhate, deadrat, rudehat, etc, probbaly another 80 or 90 that I dont know aobut yet).. you continually blast it for being Insecure, full of bugs, unstable, etc etc etc etc, stop repeating what other people say, think for yourself for once...
Let me tell you knuckleheads something, before you go Bashing RedHat, and its a very good distro, yes, even Linus Torvalds uses Redhat (wow, he must be some Lamer dude eh ? ) the Security issue, Okay, two things here, I'll grant you the latitude to bash redhat for their default inetd.conf configuration (its a bit Strange).. But you've got to learn to tidy those things up, if you dont, You aren't worthy to administer a Linux box, Sorry guys thats the way it is. 2nd thing with security, RedHat has probably the best support when it comes to bug/exploit fixes for their rpms, just check their errata page every week to see if something new has popped up (or get on the mailing list, it'll send you mail when a Security Alert has been issued)...
ya, okay, then you go ahead and say "HEY LOOK AT ALL THOSE BUG FIXES ON REDHATS ERRATA, THEIR DISTRO MUST BE FULL OF BUGS AND EXPLOITS !!!!!" I've heard crap very similar to this many times.. Okay you knuckleheads, First of all, when somebody discovers a bufferoverflow in SSH or whatever package you can think up, MANY MANY TIMES it is not distro specific, in english, that means IT AFFECTS ALL Distributions, "OH MY GAWD, DEBIAN IS TAINTED !!! BUT ITS THE PERFECT DISTRO !!! ONLY REAL HACKERS USE DEBIAN!!!!!" (Debian is a great distro, good work you guys, not trying to put you down or anything here)..
Oh, I almost forgot Redhat is the next Microsoft of Linux, how many times have I heard that from you schmucks lately , ohh, lots. I dont have to sit here and prove that it cant happen, I'll be wasting my time, because I know it cant.
The Linux community has Benefitted and profitted so much from Redhat, You just dont know it, 90% of the people that fit into that (1 year to 18 month) range JUST DONT KNOW what they've done, and you guys keep repeating the bullshit your script kiddy friends say.... your all pissing me off.. There is a lot of good info for you guys that is available on the web, even here on slashdot regarding the last 6 or 7 years of Linux History, I SUGGEST YOU ALL GO READ IT AND LEARN. Dont be afraid of the commmandline, I know you guys are scared of that thing, its easy as pie , type ls , rm ~/.netscape/cookies , vi/etc/inetd.conf.. wow, hard eh..
Either grow up and learn to accept their will be bugs and weird things happening in the first major release of a distro or the alternative is, You better be holding your precious SuSe/debian/mandrake/corel/ distro the same ugly standard as you do redhat when they make a first release.
Slashdot Mirror
Shovelware
Shovelware is a bad thing, and it's a whole lot worse when you start shoveling server apps. It means that:
1. People run software that is not a best-fit because it works and it happens to be on the CD.
2. People run software that they don't understand and might be unsecure simply because it's there.
I can't think of anything worse than pre-installing Apache as a default web server. It's very big, very complicated and probably unecessary. Next you'll be telling me that the OS uses it to display help files or run some CGI based configuration utility.
This simply re-inforces my notion that someone REALLY should split a Linux distro into server, workstation and home user builds. If you want to shovel on 20 different CD-player apps so the desktop user can choose the one with the most eye-candy that's just fine but for God's sake I wish they'd stop doing it with daemons.
If I'm building a server, whatever OS it is, I do not want anything but the most essential (syslog, etc) services installed for me. I don't even want to have to de-select them on a setup screen. Actually I don't even want a setup screen - I want to build servers from my own install server over the network ala Solaris Jumpstart.
We all made/make fun of MS for building a Server with a GUI - hell most Linux distro's ship SEVERAL GUIs these days. Sure you can take them off but as a server admin why the hell should I spend hours removing garbage from distributions?
I used to work with Linux all the time, but now that I work with Solaris I can't say I miss it much. I'd rather spend time adding gcc, bash and friends to a Solaris box than removing Python and stuff from a Red Hat box.
It's easy to keep track of what you add, where you add it and when. It's very hard to keep track of what you've forgotten to remove because you don't know where it was put in the first place.
I tell you, the first distro that stops arsing about with 3D graphics support and actually fixes NFS* and creates a nice automatic network install system will get my support.
*Unless they've fixed NFS in Linux already - used to be a big weak point when I used it.
-----
Version 6.1.
--
dinner: it's what's for beer
Well, according to their website, it now includes apache and sendmail... isn't that revolutionary? :-)
I realise that you are speaking with tongue in cheek, but this point is worth making anyway:
To us? Of course this isn't revolutionary. You must remember, however, that both Apache and Sendmail have been receiving a lot of press at the moment (at least, they have in the journals I am subscribed to). It would appear that RH are ensuring that 6.2 will be noticed by those PHBs who have heard of Apache and Sendmail - "Hey, Linux, Apache *AND* Sendmail in one package - must try that".
The thing which interests me though is the partionless installation - I can't seem to find any details about that. What is it? Why does the cynic in me think it just means it sorts out all your partitions for you, but that they still exist?
Anyways, a new Linux release is always good for the community, so raise your glasses ladies and gentlemen.....
Nick.
added
;)
- Encryption now included! Now that the US more closely resembles
a free country, all versions of Red Hat Linux include:
o Kerberos authentication for mutt, pine, fetchmail,
cvs, and imap. In addition, the following kerberos-aware
versions of the following clients have been added:
o Kerboros network clients included for rlogin, rsh, telnet, ftp
in krb5-workstation package
o GNOME-based Kerberos configuration tools added
o GNU Privacy Guard (gpg) included
o Netscape with 128-bit encryption included
Ok, what did I miss? Was there legislation that was passed that totally opened up the encryption issue, or did Redhat get licensing from the commerse dept. for these products? I thought things like 128-bit Netscape were still illegal to export. If not, this is great news! Someone please fill me in.
-- Virtual Windows Project
http://download.sourcefor ge.net/mirrors/redhat/redhat-6.2beta/
The partitionless install means that you don't have to partition your system for ext2 - it installs to a big file in a FAT partition via loopback. It's mostly for people who want to try Linux without the risk of repartitioning their system.
Once again Microsoft has demonstrated their superiority in software development and versioning. How could Linux possibly compete against Microsoft when their consumer operating system is version 98 and their server operating system is all the way to to 2000.
With that many versions, they probably don't have any bugs left at all !!! To think people would actually waste their time fixing all the bugs in a 6.2 release. Even Mandrake and Slackware are only up to 7.0.
And Enlightenment, they're not even up to version 1.0 yet! There's probably not even any code to run.
You Linux folks never cease to amaze me.
WARNING - THE PRECEDING POST IS AN ATTEMPT AT HUMOR. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO FLAMEBAIT IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.
Am I the only one that noticed that this is a Haiku?
Very nice. Creative. 8-)
"Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear, Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair... Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy was he?"
Binary compatibility.
Stuff compiled on 6.2 is supposed to run on prior 6.x releases, which is not the case if we had updated gcc (c++ changes).
gcc 2.95.3 (or whatever is current by then, maybe 2.96, maybe 3.0) will be in 7.0.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
The Debian Backspace Guidelines are guidelines for how BS and DEL should act. See section 3.8 of the Debian Policy Manual.
Intel & Sparc will ship April 10th; Alpha is not yet available. This info is prominently displayed on the RHAT website...
And another advantages of a distro is that (if the distromaker do properly his job) new versions of all utils on the system (it's sometimes boring to consult 87-or-more homepages to look for a new version of something to install).
sigmentation fault
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Yup.... played with it last night. They moved all the .rpm and .src.rpm files that are only documentation (gimp-manual, howto, rhl-ig, etc.)off of the main CDs, and onto the docs CD. They also have unpacked versions of all the files so you can jujst broese it off the CD rather than install it.
Given the size of gimp-manual I think this is a good idea.
This message was also sent to me a while ago:
6 .2/ r edhat/redhat-6.2/ a t/redhat-6.2/ h at/redhat-6.2/ - 6.2/ a t-6.2/ d hat.com/redhat-6.2/ r edhat/redhat-6.2/ r edhat-6.2/
/etc/X11/xinitrc/xinitrd.d for X startup logic
/usr/bin/vim supports syntax color
/etc/profile.d/colorls.* to disable)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 08:45:54 -0500 (EST)
From: Erik Troan
Reply-To: zoot-list@redhat.com
To: redhat-announce-list@redhat.com, COLA submissions
Subject: Red Hat Linux 6.2 (Zoot) now available!
Resent-Date: 27 Mar 2000 13:46:45 -0000
Resent-From: redhat-announce-list@redhat.com
Resent-cc: recipient list not shown: ;
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Red Hat is happy to announce the immediate availability of Red Hat Linux 6.2,
Zoot, for the ia32 and SPARC platforms (Alpha is coming, really), with support
for French, German, Spanish, and Italian.
You can get your hands on Zoot in many different ways:
1. ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/redhat-6.2
2. Order one of our many boxed set editions from www.redhat.com
(shipping April 10)
3. Buy it at a retail outlet (available April 10)
4. Download from one of our many mirror sites. The following mirrors
are known to be complete:
ftp://ftp.hjc.edu.sg/linux/redhat/redhat-6.2/
ftp://ftp.ip.pt/pub/redhat/ftp.redhat.com/redhat-
ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/RedHat/ftp/
ftp://ftp.sourceforge.net/pub/mirrors/redhat/redh
ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/redhat-ftp/red
ftp://ftp.uni-bayreuth.de/pub/linux/redhat/redhat
ftp://ftp.uselinux.org/pub/redhat/redhat-6.2/
ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/opsys/linux/redhat.com/redh
ftp://mirror.atlantic.net/pub/Linux/redhat/ftp.re
ftp://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/MIRRORS/ftp.redhat.com/
ftp://the-city.seas.upenn.edu/pub/mirrors/redhat/
For help with this release of Red Hat Linux, subscribe to the Zoot mailing
list by sending a message with a subject of "subscribe" to
zoot-list-request@redhat.com, or buy a Red Hat Linux boxed set and take
advantage of our support department.
The Zoot development team wishes to thank all of the developers who
contributed to this release, our beta testers, and everyone who reported
a bug or made a feature request.
Here's a (partial) list of new features in Zoot:
- The system can now be installed onto a loopback file on a FAT
filesystem. This allows users to install Red Hat Linux onto an
existing partition rather then having to repartition their system.
- The upgrade process recognizes Linux RAID arrays.
- Better rescue mode on CD and NFS, allowing improved disaster
recovery.
- Networking services have had their client and server components split
into separate packages to improve sysadmin flexibility.
- Pentium III support for improved performance
- Workstation installs no longer install networking daemons
- Many system daemons turned off by default
- MesaGL now included
- All man pages gzip'd
- Added support for
- Piranha clustering updates
o web based GUI config
o 2-node service failover support
o generic service monitoring/loadblancing
o tunneling and direct routing support for IPVS
- Beowulf-style clustering added
o PVM 3.4.3 (Parallel Virtual Machine)
o LAM 6.3.1 (MPI library environment)
o make-pvm (PVM aware version of GNU make)
o (Please note that mpich-1.2.0 is now part of PowerTools for Red Hat
Linux 6.2.)
- Automatic support for up to 4 gigabytes of RAM
- ISDN configuration utility added
- Encryption now included! Now that the US more closely resembles
a free country, all versions of Red Hat Linux include:
o Kerberos authentication for mutt, pine, fetchmail,
cvs, and imap. In addition, the following kerberos-aware
versions of the following clients have been added:
o Kerboros network clients included for rlogin, rsh, telnet, ftp
in krb5-workstation package
o GNOME-based Kerberos configuration tools added
o GNU Privacy Guard (gpg) included
o Netscape with 128-bit encryption included
- More beauteous vim included --
and langauge-based indention
- anacron used for many system jobs
- termcap, terminfo, and various terms have been modified to support
the Debian Backspace Guidelines for Backspace and Delete, as well
as to make Home and End work consistently
- DocBook support included
- Colorized ls by default (remove
Red Hat 6.2:
Not playing the version game
With Mandrake. Hooray.
If I want to upgrade something on my system, I download the source, compile it and install (I hate RPM's). Why wait several months to install all the fixes in one go, when you could have fixed them many weeks before?
Because not everyone is running a single-user system with the time to waste in the "search, download, tweak, compile, repeat" process. Those of us who use Linux as a tool (not a toy) enjoy the idea of being able to drop in a CD and have a relatively up-to-date system without the hassle of having to do it by hand. In a university environment, where good help is almost impossible to find, CD distros and RPMS are a life-saver:
It's a lot easier for me to say to a student assistant: "Upgrade the gcc RPMs on the Computer Science cluster" rather than "Download the GCC tarball, and compile it? What's that? Configure options? Here...do this. Hmm--dependecy problems. Ok, you fix it this way... Another question? Ok, here, I'll just have to do it myself, since we needed this done last week."
Also, RPMs are great for ansering the "what the heck is that file doing there?" question.
When I only had my home Linux box to play with, I used to be a "source tarball, compile your own is the only way!" guy. Then I started using Linux at work. There's a big difference when you have to manage multiple machines and users. Suddenly, RPMs don't seem so bad at all...
Frankly I'm a little sick and tired of some of the people that have just started using Linux, Ya, I know I should be kind and helpful and all that, and I will be helpful and kind, I'm ready to answer any questions I can, to help somebody get a solid understanding of linux and how it works, etc, etc, etc, etc, to my point...
/etc/inetd.conf .. wow, hard eh..
There seems to be a group of you, and I think I know who you are... You've been using Linux for about a year, maybe eighteen months... You probably dual boot or have a Lose98 machine handy.. You pretend to know a lot about linux , You talk a lot when it comes to linux and boast how great it is, how it can do everything and anything, Well except for StarCraft and Quicken... and then you go on to bash RedHat, you know all the profane variations of the Redhat name (redhate, deadrat, rudehat, etc, probbaly another 80 or 90 that I dont know aobut yet).. you continually blast it for being Insecure, full of bugs, unstable, etc etc etc etc, stop repeating what other people say, think for yourself for once...
Let me tell you knuckleheads something, before you go Bashing RedHat, and its a very good distro, yes, even Linus Torvalds uses Redhat (wow, he must be some Lamer dude eh ? ) the Security issue, Okay, two things here, I'll grant you the latitude to bash redhat for their default inetd.conf configuration (its a bit Strange).. But you've got to learn to tidy those things up, if you dont, You aren't worthy to administer a Linux box, Sorry guys thats the way it is. 2nd thing with security, RedHat has probably the best support when it comes to bug/exploit fixes for their rpms, just check their errata page every week to see if something new has popped up (or get on the mailing list, it'll send you mail when a Security Alert has been issued)...
ya, okay, then you go ahead and say "HEY LOOK AT ALL THOSE BUG FIXES ON REDHATS ERRATA, THEIR DISTRO MUST BE FULL OF BUGS AND EXPLOITS !!!!!" I've heard crap very similar to this many times.. Okay you knuckleheads, First of all, when somebody discovers a bufferoverflow in SSH or whatever package you can think up, MANY MANY TIMES it is not distro specific, in english, that means IT AFFECTS ALL Distributions, "OH MY GAWD, DEBIAN IS TAINTED !!! BUT ITS THE PERFECT DISTRO !!! ONLY REAL HACKERS USE DEBIAN!!!!!" (Debian is a great distro, good work you guys, not trying to put you down or anything here)..
Oh, I almost forgot Redhat is the next Microsoft of Linux, how many times have I heard that from you schmucks lately , ohh, lots. I dont have to sit here and prove that it cant happen, I'll be wasting my time, because I know it cant.
The Linux community has Benefitted and profitted so much from Redhat, You just dont know it, 90% of the people that fit into that (1 year to 18 month) range JUST DONT KNOW what they've done, and you guys keep repeating the bullshit your script kiddy friends say.... your all pissing me off.. There is a lot of good info for you guys that is available on the web, even here on slashdot regarding the last 6 or 7 years of Linux History, I SUGGEST YOU ALL GO READ IT AND LEARN. Dont be afraid of the commmandline, I know you guys are scared of that thing, its easy as pie , type ls , rm ~/.netscape/cookies , vi
Either grow up and learn to accept their will be bugs and weird things happening in the first major release of a distro or the alternative is, You better be holding your precious SuSe/debian/mandrake/corel/ distro the same ugly standard as you do redhat when they make a first release.
see ya later you fucken clueless assholes