RedHat 7.2 Beta: Roswell

LinuxNews.pl writes: "Few days ago RedHat uploaded new Beta release of their distro - Roswell. If you want to find out more about it just go to the LinuxNews.pl" And I won't even make a snide comment about how I haven't run Red Hat in 2 years!

Comments

Re:And that was what kind of comment?

[Teach]

"Like a madman shooting firebrands or deadly arrows is a man who deceives his neighbor and says, 'I was only joking!'" -- Proverbs 26:18-19

Sometimes the Bible is surprisingly relevant.

(BTW, this comment is not intended as a troll; it's just that few people know the Bible has anything to say about the whole "just kidding" thing. Though I fear I may spark a long offtopic thread anyway. Apologies in advance if such a thread ensues.)

Journaling File System

[luguvalium2]

I installed it on a spare box a few days ago. The default filesystem is ext3. It also has migrations tools to convert existing ext2 partitions.

Re:Can't wait...

[Jeremy Erwin]

gcc 2.96x isnt even an official release. gcc-3.0 is. gcc-3.01 will follow in August. Why RedHat continues to support "gcc-2.96x" is beyond me.

Here is a list of gcc-3.0 improvements over gcc-2.95.3. As for myself, I really appreciate the libstdc++-3.0 support.

I am less than enthusiatic about the

New warnings for C code that may have undefined semantics because of violations of sequence point rules in the C standard (such as a = a++;, a[n] = b[n++]; and a[i++] = i;), included in -Wall.

OMS/LiVid code, in particular, trips this up.

Re:Impressions

[chromatic]

He's a decent guy in person. I spent a couple of days around him, Chris Dibona, Krow, Pudge, and Patrick G. as well. They're all decent guys, and at least half of them are brilliant.

Maybe it's different 'cuz of my business dealings, but Malda sure wasn't a whiny prima-donna. He's got his opinions and all, but doesn't take himself too seriously (really!). I now have the impression half the stupid article comments are meant to poke fun at himself.

Besides that, he bought a round of drinks one night and supper another. (Of course, he probably did it to pay back Jim Gettys for the years of work on X11.)

I still wouldn't hire him to write software that anyone else would ever maintain, though.

There is no Roswell!

[Alien54]

They even say so in plain english, on this "East European" news site.

;-)

I love the style of the writing of the press release:

Trust no one!

It has come to our attention that rumors are floating regardingthe appearance of a Red Hat Linux beta release, named ROSWELL. We would like to reassure you that there is nothing of the sort. No other object has been misidentified as a Red Hat Linux beta release more often than Rawhide. Rawhide was updated just recently. Reporters probably thought they saw something on an FTP site other than Rawhide, but we assure you, it was Rawhide.

Reports cite that this supposed ROSWELL beta included 4 CDs of software, with such things as a 2.4.6 Linux kernel, XFree86 4.1.0, KDE 2.2pre, GNOME 1.4, and journaling file system support, and included support for both x86 and ia64.

Were any such Red Hat Linux beta release to exist, it would not be recommended for use on mission-critical hardware, and any casualties due to data loss, mutation, swamp gas, radiation, or strange glowing lights with such a release would be scoffed at. Any problems or bugs with such a release would most likely be the effect of passing weather balloons.

These problems would be reported at:

http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/

However, there is no evidence to suggest the actual presence of a ROSWELL beta release. Those who claim otherwise would best not flaunt their naivete by telling anyone that they saw anything other than Rawhide.

Etc.

Too bad we can't say the same about XP

Re:usability?

[bero-rh]

7.2 includes KDE 2.2 and GNOME 1.4 - both of them make life easier for new users.

7.2 includes more packages than any of the previous releases, so chances you'll actually have to compile something on your own are lower.

File permissions etc. are still there (and will stay) - but they're not really complicated once you've understood them. Basically, a file can be read, written and executed (think of the third as renaming a file from test to test.exe on that other operating system - it's done differently, but the effect is pretty much the same) - each of the operations can be allowed or denied. The file managers in KDE and GNOME give you a GUI frontend to changing permissions, so you don't need to remember commands like "chmod o+rw test" or "chmod 4777 /bin/sh".

Try it, and let me know if you're seeing any usability problems - I'd like to fix them, but noticing them after you've used Linux for 10 years is quite tricky. ;)

Re:.2 Redhat releases

[Tet]

gcc 3.0 is not used by default, just included in addition to 2.96

They didn't have an option on this. Red Hat have always maintained binary compatibility throughout major version numbers, so shipping with anything other than 2.96-RH as the default compiler just wasn't an option. Naturally, they've supplied 3.0 for those that want to use it. I can't really fault RH about this -- they've done exactly as they said they would. Can you imagine the uproar if they'd broken their promises on binary compatibility?