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Red Hat's Michael Tiemann On gcc, ReiserFS & More
Mayank points to this
interview at FreeOS.com with Red Hat CTO Michael Tiemann, in which Tiemann discusses why the Hat shipped a development kernel with their 7.0 distribution, journaling filesystems, the openness of ecos, and the competition (no, not that competition). It's a good read, though it would be cool to see the same questions addressed at even greater length. Guess everyone has a time limit, though;) [Updated by timothy:] I flubbed, that should read "development snapshot of gcc," of course, not "development kernel." Stop hitting me.
if he answered the questions instead of beating around the bush.
The interviewer asks about other Linux distributions, and he talks about microsoft.
The interviewer asks about a specific type of application, and he talks about the free software development model.
And on and on. It's boring and doesn't do a lot to build trust in Red Hat.
So are RedHat better or worse for admitting their product was poop?
I can post verbatim quotes from the redhat alphalinux mailing list from some of the movers and shakers in RedHat's Alpha group if you don't believe me. Be warned, they use stronger language than I do.
FatPhil
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
In order to be a bit on topic, I think that RedHat 7.0 is really similar to the technology preview linux release from Caldera, something that is BETA, but is a good indicator of what future distributions will have in them.
------ 24.5% slashdot pure
We shipped pgcc only for one release and we didn't do the same errors again since then ...
I tried the Mandrake distribution once, when it's main selling point was the Pentium optimised compiler, but reverted back to RedHat when I changed jobs. If Mandrake are considering a regularily updated SPARC distribution as well as their Intel one then I'd be keen to try it again.
Chris
>As for your inference that Windows software is >easier to use, try Visual C++ some time. Their is >no source control as standard,
>and the API's are dreadful (dodgy socket >libraries for example).
I agree, on the surface it looks nice, but then becomes ugly as hell. Even there on-line courses do not work.
The scary part is kind of related if you can think laterally. Ever tried saving a simple html file with Word? Try that and you will know what I mean by scary....
StarTux
Is eCos open source?
We always do open source. It's actually something like the Mozilla public
license. The reason we didn't want to put it out as GPL was because if this
Digital TV company links an application to the kernel. We did not believe it
was commercially possible to GPL the kernel.
Never ask the politician a question when you are seeking a technical answer. So sayeth the Great Cornholio. Go forth, and spread the word.
Seriously, this guy had a major, MAJOR case of the political propaganda bug. It would have been nice to get a straight answer, but you don't "save face" by being technically correct now do you?
Bite my yammer.
Red Hat is making arbitrary decisions regarding what beta/development features to include in their distributions, and what to leave out.
I like Red Hat 7 (and I may be the only one), but I have run into the 2gig filesystem limit too many times, and I would have preferred the file system to be an area of concentration. Instead, I am forced into the arms of Solaris x86 for certain applications.
Red Hat has always been progressive. I just wish they were a little more attentive to the needs of their customers. It appears to me that the new packages in Red Hat 7 were developed in a vacuum - it is an interesting solution in search of a problem. It adds nothing to my server toolset.
Red Hat 7 should have included:
Today, Red Hat's stock price is a little over $8/share, which is almost below the IPO offering. Talk to us, guys, or it will only get worse.
I went to disable ftp and telnet by outcommenting /etc/inetd.conf. Guess what? There is no inetd.conf!
Redhat: Please leave the standard config files in place! Stop molesting /etc!
Quote from the RedHat 7 Features/Enhancements page:
--
Compile reiserfs in statically then. I also noticed that the guy earlier in this thread was using 3.5.17, which I know is a rather old release of reiserfs. I believe the current version is 3.5.27.
Maybe RH needs people who can read a spec?
--jdp Maintainer of VisEmacs
Have you ever tried to install a commercial application on a non-redhat box? It's not pretty.
.... what else? At some point, for an OS to become mainstream, it needs to provide a stable base for developers without having to build/maintain/support 10 variants.
I downloaded the iPlanet Messaging Server just to test it. I tried to put it on a Mandrake 7.0 distribution.
It didn't work. Unknown library references, and etc.
When I installed in on a RH6.2 system, it worked.
So if RedHat ain't it, what does the world do? Is there NO room for commerical linux apps? If so, do they have to develope against RH, Debian, Slackware, Mandrake, Turbolinux,
How does LINUX do that?
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
After hearing all this stuff about RedHat 7.0 I started downloading Mandrake 7.2. For the project I have going on now, I want users to be able to try Linux and not have a hard time. I don't like to hack/fix things that's why I jump to Mandrake. RedHat is an great company but it's not going to hurt when they push out RedHat 7.1. Then I'll look into getting it, besides Linux is free! I'll just download it from there FTP site just like I am doing with Mandrake 7.2 now or order the CDs for $2 +S&H.
From Zero to Hero... Starbuck Zero
"
How come you survived for such long time with this totally fucked-up 6.0?
"
- RH/Alpha mover/shaker (anonymity preserved)
That is from a private e-mail, hence the anonymity of the sender. Please believe me, it was a big name in the field.
FatPhil
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
gcc "2.96" has problems compiling some things, specifically the kernel. The kernel will not compile at all. So you can't just "recompile" everything.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
Anyway, since many RH 7 binaries won't work properly on a 6.2 system, it's probably a good thing that it's a bit of work to get them to install.
Red Hat makes the extremely reasonable choice of not sticking to cruft. This is why this is a 7.0 release, not 6.something. Expect similar things to happen with RH 8. There is utterly nothing wrong with this. Other distributions will come across the same problems as they move to the newer C++ (either the same v2.96 snapshot or v3) and newer glibc. It'll all be in sync again eventually.
And, it should be noted that the *source* RPMs are still completely compatible.
I don't understand what you mean by "All possibilities of 'choice' within Linux being wiped out by them". There's a lot of choice.
--
Well, I skipped 6.2, so this isn't fair. And I also installed Mandrake 7.2. But I'm being experimental, and someone said that it was better not to put KDE 2 on a machine that already had KDE 1.
.0 release, but it said so up front. I knew before I bought it that it came with an expeimental compiler, that was binary incompatible with both the prior version and the next version (3.0). I'm not absolutely sure that I read this in the ad copy, but it was clearly mentioned on /., and somewhere (don't remember just where) on the Red Hat site (I like to confirm /. news).
I liked RH 7.0. It was clearly a
You don't need to blame Red Hat. The warnings were posted. (Well, there was all that ad copy, too, I admit, but they didn't hide the warnings.)
Now, personally I wouldn't have called this ready for release, but Red Hat has a tradition of releasing ?4? times per year. They haven't all been winners. And the 7.0 was advanced over 6.2 because it was binary incompatible.
That said, I was pleased enough with 7.0. It did what it said it would. I was far more pleased than with 5.2.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Regarding the gcc controversy, I am constantly amazed at the number of people who think they know better than the gcc developers themselves. But what do I know...
I'm pretty sure that if you don't trust for-profit companies you are by DEFINITION communist. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Communism, just like capitalism is totally innocent in its motives. Both systems have the ultimate goal of making the world a good place to live. They just go about it in different ways. The fact that capitalism happens to work well in practice, while communism doesn't, is just the small issue of human nature. To make an analogy, OpenGL is a great standard, its only when a 2bit company like ATI tries to implement it that it seems flakey. (To be fair, the Radeon has decent GL drivers, much better than the POS Rage PRO)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Umm, C++ shared libraries break too. That's one reason BeOS is still using egcs, because the system is implemented as a bunch of shared libraries exporting C++ classes. (I'm pretty sure that C shared libs are still compatible though)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
That is exactly the kind of utterly worthless drivel that isn't exactly trolling or karma-whoring, but is nonetheless swamping /. in inanity.
Just to clarify for you - this is a *discussion* site. That means when there is an geeky issue of any contention, interested people can *discuss* it here. "If you don't like it, don't use it" is not an opinion, argument, or anything except possibly an excuse to tell your mates that you've posted to slashdot (ooh you bleeding-edge uber-geek, you!).
I don't use RH, (and wouldn't in a blue fit try to use it for any project that had to be stable and compatible) but it's future will influence the development of Linux distros for some time to come due to it's market position.
In short, save the world some bandwith and keep your retard non-opinions to yourself.
You know they call 'em fingers but I've never seen 'em fing. Oh, there they go.
Actually, Dell ships RedHat 7.0 for all machines. I haven't heard any complaints about it, though I think a lot of Dell's customers also think a 1.5GHz P4 is 50% faster than a 1GHz PIII.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
What do you mean? www.warez.com is just a click away! Or do you actually BUY Windows?
.... damn ...
I do not advocate the use of pirated software.
I do not condone its use.
Any information you may have gotten from this post cannot be used against me.
HELP! MS has sent its elite product-control unit after me. They're trying to raid my house. Oh my god, they have light artillery
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I'm not a communist, but I don't trust for-profit companies. The best thing about Red Hat is that they deal almost exclusively in free software. (Their secure web server isn't free, but I imagine that will change, with the passing of the RSA patent.) For better or worse, they've unleashed RPM on the world. They've done extensive QA on gcc and many other packages.
I disagree with the decision to ship Red Hat 7. Version 7 should have included a released version of Linux 2.4, the new gcc, and the corresponding glibc. But that's their business model: periodic releases, where ++.0 > x.++. Making a new version of Red Hat Linux is like printing money. You don't do it too often, or you'll devalue it (and I think they may have done that with version 7). On the other hand, you don't wait too long, because there's an opportunity cost.
the elephant won't fall anytime soon...
:)
yeah, I know what the original question was. I was going against RH's assertion that MS was a competitor (whether or not it is a distribution is irrelevant).
MS is NOT a competitor to RH. Nor vise versa.
This is my opinion of course. If you don't like it, I don't care
I don't know who started this dumb dev kernel rumor. In 7 it's a "preview/beta" thing you can optionally install manually if you want to do some testing or get an idea what 2.4 will be like. The installer won't ever install it. It's just an RPM sitting on the CD for people that know about it and know what they're getting into.
But of course you can legally get 7.0 without paying RedHat a red cent, and if you are angry about the quality of 6.0 I suggest you do just that. Half the time with MS, it isn't a service pack, it's a whole new rev of the OS, which isn't free.
At least with RH, I don't pay to test beta-grade software that is released as version X.0.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wagn'nagl dominos.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
The past weekend was a nightmare for me. The root filesystem of my mailserver got severely corrupted and I had to do a complete reinstall. I had been running ReiserFS on that partition and this is how it got corrupted.
/etc/hosts!). I suspect ReiserFS did a bad journal replay which caused this. One reboot later the whole system wouldn't boot stopping at the boot loader. This all happened when using Mandrake 7.1 with ReiserFS 3.5.19.
When I tried to install a 3Com 509 card it froze the system when I ifconfig'ed it and I had to reboot. Then ReiserFS did it's journal replay and when the system was up again it turned out that some files had their contents scrambled (/etc/conf.modules contained some lines from
I wonder if people have experience with ext3. I've heard it also does data journalling whereas ReiserFS only does meta-data journalling. Data journalling may cause a performance hit but I'm willing to take that for reliability.
Also, I wonder if anyone knows if versioning (used in databases like InterBase) has been used in filesystems yet. Versioning seems ideal to me for filesystems as it provides low overhead and atomicity. But maybe I'm completely in the dark here, anybody care to comment?
Completely failed to even admit that other linux distributions exist.
I like Redhat, I want them to do well but I don't think this bodes well for them.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
I think we all need to stop to remember why we love GNU/Linux/*BSD/GPL/OSS in the first place.
So what if the compliler produces incompatible binaries? They made a tradeoff for other benefits, and because the kernel and apps we all use almost exclusively have available source code we can just recompile, right?
Got a Debian machine and need to use that prog you built on RH7? *RECOMPILE IT*
M
The embedded marketplace is very different from your typical computer/os/software/hardware market. In the embedded market, the developer typically ends up hard-linking his application into the OS, since both pieces are going to be jammed into the same EPROM (or Flash if you've got the budget). To save space, often the developer will decide which OS services he needs, and discard the rest (ie: if you're not building a network appliance, why load the ethernet drivers?) An embedded OS is really more like a development framework -- it gives your application the tools it needs to function without the programmer having to implement those tools from scratch.
If you attempt to GPL the kernel to an embedded OS, then you're going to force developers to release all of their source code, simply because they linked their code with the OS. If you put this restriction on an embedded OS, then no embedded developers will buy your OS, no matter how good it is. On the other hand, either LGPL or MPL can be commercially viable, while still encouraging developers to contribute.
Are you moderating this down because you disagree with it,
We call it art because we have names for the things we understand.
Actually kgcc (kernel gcc?) is EGCS 1.1.2...
--
The world is divided in two categories:
those with a loaded gun and those who dig. You dig.
--
The world is divided in two categories:
those with a loaded gun and those who dig. You dig.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean about the kernel files being messed up; care to explain further?
And, I think the article linked to above explains the compiler issue well pretty well.
What were the other issues?
--
As for BSD you clearly are clueless, as they use aging versions of gcc
FreeBSD use the latest gcc.
It wont encourage you unless you know how poor Microsoft or Sun's compilers are
For most of our C++ work (I'm talking of big codes used in the electricity utilities business), Microsoft (on Windows) and Sun compilers (on Solaris/Sparc) are infinitely better than gcc : Better supports of the C++ standards, much better performance.
I don't say gcc is not good : it's an amazing piece of software, and invaluable for the open source developpement. But if you really want to bite, at least bite correctly.
It's redhat's fault for not labeling their versions correctly. They need to put labels like deeloper release, user release and server release on the .0 .1 and .2 releases respectively. Microsoft sells as it's server flagship NT 4.0 (still! they arent pushing 2000 as hard on us corperates as it looks.) because it is proven. my corperation has made the decision NOT to switch from 4.0 to 2000 because of this (and the fact that 2000 offeres no value over 4.0 except a reason to spend money.. Hell we still have 3.51 servers out there!) Redhat needs to re-brand and release server, workstation and developer repectively.. and to hell with this silly number chase. It would gain more respect from the CIO's (It's hard enough to convice a brain dead CIO that linux works in light of developer releases coming out vieled as a server platform.)
RedHat... REBRAND! or just put nice Stickers on the boxes to keep the dumb It managers at bay, us in the trenches know better, but the goofball that runs our meetings don't, and unfortunately they are the ones making polocy decisions!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
why doesn't let redhat the user choose. with suse i can choose wich version of gcc (they ship multiple versions), kde, X11, etc. i wanna use. sometimes you can choose both at the same time.
... ??!!!!
a totally hacked default setup is NOT a good idea!
they did ship 2.95.2 to compile the kernel, why wasn't this the default? WHY a hacked version?
if i wanna hack, i install it myself
Isn't one of the advantages of open source (and free software) supposed to be that you aren't at the mercy of other organizations?
The GCC comittiee has different deadlines and standards than Redhat. They don't consider their snapshots to be up to par for a release, but Redhat finds they are good enough for almost all of their purposes. Why should they have to wait for an official release? Besides, object file compatibility is a complete non-issue for about 99% of users. People usually only distribute binaries or source code. Redhat 7 is compatible with both of these methods.
To sum up, if a distributer is required to listen to every group involved then the software isn't free speach, just free beer.
BTW, I agree with you about the config files...
it's a nightmare finding anything.
You have got to be kidding me. You are taking issue with what features they choose to include and exclude? That is the WHOLE POINT of distributions! They have features. They differ in what they offer. The distributions have been that way for 3 years now. What, can't a company decide what features their OWN product has to offer? Remember, those RPMs don't compile themselves.
What the heck are you talking about? Have you even used RedHat 7.0? 7.0 has USB support. Who else has USB support? RH7 has X4. Who else (before 7) has X4? It has improved security packages and more manageable setups for servers and workstations--things users have been demanding. So how exactly are they ignoring customers?
As for the other things they should have included: they HAVE 2.4 kernel RPMS. I ask again, have you even looked at RH7? I installed the RPMS and gave them a whirl. So what distrib are you using? ReiserFS is not in the distrib, but can easily be added to RedHat.
I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt, but you appear to have no idea what you are talking about. Have you even used the distribution? If not, why do you feel the need to make a whole lot of noise when you don't have your facts straight?
I am soooo sick and tired of all the baseless Red Hat bashing that takes place on Slashdot. It is not Slashdot (the website) itself, but the hoards of people who want their 15 seconds of fame for having "gave it to the man" in a post. Slashdot is supposed to be a place where we discuss things and offer something of value. Just spouting stuff at random does no one any good.
Plus you end up looking silly.
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
Well, I wrote a little (small, but rather neat) library called Atlas-C++ in C++ as part of the WorldForge project earlier this year. It uses templates and other "advanced" C++ techniques a lot, giving it amazing flexibility, but making it slightly hard for some compilers to grok. Now, it compiled fine with GCC 2.95.2, after all, that's the current stable release, that's what I use, that's what I expect people to be using. Now, unfortunately, it did not compile (read: threw Internal Compiler Errors) with the gcc snapshot shipped with RH7. This lead to people having to go through a lot of trouble trying to get it to just compile and link properly. *sigh*. This was quite an annoyance.
It makes me glad I use a distribution whose goal is not profits.
Yea, unless you use C++.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I'm pretty sure that Suse 6.4 was the first one to have most of those features.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Besides, is ReiserFS officially stable now? I figured there was a reason it isn't in the kernel yet...
As Timothy would have noticed if he'd followed the Slashdot link in the story, the controversy was over a development snapshot of gcc (2.96), not the kernel. I haven't used RedHat 7.0 but I assume it ships with a 2.2 kernel and also has a 2.3 dev kernel in there as an optional package.
It wasn't the default. It was included as an option.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Red Hat did not ship a development kernel, they shipped a gcc development snapshot.
--
bgphints - internet routing news, hints and ti
Doing to Linux what MS did to QDOS.
Not all of which is bad, far from it.
I have an Alpha, I run Redhat 6.0 on it. It's shit. They know that. They've told me to upgrade.
(Which is precisely the attitude which people criticise MS for "just apply service pathc 79...".) 7.0 is already announced for Alpha. I don't know if I can trust them. They've sold me poop before...
Lesson - Avoid N.0 like the plague?
FP.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
... imagine my surprise when I saw 'the competition' and clicked it ready for some challenge, something to spice up my Tuesday morning at work, something to work late nights on while eating penguin mints and drinking Jolt... and discover MICROSOFT!
prosebeforehos.com
So when can I see the source for CCVS?
Nice interview, a little short but fine with me. A small incorect statement
Which distribution do you feel is your main competitor?
Right now our main competitors are Sun Solaris and Microsoft.
So does that mean that Microsoft is a distribution ?
Nevermind...
Just another coder...
Some posters seem to get confused by the incorrect information given. Red Hat didn't ship with a developmental kernel; they shipped with gcc 2.96, which is a developmental branch of gcc. This has been discussed a lot on Slashdot already, and if I remember correctly, everyone except Red Hat's CEO agreed that is was a bad decision... But it's old news now.
Since when does windows ship with a compiler? You don't get QBasic any more ;-)
Read my plan to save the Bengals
Question :
"If there's another OS came out that was a Free OS and started doing well then
will we see something like Red Hat BSD or something?"
Answer:
I think comes back to the critical mass question. I think that for Red Hat,
it's better to enhance our technical solutions to meet customer requirements
than it is to dilute our brand with other operating systems that don't have
the critical mass of Red Hat Linux or eCos.
Huh ? The critical mass of 'eCos' vs 'BSD's ? Unfortunately, this stupidity is at the end. If it have been at the top, I woundn't bothered reading all this poor inteview.
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
I don't know why this interview came on /.
There is nothing to learn, it is just marketing bla-bla.
They ask: Why aren't you shipping ReiserFS, or Mandrake ?
He doesn't answer at all!
I think that RedHat suffer from a serious case of NIH syndrome for some parts..
"Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
(I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
The article was pure brochureware.
Except for the bit about filesystems, which I appreciated, there was no real news that would of use to anyone -even investors, such as plans are for the 2.4 rollout.
With tux and 2.4 coming up, RH should be saying much more about their philosophy with respect to kernel dev and release, filesystems, and releasing lab results, etc...
It'll be a bit scarier in the next upgrade cycle, and their target markets (RH serves too many) will be very anxious. At least I will be.
Boo hoo. So the C++ ABI has changed from one version of gcc to another - so what? It wasn't a fixed standard in the first place. If you are relying on implementation-defined details like this you will surely get bitten sooner or later.
Just get RPM 3.0.5 which is forwards-compatible with 4.0.
Red Hat have upgraded the C library in the past, what's so wrong with doing it this time? Surely you don't advocate that we should all still be on libc4 in order to keep binary compatibility?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Am I the only one who reads the changelog etc, when a new software realese are annouced? My thoughts goes something like this:
Hmmm... snapshot of gcc... What bug-fixes/improvments are there? Do I need them right away? If answer is yes then reconsider. Hmm... snapshot... maybe dont produce stable code... Naaa I'll go with RH 6.2 instead.
Well, it is the _Red Hat_ Package Manager, so they can do whatever they want with it, I guess.
The only alternative is obviously *not* egcs, gcc 2.95.2 would be the choice. gcc 2.96 was/is broken in more ways than a compatibilty sense. Particularly the g++/libstdc++ that they shipped would miscompile many applications resulting in application lockups and such nightmares often. Most of these problems have since been fixed in rawhide and cvs gcc, but not in any updates that I can find in errata. Sure the rawhide packages work fine, but corporations want it to be an update, not installing something "unsupported" glibc is hosed too, but that is not exactly a virtue...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
You know, it's almost like Red Hat was trying to create an integrated product that met its (paying) clients' needs...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I imagine you're using a 2.4.x series kernel too.
Yes, you are in the dark. Stop. Use stuff that's known to work, not stuff that's experimental.
Do me a small favor. Look at the list of RPMS in 7.0. Do you see a 2.4 kernel? Neither do I. Obviously, what is not included in the distribution is not integrated into the installer.
The decision to support USB and X4, and not ReiserFS, was arbitrary. Red Hat did this before with KDE, but at that time they had good reason. This time they do not.
I have done more to advocate Red Hat than you could probably comprehend. Pardon me if I take your vitriol with a grain of salt.
How can it be unreasonable for customers to say what features they do and don't want in a product?
Red Hat has to make feature decisions, like any company, that some customers don't like - however, it is entirely reasonable for customers to comment on what they want (ideally before the product is finalised!)
As for special things like USB support - Mandrake 7.1 (I think) and definitely 7.2 includes USB backported from 2.4 work.
I agree that Red Hat bashing for the sake of it is pointless, but feature/stability discussions are definitely worthwhile.
Nearly all of Red Hat's software, even the parts they created on their own, are covered by the GPL. They can't force these programs to be incompatible. If the other distributions want the new versions to work, all they have to do is get the code and recompile the appropriate programs. Then everybody gets to enjoy the new stuff (if they want it.)
--
We won't normally ship a RH 7.0 server (or x.0 at all), but when we start a new project we're always using the latest version. Given some 6 to 12 months development time the once immature version would have grown up and reached the production quality level.
We're currently working on a project that started out on a 6.0 but now runs on a 6.2. The 6-months release cycle of RedHat fits our business very well.
Oh, btw: There is an exception to the never-ship-a-x.0 rule - today I completed a performance tuning of a Oracle database. Previously it ran on NT. Now it runs on RH 7.0 with astonishing results and our customer demands that we ship him the RH 7.0 version :-)
--
But the post did have content, several of the other posts here were making it seem like redhat is the only availible distrobution. Different distros cater to different needs and no distro will keep 100% of the people happy 100% of the time. I'm stating if you don't like redhat, rather than whining use a diferent distro like Debian, Slackware, or Mandrake. Thats the beauty of the multiple distrobution system
-Compenguin
Personally I am still usnig RH 6.2. I have the gnome helix updates. I have upgrade to rpm 3.0.5 and then to rpm 4.0 (as they suggest) I did have to rebuild the rpm database though that took a little time. I am also found kde 2.0 binaries for my system as well. So I get to run kde or gnome (I use gnome).
Wasn't this article out a month ago or was it just one like it? This sure has gotton them lots of attention though. Hmm maybe that is what they were after.
If you don't like what Redhat did get Mandrake. Mandrake always seems to take the latest version of Redhat and ad the updates and fixes to it anyway.
QYB
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
No I am not just blowing smoke. Being a big multimedia application our application is quite huge and touches many areas. We have many kernal calls, X calls, asm, c, C++, and a number of different configurations to attempt to get the best performace on a machine. using 2.2.x we have to patch the kernel, but first we have to patch it or something (I didn't look into this aspect). The compiler was compleatly unable to compile the code. There were X files that were missing and or not what they should have been. It was just one thing after another that wouldn't work. We came to the conclution that it wasn't worth the time nor effort to get it to work on redhat 7.0. We will attempt again at 7.1, but who knows.
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
What has liking or not liking a company got to do with anything? The article is about an interview with Tiemann, and the discussion is about his answers (or lack thereof) in that interview, and what they reveal about RedHat's direction.
For a linux-geek-for-hire it's not possible to simply say "RedHat's shit, so let's use debian", because RedHat is what most companies (rightly or wrongly) use. Therefore it's entirely relevant to discuss here the pros and cons of RedHat's distribution, and particularly the influences and motivations behind some of their more questionable design decisions.
What do *you* think we should be posting about here, given that according to you we can't diss RedHat in any way?
You know they call 'em fingers but I've never seen 'em fing. Oh, there they go.
...notice how he skillfully avoids answering any concrete question, like whether or not Red Hat is going to include something like Mandrakes partition magic.
They no longer care about compatibility with other Linux distributions (LSB? Whats that?):
- Use a development snapshot of gcc, so that C++ programs compiled on RH7 only work on RH7.
- Again change their RPM binary format (for the utterly stupid reason that it now supports bzip2 compression), so RH7 RPMs only work on RH7.
- Use a glibc2.2 development snapshot, so that again, their RPMs only work on RH7.
All possibilities of 'choice' within Linux being wiped out by them I now nearly agree with the 'RedHat sucks' motto. *sigh*I've been running Red Hat since 5 and have been a big supporter, buying releases as they became available. 7 was a downgrade. All it did was screw up my solid 6.2. I stuck in Mandrake 7.2 and was pleased to find it was a definite upgrade. It'll be a while before I bother to try Red Hat again. If I ever bother. I can understand a company having one eye on its revenue stream and one on its technology. Red Hat, like Microsoft, seems to have both eyes on its revenue. Too bad. Another release like 7 and they won't have any.
You're obviously clueless, but I'll bite. After all I am on my lunchbreak ...
Compare this with Windows, which has test periods of a year or more for new Windows releases.
Would you really trust your company to a distro that ships a broken compiler?
Read bugtraq, and learn just how stable and secure those tested versions of Windows are. Not very. As for a `broken' compiler, try Visual C++ 5.0 which was notoriously broken. RedHat's GCC snapshot was only `broken' in the respect that it was binary incompatble with preceding versions and the upcoming version 3.0. They had very good reasons to ship a snapshot, not the least of which was the fact that it produced better object code than 2.95.2. The alternative was to stick with egcs-1.1.2, which is getting exceptionally long in the tooth. If you really want to criticise a Linux distributor for shipping dodgy compilers, then turn your attention to Mandrake. They shipped the Pentium optimised `pgcc', which is known to produce incorrect assembler output.
> > [Why the broken compiler?]
This doesn't make an eachway-incompatible compiler a good idea. What it does say, however, (his words not mine) is that
(a) the current compiler is a POS
(b) we're using an incompatible, and immediately obsolete compiler.
Doesn't really encourage you to use Linux, rather than say, Windows, *bsd or Solaris, does it - the current compiler sucks
It wont encourage you unless you know how poor Microsoft or Sun's compilers are. As for BSD you clearly are clueless, as they use aging versions of gcc. Microsoft have yet to produce an ANSI C compliant compiler, let alone an ANSI C++ compliant one. As for Sun's compiler suite, they no longer ship it by default with Solaris, and many of the companies I have worked for use gcc instead out of preference. In other words, they have a Sunpro licence, but don't bother installing it.
These patches are indicative of the unstable state of Linux development ... (see Mandrake for a desktop product, not that it's a patch on Windows or Mac)
Let's see - my desktop machine has not crashed once since I installed RedHat 6.2 on it four months ago. It has all the tools that my colleague's Windows PC has, and more (ever tried grep'ing or find'ing on a PC?). In the same time the programmer to my immediate left has reinstalled Windows twice, and the Mac programmer is lucky if he get four hours of uptime.
As for your inference that Windows software is easier to use, try Visual C++ some time. Their is no source control as standard, and the API's are dreadful (dodgy socket libraries for example).
Chris
I have been developing an application these past 6 months under redhat 6.2 and looked forward to 7.0.
Unfortunettly becuase of the way that everything is cvs quality / hacked / part this part that we have concluded that there is really no was for us to use redhat 7.0. From the kernal files being messed up, X3 and 4 kludged together, and a compiler that never would have seen a real box if it wasn't for redhat we have been virtually unable to get any sort of a build made. This does not mention the other issues we encountered.
Even though companies all "standerdize" on redhat I can say that we now don't.
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
Redhat is on the bleeding edge of Linux technology. Unfortunately, it is the user who bleeds the most.
getting exceptionally long in the tooth. If you really want to criticise a Linux distributor for shipping dodgy compilers, then turn your > attention to Mandrake. They shipped the Pentiumoptimised `pgcc', which is known to produce incorrect assembler output.
We shipped pgcc only for one release and we didn't do the same errors again since then...
See subject. The language standard and the application binary interface are two entirely different things. The first is indeed standardized, and RH/Cygnus conform. Unless I'm drastically mistaken, the latter is not covered in ANSI C++.
It wont encourage you unless you know how poor Microsoft or Sun's compilers are.
/root]# uname -a
/root]# gcc --version
...
... you can always install CVS separately of course ... but then, why not install CVS under Windows?
I've had nothing but success with the Visual C++ 6.0 under Windows. The only compiler that came close to beating it for code speed for graphics apps was Watcom, in the old days.
As for BSD you clearly are clueless, as they use aging versions of gcc.
[root@brick
OpenBSD brick 2.8 GENERIC#3 i386
[root@brick
2.95.3
That doesn't seem very aging to me
As for your inference that Windows software is easier to use, try Visual C++ some time. Their is no source control as standard, and the API's are dreadful (dodgy socket libraries for example).
There is source control as standard with gcc then? Neat, I've never seen it
Where this stuff falls over is documentation for the newbie. If you face off linuxdoc.org vs the MSDN (which is literally gigabytes of copious documentation), I wonder which one would win.
Let's see - my desktop machine has not crashed once since I installed RedHat 6.2 on it four months ago
My RH6.2 install still consistently segfaults if I run 'gtop'. And when I switched to the excellent Debian, it look me literally a week of hard hacking to get XFree4 and 3D acceleration working. Doesn't really take that long under Win2k now, does it?
I'm now trying to use my Debian setup as my primary desktop, but there's a lot of stuff I sorely miss from Windows 2000 (the speed, the consistent interface, not needing to hack up WINE for games). Still, it's leaps and bounds ahead of what it was last year, so I'm pretty pleased with being able to use a *nix desktop again.
If you don't agree with RH7 then don't use it, use a different distro. I like it because I get the excitement of bleeding edge in the convience of a distro.
-Compenguin
I know for a fact that Mandrake has had XFree86 4 and USB support included as options for a while now, before Red Hat 7 was released.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
[root@brick /root]# uname -a /root]# gcc --version
OpenBSD brick 2.8 GENERIC#3 i386
[root@brick
2.95.3
That doesn't seem very aging to me ...
Last time I used OpenBSD it was gcc 2.7.2.3. Ditto for NetBSD. I know why OpenBSD's developers would pick an older compiler over the latest release, it's more tried and tested. What I was trying to point out to the original poster was the inconsistencies in his arguments.
My RH6.2 install still consistently segfaults if I run 'gtop'
No, you mean gtop - a poorly written program - segfaults. This is like saying that Windows crashed when in fact it was notepad.
As for Windows 2000 running faster than Linux - there must be something seriously wrong with your configuration of Linux. I was recently surprised to find out how appreciably slower Windows was on an identical box to mine. Opening and closing applications, saving and loading files all seem frustratingly slow on the Windows box.
Chris
While it was nice that Michael mentioned that there would be future development for the desktop/workstation, he failed to mention any specifics. Just what will Redhat 7.1 and up hold for the average desktop user? Will it be simply drivers for hardware or some real significant improvements...? As a faithful Redhat user, it makes me wonder.
(this article is also making me think that maybe i should change my fake email addy listed above, as well as my quote below...)
------
Random, useless fact: I type in startx entirely with my left hand.
No, you mean gtop - a poorly written program - segfaults. This is like saying that Windows crashed when in fact it was notepad.
Indeed, but I expect decent quality control from a distribution to avoid programs crashing out of the box. Win2k is very stable for me; it's crashed _once_, when I experimented with leaked NVidia drivers.
As for Windows 2000 running faster than Linux - there must be something seriously wrong with your configuration of Linux.
Fundamentally, the X-layer, with its protocol in between, makes the Linux desktop slower that the highly integrated Win32 system (which also has the benefit of primary testing from driver developers). And I'm sure I could tweak Linux to run ludicrously fast, but I don't really have time to do this...
And in terms of usability, don't even ask how hard it's been to find a decent web browser under Linux (and then, get the fonts rendering decently)...
Don't get me wrong; I make (and enjoy) my share of contributions to OSS, but I also don't have any illusions about how well something like Linux competes in the desktop market.
HOWEVER, perhaps you are looking in the wrong place.
Disc 2:/preview/RPMS/kernel-2.4.0.*
It is all right there. I found it by reading the README :-)
Now perhaps it wasn't in the installer. But then Red Hat makes a commercial distribution, and they have all sorts of users installing Red Hat. Perhaps they were afraid of people installing a kernel that doesn't support everything. I tried it on mine, and the snapshot (pre1, I think) doesn't do Symbios based SCSI cards (my Fireport 40 didn't work).
With GnoRPM, you have an easy way to install it. Granted, installing kernels isn't for the faint of heart, but then neither is 2.4-pre!
Pardon my first post if it was a bit negative, but as you can see, the kernel is right there, right on the CD. And it is documented in the README and features list. That's how I found it. Reading your post about a lack of 2.4 along with all the other Red Hat bashing in this article seemed to indicate that you were just bashing with no knowledge. Maybe you just were misinformed.
Perhaps you don't read READMEs :-)
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
> Red Hat has worked incredibly hard to make Red Hat 7 the best Linux distribution ever,
If it is true, Microsoft don't have anything to worry about - a piece of software so poorly tested that it broke within 30 days of installation.
Compare this with Windows, which has test periods of a year or more for new Windows releases.
Would you really trust your company to a distro that ships a broken compiler?
Just as a point, with linux, simply running every program will show you a large number don't work. We're not talking advanced QA here - it's not like a program that crashes - some of these things don't even work.
It seems they don't even run the most basic test of checking each program (e.g., type vimtutor in Redhat - they renamed vim to vi).
> > [Why the broken compiler?]
> It would have been great if GCC 3.0 had been a released compiler
> At the same time, the latest released version of the compiler, 2.95.2, had a number of significant issues
in a long time.
This doesn't make an eachway-incompatible compiler a good idea. What it does say, however, (his words not mine) is that
(a) the current compiler is a POS
(b) we're using an incompatible, and immediately obsolete compiler.
Doesn't really encourage you to use Linux, rather than say, Windows, *bsd or Solaris, does it - the current compiler sucks.
> Someone on this thread complained that the RPM that we shipped is highly
> patched. Bar two (the sbreg_byte patches), all of those patches are in
> current cvs. Since at some point procedure would not allow us to take a new
> snapshot, those 85 patches are a visible side effect of the QA work that was
done.
These patches are indicative of the unstable state of Linux development, and of the fact that essentially a server product (see Mandrake for a desktop product, not that it's a patch on Windows or Mac) has 2-week beta test periods, rather than months for commercial-strength OSs.
Free Anne Tomlinson!!