RedHat 7.2 Beta: Roswell

Re:Can't wait... by bero-rh · 2001-08-05 07:59 · Score: 5, Informative

If you don't like the compiler, take a look at http://www.bero.org/gcc296.html and then fix your applications.

There are 2 reasons why we're still using 2.96 even though 3.0 has been released.

The first is binary compatibility - gcc 3.0 is not binary compatible with anything else, and we don't break binary compatibility between minor releases.

The second is that 2.96 is way more stable than the 3.0 release (though the current 3.0 branch in CVS works somewhat better). If you've ever tried compiling KDE with gcc 3.0, you'll know what I mean.

I don't think you can come up with any program that uses correct code and doesn't work with gcc 2.96 - if you can, report it so we can fix it. If you can't, don't complain.

The final will include KDE 2.2 and a proper compiler (namely 2.96 ;) ).

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Snidey lies... by Anonymous Coward · 2001-08-05 06:29 · Score: 4, Funny

And I won't even make a snide comment about how I haven't run Red Hat in 2 years!

Yeah apart from on the Slashdot SQL server...

Holy smokes! by Denial+of+Service · 2001-08-05 06:41 · Score: 4, Insightful

The hypocrisy is flying around this place like shit from howler monkeys today. You're all bashing Taco for his outwardly elitist commentary when the exact same thing flows from most of you on a daily basis. Read virtually any thread around here with as must objectivity as you can muster and it's difficult to miss. God forbid anyone suggest that non-OSS software is better for a certain task or ask a seemingly obvious question.

Personally, I congratulate Rob for having the balls to at least be blunt about it instead of the thinly veiled digs routinely employed by the vast majority of you.

Now, whip out the -1, Troll or Offtopic marking for this as fast as possible and sit back satisfied that another dissenting opinion has been eliminated. It's your duty, isn't it?

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Slashdot: News For Zealots. Stuff That's Hypocritical.

Re:And that was what kind of comment? by Teach · 2001-08-05 06:47 · Score: 3, Interesting

"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.)

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Graham "Teach" Mitchell, computer science teacher, Leander HS

Journaling File System by luguvalium2 · 2001-08-05 06:14 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.

Hmm... by itp · 2001-08-05 05:46 · Score: 5, Funny

I guess I won't even make a snide comment about whan an asshole Rob is, then.

Re:Hmm... by LinuxHam · 2001-08-05 07:03 · Score: 3, Insightful

I guess I won't even make a snide comment about whan an asshole Rob is, then

Seriously, that was pretty fuckin' uncalled for. I don't care how insecure RH may be out of the box compared to some other distros, but shit, Linux is Linux, right? You have to secure every distro, and AFAIK, none of them ship with a chrooted apache, bind, and sendmail (or better yet, qmail or postfix). Gimme a break.

Granted, I haven't used it yet, but I have yet to see or hear any evidence as to why apt-get is so much better than rpm -Fvh. Particularly when no commercial apps ship as .deb's. (And yes, some of us have *jobs* where we're well-regarded for specifying closed-source commercial apps for Linux.)

Some people will always find someting to bitch about. Case in point.

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Intelligent Life on Earth

Re:For those that actually care about this stuff.. by bero-rh · 2001-08-05 07:57 · Score: 3, Informative

Actually, any news about a new Redhat for Alpha?

7.1 was released, 7.2 will be. I could tell you the release date, but I'd have to kill you afterwards. ;)

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looks pretty nice.. by josepha48 · 2001-08-05 06:18 · Score: 3, Informative

ext3 support built into the kernel...(as well as other journling file systems)

GNOME 1.4.x.. ... XFree 4.1.x.. nautulus(sp).. mozilla.. new config tools eventually phazing out linuxconf... easy GUI ISP dial tool..

I am running 7.1 right now and except for a few setup issues it is actually pretty good.

Hopefully they'll put mozill 9.3 in or the latest version of mozilla at the time of release...

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Only 'flamers' flame!

Re:Another update? by bero-rh · 2001-08-05 08:29 · Score: 4, Funny

Argh, you caught us! Of course, 7.2 is actually still 1.0, just with a higher version number so people with fat net connections can brag about having more current stuff.

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RedHat denies! by Bender+Unit+22 · 2001-08-05 05:46 · Score: 5, Funny

RedHat now denies that they have released another beta of their distro - Roswell. They say: "In reality it was just another one of our disaster recovery backups that we place offsite every month. There is no evidence that points to that this should have been a distro".
Meanwhile RedHat believers rush to FTP sites, trying to gather evidence that it indeed was a real distro that had entered these servers.

Another coverup? Only time will tell.

Re:Interesting that I got rejected for this story by pjbass · 2001-08-05 05:59 · Score: 3, Informative

Funny, I submitted a story on PCI 3.0 (Intel's Arapahoe interface) to replace the existing PCI bus. His reason for rejecting it was "he had others who already submitted it, and was sitting on those waiting to post it." This was on Thursday of last week... I would have thought people would like to know what's going on for the future of computers, not just when Taco feels he needs to bash RedHat (even though Slackware is superior :-) ).

Re:Can't wait... by Jeremy+Erwin · 2001-08-05 06:55 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.

And that was what kind of comment? by SimplyCosmic · 2001-08-05 05:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

And I won't even make a snide comment about how I haven't run Red Hat in 2 years!

Gee ... That certainly looks to be a snide comment to me. Kind of like the guy who insults your entire family, and then thinks a "just kidding" at the end makes up for it.

Normally I try to ignore the biased comments that creep up in the stories here, but the snippy little comments, regardless of the topic, have become a bit much lately.

Re:And that was what kind of comment? by mikethegeek · 2001-08-05 06:19 · Score: 3, Insightful

"And I won't even make a snide comment about how I haven't run Red Hat in 2 years!"

I agree, this IS horriblly elitist. Yes, Debian is the most "ideologically pure" Linux distro (which I admire), but it's the HARDEST for any non-expert to get any use out of. As a systems engineer, my job is not to impose ideology, but to impliment the best solution, which in the Linux world is Red Hat.

Red Hat is in my experience the best distro for a server, which is what I use 7.1 for. However, I do use Mandrake on my desktop machine, but then that is what Mandrake is INTENDED for.

The press release was REALLY cool, and the name "Roswell" is way cool. Too bad they didn't save that for the final...

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=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance

Re:Impressions by chromatic · 2001-08-05 07:12 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.

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how to invest, a novice's guide

There is no Roswell! by Alien54 · 2001-08-05 05:51 · Score: 5, Interesting

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

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"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"

Official denial: There's no Roswell either by bero-rh · 2001-08-05 08:16 · Score: 3, Funny

Roswell doesn't exist either...

It's ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/beta/roswell

See? It's roswell! ;)

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The explanation for this by bero-rh · 2001-08-05 07:52 · Score: 5, Informative

This happens to be my fault.
Or rather, it's because I didn't have the time to build the packages when the beta was current (if you've ever worked for a linux distributor, you know there are more important things to do a couple of days before a feature freeze...), and I don't think it makes much sense to build them now (now that the beta is pretty much obsolete).

That's precisely why I chose to put a recent CVS snapshot that should be pretty close to the 2.2 release in Roswell.

If you don't like it, send some of your spare time to bero@redhat.com. ;) We haven't come up with a way to work more than 24 hours a day, but I'll keep trying. ;)

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Re:The explanation for this by KidSock · 2001-08-05 14:11 · Score: 3, Insightful

Bero: We haven't come up with a way to work more than 24 hours a day
No! Take it easy. Take your time and make a good product. If you rush it will come out crappy. Keep up the great work but have fun!

Re:usability? by bero-rh · 2001-08-05 09:11 · Score: 3, Interesting

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. ;)

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Re:usability? by HeUnique · 2001-08-05 10:17 · Score: 3, Informative

ok, I'll answer this...

If you are coming from Windows with zero knowledge of Linux - them you might try Mandrake at first. Mandrake is much better suited to people who don't know linux and don't want to mess with the command line...

Now - in terms of usability tests - both GNOME and KDE are doing usability tests. Sun did it for GNOME and the KDE team did look at the Sun results and they did their own on LinuxTag in europe and keep doing so in shows - if you're going to LinuxWorld - then you're welcome to visit the KDE booth and make your remarks - comments are always welcome.

As for your comment "can't see the forest for the trees" - I know exactly what you mean, been there before - and I know lots of others did - and they give advice here and there about usability.

You are of course always welcome to join KDE or GNOME team and give advice or a hint or participate in the desktop enviroment development - people that can point out some wrong GUI decision are always welcome - as long as they are willing to EXPLAIN what is wrong and suggest an alternative (programming knowledge is not necessary)

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Hetz (Heunique)

Re:.2 Redhat releases by Tet · 2001-08-05 12:03 · Score: 3, Interesting

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?

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"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown

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