RedHat "Fisher" 7.1 Beta Out Now

Cranky Spice (and everyone, and everyone's brother) writes: "Get it here: ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/beta/fisher They've moved to mainstream the 2.4 kernel (surprise), there's an IA64 set of .iso files, the installer can wizard you up a basic firewall config, all the usual minor tweaks and enhancements. Though they say PCMCIA support is still flaky, meaning my VAIO Z505 slimline might not be running Fisher anytime soon. :/" The flood will only increase now -- even PocketLinux was demonstrating 2.4 on their iPAQs today at LinuxWorld.

Comments

Re:"Fisher" - Evolution of a Name

[ajs]

Possible followups to Fisher:

Milton -- Toy companies (followup: Dante/classic authors of religous fiction)
Picasso -- Artists (full circle) (followup: Rembrandt)
Pendragon -- Arthur (followup: Emperor/name for an absolute ruler)
Light -- Names Jesus called himself
Pirate -- Sea-based professions
Clancy -- MFK Fisher and Judith Clancy wrote "Not a Station But a Place" (followup: Lambert/Highlander)
Cougar -- Carnivorous mammals of North America (followup: Firebird/Car)

Have to admit, I'm partial to this last one, but that's just because I'd love the next ".0" release to be called "Phoenix" ;-)

Why don't you guys put some effort into it?

[emil]

What I don't understand is why Red Hat would pour effort into Gnome, but they are so reluctant to assist with the first journaling file system (especially when SUSE has done so much with it).

But then again, if ext3 is in the distribution within 3 months and it includes large file support, I won't be too upset.

It would just be nice to know what you guys are planning. It's not that much of the plan has ever been bad, but I need to plan too.

Re:Why don't you guys put some effort into it?

[bero-rh]

Because most of us think ext3 will be the better choice, and we are putting some effort into that.
One of the main advantages of ext3 is that it can use ext2's already very advanced userland recovery
tools - if something goes wrong that can't be fixed with a simple replay, ext3 won't be in much trouble. Add the fact that you can simply update
ext2->ext3, and you know some (not all) of the
main arguments for this.
But when reiserfs stabilizes, there's no reason not to have 2 (or more, with XFS, JFS, tux2 and all coming along) choices.

Re:Why don't you guys put some effort into it?

[emil]

That does sound pretty awesome. Do you think we could plan on an endorsed Red Hat distribution with a journaling file system integrated into the install by June, at the latest?

I promise to buy the boxed set if so...

Fisher boot disk for those who have floppy and zip

[Chanc_Gorkon]

According to the e-mail about the beta, you need a updated boot disk to install Fisher if you have a floppy and a zip drive. They say the install will fail if you have that combo. They give a like to the bootdisk image, but, however, it's incorrect. The correct links here. Fix this up Red Hat! You also better fix da CD too before ya go to 7.1!! :)

Re:some of the features (if you care)

[jmv]

GCC 2.96-RH

I though they would have had enough complaints to switch back to 2.95.2, but no... Anyone knows whether that a least the same 2.96 (compatible C++ ABI) as the one shipped with 7.0?

I can't wait for gcc 3.0 to be released and the C++ ABI to be frozen for a while.

Mirrors

[DaSyonic]

Fisher, is it is *STILL BETA* is only available on a few mirrors, those of which are:
Indiana, USA:
http://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.edu/pub/redhat/beta /fisher
ftp://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.edu/pub/redhat/beta/ fisher

Minnesota, USA:
ftp://ftp.mn-linux.org/linux/redhat/beta/fisher

Buffalo, New York, USA:
ftp://ftp.cse.buffalo.edu/mirror/Linux/redhat/beta /fisher

Pennsylvania, USA:
http://carroll.cac.psu.edu/pub/linux/distributions /redhat/redhat/beta/fisher
ftp://carroll.cac.psu.edu/pub/linux/distributions/ redhat/redhat/beta/fisher
rsync://carroll.cac.psu.edu/redhat-beta/fisher

Anyone going to use Fisher should of course, goto Bugzilla.redhat.com and give plenty of bug reports and other issues while using this beta version of RedHat.

Re:What's missing

[bero-rh]

Most of this stuff is either in the release or in Powertools.

Re:Naming?

[Matthias Saou]

Guinness and Fisher are both european beers :-)
Free speech and free beer, they did it! ;-)

Matthias

Re:quick quick ..

[josepha48]

sorry let me clarify my initial post of "quick quick..."

After doing a make modules_install, it installed my modules in /lib/modules/2.4.0, which is fine, but the directory structure was all screwey, as well there was a sym link called 'build' back to my /opt/linux-2.4.0 directory. Explain that one? I looked at the changes. I noticed that the whole make menuconfig had completely changed. Some for the better, but it seems that the bttv drivers have somewhat disappeared, or maybe I was not looking in the right place (video). It was just a whole confusing mess, that at that time I did not want to deal with, as well they have just released 2.4.1 a few days ago. By the time that RH 7.2 comes out 2.4.10 shoudl have been released ot maybe later and it should have most of the bugs worked out of it. I can't afford to have my system in a state of mayhem. I need it to much in a stable state. So as I said I'll wait til. 7.2.

I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!

Re:Do they turn unnecessary services off?

[alexburke]

It's a distro aimed at servers. Servers that like lpd, ftpd, and r-services perhaps.

Any admin that installs a server and leaves the r-services enabled (with extremely few specific exceptions) should be tarred and feathered.

This takes care of both rcp and rlogin quite nicely. There's really no reason not to use it instead of the old, horribly insecure r-services.

--

Do they turn unnecessary services off?

[Wakko Warner]

It really makes me cringe when a distro ships with stuff like lpd, ftpd, and the r-services turned on by default, especially when it's a distro aimed at novice users. Please tell me they've wisened up in 7.1?

- A.P.

--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.

Re:Do they turn unnecessary services off?

[teg]

Of course not:

• It's the best gcc-based compiler out there
• It's the most standards conformant gcc-based compiler out there
• The alternatives have big problems wrt. to bugs (some nonfixable without breaking the ABI), portability and performance
• It's actively supported - try reporting a compiler bug to one of the other companies and see if it gets fixed.
• Of course, since maintainaing binary compatiblity through a series is important, going back isn't an option

Technically, there has never been any doubt that this was the correct thing to do. Politically, things should have been handled better.

Re:Do they turn unnecessary services off?

[bero-rh]

We have never shipped with a version that was known crackable at release time. (They're all quite hackable since they're open source - get your terminology right ;) ).

BIND 9.1.0 and wu-ftpd 2.6.1 (both with a couple of bugfixes) are included - no known security bugs at this time.

Re:Do they turn unnecessary services off?

[barracg8]

• Any admin that installs a server and leaves the r-services enabled should be tarred and feathered.

Any admin that installs a server and leaves the r-services enabled should be tarred and gzipped.

Re:Do they turn unnecessary services off?

[jerky]

Yes, they've wised up. From their announcement:

Workstation installs are network-secure (services are off by default)

Re:Do they turn unnecessary services off?

[teg]

Even in previous releases, this stuff wasn't installed if you chose "Workstation"

All of those services are turned off by default in the beta - openssh is up and running, but not much more than that. And there's even a firewall setup during install

Re:Do they turn unnecessary services off?

[redpants]

It's not a distro aimed at novice users. It's a distro aimed at servers. Servers that like lpd, ftpd, and r-services perhaps.

Try rawhide.

[Booker]

Try rawhide. ftp://rawhide.redhat.com

---

PCMCIA flakiness

[cje]

What exactly is meant by "PCMCIA flakiness?" I've not had any problems with PCMCIA devices on my Linux laptop (a Dell Latitude.) The cardmgr daemon detects the insertion and removal of PC cards just fine, and handles them appropriately. The only anomaly that I can find is if I boot up the system with the CD-ROM drive attached to the unit, and yank the card out sometime afterwards -- when I shut the system down, I get some error messages when PCMCIA services are being shut down. This doesn't affect the shutdown.

Are there general Linux PCMCIA issues that I need to be aware of?

Re:PCMCIA flakiness

[warpeightbot]

Not that I know about. When I upgraded my Emperor BlackPerl Z (the Sony Vaio Z505 mentioned in the main article, custom-installed with Red Hat) to Kernel 2.4.0, I had to tweak around with the modules.conf and pcmcia.conf settings to get it to recognize the PCMCIA controller, but once I did that, it's been solid as a brick since it came out. It boots faster, DHCP's faster, and is generally the high quality of work we've come to expect from Linus. On the .0 version, no less. I'll get .1 in a few days.

--
See, you not only have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux, you have to be a sneaky bastard too ;-)
-- Linus Torvalds

Re:PCMCIA flakiness

[teg]

Some PCMCIA cards won't work anymore (kernel-related)... There was a lot of changes to PCMCIA since 2.2.x, it's now part of the mainstream kernel.

Upgrades have a very slim chance of working - you'll get your machine upgraded, but networking is broken afterwards.

Re:Redhat 7 with Oracle on SMP box ?

[the eric conspiracy]

experience with RedHat and Oracle ?

Oracle on RedHat is VERY version specific. Because of the install process you need to run a specific version of RedHat to get Oracle to install/work properly.

Right now that means RedHat 6.2. Sure, there are patches and other stuff that MICHT get Oracle to work on 7.x, but they are not reliable.

There is a LONG bug report in the Redhat bugzilla site that describes the situation with Oracle and RedHat 7 very well.

It's not RedHat's fault - it's the way Oracle links to glib on install.

Re:Why use Linux at all?

[ndfa]

OK so i have to clear up things a bit more i guess... We do have a QA setup which is pretty much a replica (outside of load balancing and failover drives). So the reason to use Linux is simple, this box is going to be used by the developers for pure development,and its basic reason for being is to be a Database server for the developers, there will be some other 2450 Dell, and Sun 420 boxes that are actually going to run the App/Development servers... developer workstations are pretty lean. so all this box has to be able to do is beat the price/performance of a sun box, be relatively easy to maintain and show good uptime... all of which have been the case with a Dell 620 (Dual Xeon, 1Gig running Slackware). Now I am beginning to think that win2k would be an interesting test... will post once its done

Re:"Fisher" - Evolution of a Name

[grappler]

There should be a project that starts with the codename "Phoenix", branches off of it, and returns to Phoenix for every .0 release in its development cycle, in a never-ending cycle of rebirth.

French Mirror (i386 ISOs only)

[AftanGustur]

You can grab the 2 ISOs from here:
(you might want to hold down shift while you clock)

fisher-i386-disc1.iso

and

fisher-i386-disc2.iso

--
Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?

So here we are...

[Brian Stretch]

...late at night, Searching for Beta Fisher...

Naming?

[Booker]

So where did "Fisher" come from...? What's the connection, anyone?

---

Re:Naming?

[Vodak]

It's name connection is Amy Fisher. and it's Redhat's sick little joke how they will screw
the LiNUX Community.

:)

Alec Guinness -- Carrie Fisher

[jcc]

<CODE>Duh!</CODE>

Re:The Announcement from Redhat

[RedWizzard]

My favourite line from the press release:

X and KDE have known failures on Itanium.

Re:will it

[Micah]

*sigh*

Hasn't it been proven enough yet that GCC 2.9.6 + the latest patches is by far the most standardized and bug free version of GCC yet?

Bero from Red Hat, among a few others, have beaten this to a pulp. The only people with problems are those who have written code that takes advantage of old GCC bugs!

And we won't have real binary compatibility until GCC 3 comes out. So why not have the best we can have now?

Re:some of the features (if you care)

[bero-rh]

It's an improved version of 2.96, using the same ABI. We don't break ABI compatibility in a minor release.

There are many reasons why this decision was right:

• With all the bugfixes we have now, 2.96 is more stable than 2.95.3. Almost all of the compiler "bugs" reported in the last couple of months were actually buggy code that older gccs accepted because they are not standards compliant.
• It's more standards compliant (maybe not in terms of what most others are shipping, but definitely in terms of ISO C99 and ISO C++98)
• The ABI issue is not as much of a deal as some people would want you to believe. It affects C++ only, and can be circumvented by linking libstdc++ statically or simply including the libstdc++ from Red Hat Linux and installing it if it isn't already there. This won't break anything - different soname, no conflicts
• The generated code quality is much better, especially optimizations
• ia64 is supported

If you have any objections to the compiler, report the problems you are seeing rather than complaining without having tried it, the way many people seem to do lately.

Re:Have they integrated ReiserFS into the install?

[bero-rh]

It's not integrated in the install (yet), but the kernel modules and userspace tools are included.

This is because we don't consider it stable enough for real production use at this time (though it's slowly starting to get there). Right now, it works quite reliably (unless you're NFS-exporting it) as long as everything can be fixed with journal replays.
If you're using reiserfs and you have a hardware or driver problem leading to a corruption that can't be fixed by a simple replay, you're pretty much on your own. ext2/ext3 can recover from some of this.

Re:Have they integrated ReiserFS into the install?

[bero-rh]

Actually we're including 2.4.0-ac11 (which has it) with a couple of extra patches.

It's not offered as an option during an install though; look for my other post on the thread for the reasoning.

Re:RedHat will use ext3. ReiserFS in your dreams

[bero-rh]

We're including it to give users a choice - choice can't hurt, and if you keep good backups, reiserfs is good at handling lots of small files (e.g. news spools). And, of course, it makes it easier to "upgrade" from certain other distributions. ;)

Re:Performance gain

[bero-rh]

No exact numbers, but there will be a performance gain because of kernel 2.4, more glibc optimizations, and some compiler patches improving code quality and optimizations.
Since we're using the compiler to compile the distribution, the compiler patches affect you even if you are not a developer.

Re:A small wish

[bero-rh]

It works - so does the version from 7.0 updates.
Simply run "up2date -l" or go ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/updates/

Redhat + Mandrake

[Beowulf_Boy]

Equals Mandrate!
No seriosly,
I wish Redhat would be as easy to set-up as Mandrake (it installed Glide and Mesa for me, can't get much better than that!)
I was never able to actually get Mesa to compile on my system (Don't tell me how! I'm sick of it by now) But mandrake had it compilled for me the first time I booted my system.
It also did all kinds of things like installed
Tux-racer (I thought it was cool) and setup my cd-burner.
I wish Redhat would do this without the bloatyness of Mandrake, as mandrake automatically setup Apache, and a bunch of other crapp (what the heck is Zope anyways?)

"Fisher" - Evolution of a Name

[IntelliTubbie]

RedHat name evolution: (Most of this is stolen from this post)

Version - Name - Tie-together
3.0.3 - Picasso
3.0.4 - Rembrandt - Painters
4.0 - Colgate - Toothpastes
4.1 - Vanderbilt - Universities
4.2 - Biltmore - The Vanderbilts lived in Biltmore Estate
4.8 - Thunderbird - Hotels near the San Jose airport
4.9 - Mustang - Ford automobiles
5.0 - Hurricane - WWII fighters
5.1 - Manhattan - Mixed drinks
5.2 - Apollo - Theaters
5.9 - Starbuck - Battlestar Galactica characters
6.0 - Hedwig - Starbuck MN & St Hedwig TX are small towns
beta - Lorax - Hedwig Godiva & the Lorax are Dr Seuss characters
6.1 - Cartmann - MS Word macro-viruses (or cartoon characters)
beta - Piglet - Cartoon characters
6.2 - Zoot - Dr Piglet & Sir Zoot are occupants of Castle Anthrax
beta - Pinstripe - Types of suits
7.0 - Guinness - Beer (Guinness is a stout, Pinstripe is an ale)
beta - Fisher - Star Wars actors
7.1 - ? - ?

Maybe 7.1 final release will be named after a chess player ... Any other guesses?

Cheers,
IT

Re:"Fisher" - Evolution of a Name

[miniver]

Just as long as it ain't named Buttafuoco ... for Amy and Joey, of course...
Are you moderating this down because you disagree with it,

quick quick ..

[josepha48]

Download those 1000 Megs and report all those bugs and .. and ..

Oh who am I kidding.. if you download this make sure you know what you are doing. This is a beta and that means more bugs than a full release.

I.E. BACK UP YOUR SYSTEM!!!

Personally I'll continue waiting for 7.2 before I upgrade my 6.2 system. I imagine that they may be including 2.4 and I had problems with that already, just installing the modules. It did run though.

I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!

A Sweepstake

[bfree]

How about a sweepstake where everyone has to guess the number of security bug days open in the first year of the first default 2.4 releases of slackware, debian, suse, redhat and mandrake. My guess goes for 40,32,127,1357,220. What's the prize /.?

Re:some of the features (if you care)

[teg]

We don't ship 2.95.3 - we ship a snapshotted, qaed and fixed brach from the gcc tree and call it "2.96RH". Mandrake, OTOH, ships 2.95.3 (no such thing) - but noone cares.

Re:Before I grab a copy, I've got a question . . .

[bero-rh]

s/broken/great/

I don't think anyone who has actually tried one of the later gcc 2.96 releases (>= -69, the version from 7.0 updates) would call it broken.

If you have any actual issues with it, report them at bugzilla.
If you don't, don't call it broken.

Re:DevFS

[bero-rh]

We're shipping with devfsd (the userland tool) and initscripts that will handle it (e.g. start devfsd if devfs is being used), so if you want to enable devfs, all you have to do is recompiling the kernel.

Re:make or break

[bero-rh]

Our release schedule was ready quite a while before we knew when 2.4.0 would be released, so no, 2.4 doesn't create a rush to ship.

What do you mean by "more compliance with standards"? I guess you're talking about the compiler, in which case you actually mean "less compliance with standards" - 2.96 is the first gcc version that is fully ISO C99 and almost-fully ISO C++98 compliant.

Re:Redhat must be on Microsoft's payroll now

[bero-rh]

The beta is not intended to be used in a production environment.

Including prereleases IN A BETA makes perfect sense if we have reason to believe that the final will be out in time for our final or the version officially designated as beta is actually at least as stable as the latest version released as stable (tar and fileutils are perfect examples of the latter.)

The purpose of a beta release is to get bug reports and figure out what needs to be changed.
We don't have much of a use for, say, bug reports on KDE 2.0.1 if we know for sure we'll be shipping 2.1 (which has a lot of bugfixes [and probably also some new bugs]) in the final - we'd rather help the release we intend to ship to stabilize.

Make that...

[Booker]

http://heroinewarrior.com/bcast2000.php3

---

Redhat 7 with Oracle on SMP box ?

[ndfa]

We just got a Dell 6450 with 4 proc's and 4 Gigs of RAM to run Oracle on. I took a lot of work to get the box here, we have been running mostly on Sun 420R's and I think that for development Linux should be used... convincing anyone on the use of Redhat for production is a very tough sell.. thats the next step....
Now the question is that I have been a user of Slackware for 4 years now and am very happy with it, heck its running Oracle on a dual proc box alread! BUT i have to put RedHat on this, cause of the support option and wanted to know if someone else out there has had a good experience with RedHat and Oracle ? I really want to use 2.4 cause of the Smp support amongst other things......

I would not move to redhat on my own boxes or any of the smaller servers, BUT on the other hand i want to get Linux on this box, and that means i have to play ball with others and move to redhat!
Got any advice ? Links to sites ? stories ? ?

Re:Redhat 7 with Oracle on SMP box ?

[ndfa]

well i was thinking about running Win2k on it, and to tell you the truth i dont have a great reason not tooo.....are you running on a similar config ? and were you using 2.4, cause 4 cpu smp is supposed to be much better with the new kernel.....

Re:gcc 3.0???

[NonSequor]

GCC is in a "slush state" (semi-freeze I guess). They say they hope to have it ready by the end of Q1 of this year. I think I may be happier to see GCC 3 than I was to see the 2.4 kernel. GCC 3 has optimizations for my Athlon which will make me really happy. I suppose one could use the AthlonGCC patch for now, but I don't trust it. It was written as a simple experiment (not something meant to be actually used) and the original author points out that some of the benchmarks suggest that something was compiled wrong. Someone else has started a project to continue development of this patch but all he has to show for it is a web page (athlonlinux.org) and an empty Sourceforge project. Looks like GCC 3 will be ready before AthlonGCC actually works properly.

"Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
(I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)

Re:RedHat will use ext3. ReiserFS in your dreams

[be-fan]

Uh, maybe because Linux isn't about stupid Microsoft-ish tricks?

Re:Finally...

[bero-rh]

On a related note, we've patched timidity++ and xmms to support the aRts (KDE sound system) backend [the release notes don't mention this, it's in the "not really major changes" category].

Re:some of the features (if you care)

[bero-rh]

You guys have been shipping the patches you've been making to correct the code and get stuff to compile with 2.96 back to the original authors of the software, correct?

Sure. Most of them have added the patches to their current versions. For example, the current KDE CVS tree compiles without any problems (KDE is a good example because it's C++ - and C++ is much stricter than C about many things).

There are some (few) other maintainers who didn't like the patches because they considered them to be workarounds for a "broken" compiler - there's nothing we can do about those, except for waiting for them to realize it's not the case when gcc 3.0 is released.

Re:some of the features (if you care)

[jmv]

2.95.2 is an *official* gcc release, which is also OK for a kernel. It's been the compiler for mandrake 7.0 to 7.2 (don't know about other distros). The 2.96 kernel shipped with RH 7 is not official at all. There has never been a gcc 2.96 release.

At least, they could have chosen something that's binary compatible (I'm thinking C++ ABI) with 2.95.2.

Posting this from Fisher

[Chanc_Gorkon]

I wanted to post what I thought of Fisher already. It's pretty good, although a bit early to determine stability (ask me in a few days.). The GNOME install is fairly new. It even included Sawfish 0.36 which just came out recently. The firewall configuration on install is cool, especially since I am not experienced. The installer has a slightly revised look. There are a few missing applets from the install (like GnomeICU and a few others), but nothign major. X configured just fine with Anaconda. Kernel 2.4 installs by default. Version number assigned was 7.0.90. Mozilla 0.7 is included also. So far, I have yet to need to download much of anything. I haven't even downloaded Ximian GNOME yet. KDE still is annoying to me, so I am a GNOMER. KDE's arts just doesn't work for me (esound works fine, as well as the OSS stuff). To me, an OS without sound, is, well a bad one. Now, my sound issues may be related to the hacked up driver I have to use on my Vortex card. Hopefully Creative will bring out new drivers. Else, I may have to get a Creative Live card. Anyone else get the problem with arts stuttering like crazy when playing sound? Anyway, good job redhat! 2.4 rules!

Re:gcc

[bero-rh]

2.96 can compile 2.4.x kernels and is used to compile kernels.

kgcc remains there for people who want to use 2.2.x kernels. (gcc 2.96 not being able to compile kernel 2.2.x is a kernel issue, not a gcc issue).

Have they integrated ReiserFS into the install?

[starseeker]

I'm hoping that that option shows up soon. It would make it a great deal easier to use ReiserFS

2.4.1 is out! with reiserfs

[Maldivian]

and reiserfs is in it. It came out today. I've been having a stable reiserfs system since the pre kernels of 2.4.1. This is an extreemly good kernel and i recommend migration to reiserfs. at once.

Re:gcc

[pjl5602]

-Please- tell me they've abandoned the horrid gcc '2.9.6'/separate 'kgcc' nastiness from 7.0.

If you had read the release announcement, you would have seen that they are using 2.96-RH which one could assume is a RedHat branch of the GCC 2.96 tree.&nbsp So, if 2.96 cannot compile the kernel, then yeah, they will still have the kgcc "nastiness" (although I don't see what the problem is with it -- they used 2.96 for resons that I can't recall at the moment.)

some of the features (if you care)

[jacobito]

• General system improvements:
• Itanium(tm) architecture support is included
• Installer has many improvements and fixes, including basic firewall configuration
• Workstation installs are network-secure (services are off by default)
• Japanese support fully integrated
• Graphical kickstart configuration program included

• Core system components:
• kernel 2.4.0 + many fixes
• glibc 2.2.1
• XFree86 4.0.2
• XFree86 3.3.6 X servers included for maximum hardware compatibility
• KDE 2.1 beta release snapshot
• GNOME libs 1.2.8, core 1.2.4
• GCC 2.96-RH

• Expanded hardware support:
• Improved USB
• IDE UltraDMA 66/100
• IEEE1394 (FireWire(tm))
• ATM networking
• WiFI wireless ethernet cards
• ESS Maestro3 and newer Crystal audio

• System service changes:
• New network-transparent configuration subsystem
• Configuration tools for BIND, Apache, and printing

• A sampling of package upgrades:
• GIMP 1.2.1
• Tcl/Tk 8.3.2
• BIND 9.1.0
• Pine 4.32
• Vim 6.0 prerelease
• XMMS 1.2.4

• A sampling of Package additions:
• OGG/Vorbis audio encoder/decoder
• Mozilla

Re:some of the features (if you care)

[jmv]

The ABI issue is not as much of a deal as some people would want you to believe

Well, it means that since I develop my (C++) software with Mandrake 7.2 (gcc 2.95.2), and I *need* to make shared libraries (plugins), RH 7 people cannot use the binaries I build. That's the deal.

Re:Just as I get 7.0 working all nice..

[killbill]

Another data point... I agree. I have pounded on every Red Hat release since 4.2, and it was my experience that 7.0 was the best yet. My only problem was with the PCMCIA installer boot disk and a PCMCIA cdrom, but a network install is probably a better approach for me anyway.

OH! That just made me think... you still listening Bero? How about a SSH (scp) network install option? Easier to set up and get running (on the machine serving up the files) then FTP, HTTP, NFS, or rlogin... Probably thinner and easier on the client as well.

Anyway, 7.0 was better then 6.2 (which I was very dissapointed in) in every regard.

Bill

Why use Linux at all?

[Wee]

I would not move to redhat on my own boxes or any of the smaller servers, BUT on the other hand i want to get Linux on this box, and that means i have to play ball with others and move to redhat!

So, I have to ask... Why use Linux at all? You have an Intel SMP development machine. Production boxes run Solaris (I assume, since you said they are 420Rs). Presumeably, you want to develop something on this new Dell and then move it into production on your Sun(s). Why not use another Sun for development? There's a lot of satisfaction in knowing that your dev machines are identical to your production systems (QA becomes orders of magnitude easier, for example). You just have to use Linux? Is it the right OS for the job, or an OS for the job?

I don't mean to sound like a shill for Sun, but this post struck me as odd. Everyone needs a machine they can re-image if their "I wrote this, and it kinda did this instead of this..." software dorks the OS, and Linux is more than fine. Preferrable, even. You might even run an home-built, buggier-than-a-rainforest MP3 server off that same "pre-dev" Linux box (I did for many years), or whatever other wacky things you have going on after seven p.m. But why does Linux have to go on this box? Is it because you have the box already and it's an x86? I'd just really want a dev machine to match a production machine. If at all possible, that is. And it might not be for you.

I guess I'm just missing the point. And I don't know enough about what you do, where, how, etc., etc. So I guess just ignore me... :-)

-B

Thanks Bero!

[Thomas A. Anderson]

I think it's important at this point to thank Bero for posting all these replies to slashdot. There's nothing better than getting the viewpoint of someone from the company directly - I rarely ever see this.

Long live open-source!

Just as I get 7.0 working all nice..

[proxima]

I decided to use Linux on my laptop, and wanted the closest I can get to "latest and greatest" because it's not a production computer - I use it now almost exclusively for development. Anyway, I chose RedHat 7.0 because it had most of the features I wanted - and I've had a fair amount of experience with previous versions of RH, understanding its basic newbie-ish install but most importantly knowing how to get my hardware and software working.

What I didn't like about RH 7.0 was the long list of updates and changes I had to do just to get it to a reasonably secure workstation. Of course I did a custom install, picking few packages for my old and small HD, but RH insisted on turning on by default a few packages I decided to install in case I needed them later (NFS, sendmail, etc.). Not to mention the mandatory updates to glibc and all the development packages (essential to the purpose of Linux on the laptop). Finally, I just today compiled 2.4.1 and got all my hardware to work (including one clunky old Soundblaster external CD-ROM that runs off my docking bay). I'm overall very impressed with Linux's support for my laptop hardware (automatically detected video card, etc). My first experience with PCMCIA under Linux was nice too - with a very generic 10 base T PC card to connect to my home network - works like a charm).

So while RH 7.0 was supposedly so bug-filled, it wasn't too hard to update everything to get to almost exactly where 7.1 is now. For those who were turned away from 7.0 hearing it was too buggy and too bloated, those have not been my experiences at all. I look forward to downloading 7.1 when it's officially released to install on any new systems (like the one I have at work, still running 6.1).

Let's hope RH keeps the tradition of making a great .1 release (I loved 6.1).