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Red Hat 7.2 Released

Spirit writes "Red Hat has anounced the release of Version 7.2 distribution with Gnome 1.4 and Nautilus, default ext3 fliesystem and according to ZDnet migration from LILO to GRUB" Updated by HeUnique:There are some issues to note before upgrading: The kernel that comes with the RH 7.2 is heavily patched 2.4.7 and has been tested quite heavily on fully loaded Linux boxes - so the recommendation is to use it

If you're upgrading from the previous Red Hat 7.1 and you're using Ximian GNOME, then you might want to erase all Ximian GNOME RPMS (use the command: rpm -e `rpm -qa | grep -i ximian` --nodeps to erase the RPMS). Red Hat's GNOME RPMS has been more tested then Ximian's one and there is a conflict between them. You cannot use Red-Carpet on Redhat 7.2 as it will fail with the RPM libraries.

These are the most critical notes about Redhat 7.2. You might want to read the README & the Release-notes which appears on the 1st ISO image.

Oh, and if you already installed it - then have some fun with the new un-official RPMS from Enigma's section of FreshRPMS

54 of 669 comments (clear)

  1. to forestall the inevitable -- why not reiserfs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    To forestall the inevitable questions
    -- why not reiserfs, xfs, jfs, etc.

    First look at the total feature
    list of ext3 and compare, in particular the
    compatibility (forwards AND backwards) with ext2.

    There may or may not be better candidates for
    a fs, but there are certainly none better for
    a default install.

  2. First impression by geirt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have been playing with the 7.2 betas (roswell) since it came out, and with the 7.2 release for about a week now.

    I am very pleased with Redhat 7.2, it has given me very few problems, and it was the first Linux distribution that installed into my laptop without any tweaks.

    The main enhancements (as visible by the user):

    Grub instead of lilo (but you can still use lilo if you want to ..). Grub is a great boot loader, similar to the "boot monitor" of real Unix hardware. Grub understands the file system, so you do not need to reinstall Grub every time you update your kernel (like you have to with lilo). Once you are in the grub boot promt, you can boot any OS on your system (eg. from a floppy)

    Mozilla and Nautilus: (I am a gnome user)

    Mozilla 0.9.2.1 is a rather old release, but it was the release chosen by Netscape for NS6.1 so it is quite good. Nautilus is 1.0.4 + a lot of patches from RH (Alan Cox ?) to speed things up. Natilus is still somewhat slow, but I don't use file managers so much, so I don't care. I think that you should have at least 128 MB ram to run it, is was slow on one of my test machines with 64MB ram and a sub optimal disk system. Seeing the speed and stability improvements of Mozilla in the last 6 months, I am quite confident that Nutilus will be a great file manager (++) in a short time frame. It is a very good "eye candy", and impresses every Windows user seeing it. If you for one reason or another, don't like Nautilus, use the good old GNU Midnight Commander instead (yes it is on the CD).

    Kernel, gcc, ptyhon, etc

    The kernel is 2.4.7 + a lot of patches. Since RedHat 7.1 is at kernel 2.4.9-6 already, I believe that we will see an updated kernel soon. The main compiler is RedHats own 2.96 + modifications, and python is at 1.5.2-35. You will find gcc 3.01 and python 2.1.1 on the CD which can be installed separately. RedHat 8.0 will probably use these as default.

    Postfix, Apache:

    Redhat has dropped support for Postfix (a sendmail replacement), which used to be on the Powertools CD. I really don't know why, but I hope that the next RedHat release will fix this major bug. Apache is the rock solid 1.3.20.

    Executive Summary:

    RH7.2 is a polished good distribution. Since it is a .2 version, RedHat is going to support it for a looong time, and it will become the first choice for many system administrators for serious linux servers (that is, until 8.2 is released).

    --

    RFC1925
    1. Re:First impression by bero-rh · · Score: 5, Informative

      Redhat has dropped support for Postfix (a sendmail replacement), which used to be on the Powertools CD. I really don't know why

      It's because Powertools was dropped, and everything on Powertools that conflicts with something on a main CD (e.g. you can't install postfix and sendmail on the same system) had to go because at this time, the installer doesn't handle conflicting packages (breaking the "Everything" install isn't nice).

      This is likely to get fixed in a future release (no promises though, it's not my decision [I'm all for postfix]).

      Those who prefer it can grab the current official postfix package from rhcontrib. I'll open up the 7.2 section there later today.

      Since it is a .2 version, RedHat is going to support it for a looong time

      <obligatory "we don't preannounce releases" rant>
      What makes you think the next release will be 8.0? ;)
      </rant>

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    2. Re:First impression by Alan+Cox · · Score: 5, Informative

      Not me - I did a bit of benchmarking but that is my sole contribution to nautilus. Lots of other folks both inside and outside of RH did all the work.

    3. Re:First impression by cybrthng · · Score: 4, Funny

      Don't tell me it will be RedHat XP :)

  3. Nicking arteries by RasputinAXP · · Score: 3, Funny
    From the ZDNet Article:
    Red Hat 7.2 isn't quite a knife in the heart of Windows yet. However, we can't help but feel that it will certainly nick a major artery.

    I nicked a major artery this morning shaving. Those things hurt pretty badly and bleed profusely.

    I hope to see Bill Gates with many little pieces of toilet paper on his cheeks at the XP launch.

    1. Re:Nicking arteries by Rogerborg · · Score: 5, Insightful
      • Red Hat 7.2 isn't quite a knife in the heart of Windows yet. However, we can't help but feel that it will certainly nick a major artery.

      Uh, wait. Without wishing to troll, have you read the list of "things you should know" above? At the retail / desktop/ even OEM level, this is not what people want to hear. They want to hear "Put the CD in the drive. Switch on the machine. Select your language and time zone. Wait."

      I think that WinXP has goofed big time with its registration requirements. Now is a great opportunity for GNU/Linux distros to make a big play for the desktop, but they'll gain share only by being idiot proof, because (let's be honest) if we're talking about "knifing the heart" of the Windows market, we're really talking about people who are terrified of anything that comes with a README.

      --
      If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
    2. Re:Nicking arteries by duffbeer703 · · Score: 3, Funny

      What is GNU/Linux?

      Is that some sort of extention of EMACS written is LISP??

      --
      Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
  4. Without Fail... by Knunov · · Score: 5, Funny

    Everytime I download a distro, within a week a new one comes out. I just finished downloading all 3 CD ISOs for Red Hat 7.1 and Tools and now they release 7.2

    I'm switching to FreeBSD. Those guys update MUCH more slowly...

    --
    Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
    1. Re:Without Fail... by Baki · · Score: 3, Informative

      Not really, but gradually and constantly: There is a -current and a -stable CVS branch. You can follow the -stable CVS branch to stay completely uptodate all the time. Nothing ever breaks except on major announcements and big MFC's (merge from current) that are announced. At those times it may be necessary to revisit your config files in /etc (which can be automated with 'mergemaster').

      Thus, you never have to download a new version, but you can always download incremental diffs (daily) that patch the complete source tree (cvsup). I have not reinstalled my FreeBSD system in 5 years time, yet it is 100% clean (all add-ons and optional parts to into /usr/local and don't spoil the main OS) and up to date.
      (cd /usr/src; make world from time to time).

    2. Re:Without Fail... by Arandir · · Score: 3, Informative

      And now to rebut...

      ext3 is just as robust, and doesn't require a fsck at all after a power cycle.

      The fsck on a softupdates volume is blazingly fast. To be sure, ext3 is a nice file system, but that doesn't mean all the other ones are crap.

      OpenOffice for Linux doesn't run, and native AbiWord in 4.4-release doesn't start. Koffice import filters for .doc don't seem to be working either.

      Use the native OpenOffice. I didn't have any problems with AbiWord. And KOffice filters are identical under Linux and FreeBSD.

      up2date takes care of all that for in-distro packages.

      Yeah, for the in-distro packages. But that ignores the major flaw of RPM: you have to use RPM for everything or you screw up your system. With FreeBSD you can use packages, ports, or compile by hand, and nothing gets out of sync.

      Except maybe just doing a half-hour upgrade and getting back to work, rather than compiling all day ...

      Ever heard of multitasking? Compile everything in the background while you work in the foreground. Plus, if you cvsup once a week, you're never so far behind that you need to compile "all day". Or better yet, if you're into precompiled packages, just upgrade the packages!

      Nautilus, f.e., doesn't even start in 4.4's GNOME distribution.

      I didnt have any problem at all with Nautilus (other than the fact that it's slower than molasses).

      On the server side, you can't just install fbsd and use it as a NAT or enable quotas without recompiling the kernel.

      Huh? A coworker of mine installed FreeBSD "out of the box" for his server and had it up and running in half an hour. He never had to recompile anything. I don't know much about NAT (except that my coworker got it running without recompiling), but quotas are already in the shipping kernel.

      FreeBSD just takes more work.

      It does require that you use more than two brain cells, and it does require you to make some sort of effort to get it installed and administered. But since when has that been a drawback in the Unix world?

      --
      A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
    3. Re:Without Fail... by Arandir · · Score: 3, Insightful

      4.2 in 11/2000, 4.3 in 4/2001 and 4.4 in 9/2001. And, none of these are significantly different.

      This is an advantage. Some people don't want a completely redesigned OS every six months. Some just want the stable OS they've always been using plus bug fixes, new hardware support, etc. You won't see anything significantly different until 5.0. And after that you won't see anything significantly different until 6.0.

      This is a Good Thing(tm).

      --
      A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
  5. been in stores for a while by banky · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This has been at my local CompUSA (Fairfax, VA) for over a week. Anyone have any ideas as to why?

    --
    ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
  6. Re:What a crapfest by |DeN|niS · · Score: 5, Informative
    For example, they're using ext3. Blech. It is a journaling system tacked on to the old ext2 system, which seems a little too much like the evolution of FAT to me.

    FAT? Hardly! ext3 uses is built on extension hooks designed into ext2, allowing you to mount ext3 partitions with an ext2-only kernel (of course no journalling in that case). Also, it takes a few seconds to "convert" ext2 to ext3, can't get easier than that! :-)

    Personally I find it impressive that the foresight in the ext2 design allowed for ext3 to evolve the way it did with the backwords compatibility

    And hey, it just works. Performance is like ext2, except you never have to fsck anymore when the machine doesn't shut down properly. And your ext2 bootfloppies still work, you don't have to reformat your partitions first, and did I mention it just works? :-)

    So why not? ReiserFS would be more suited for news spool and squid cache partitions, but if you just want your same old system except for the fsck's, ext3 is the way to go.

  7. Re:Name... by joestar · · Score: 3, Informative

    "Enigma" - wasn't it the name of this German machine that was used to encrypt secret messages during WWII ?

  8. Re:Is RH including proprietary sw these days? by Alan+Cox · · Score: 5, Informative

    gcc 2.96-RH is all open , always has been. Gcc 3 is not quite compatible so wouldnt be appropriate for the base tools for a new release. It is on the CD though if you want it

    The only nonfree stuff on the RH distro should be netscape, and we recommend mozilla 8)

  9. Re:GRUB ? by bero-rh · · Score: 5, Troll
    Because it's better. Some of the reasons why grub was chosen:
    • Possibility to boot a kernel or device not listed in the boot manager config - great for debugging
    • Don't need to reinstall grub after updating a kernel
    • Better support for non-Linux OSes
    • No more blocky 320x200 boot graphics
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  10. Re:GRUB ? by Haeleth · · Score: 5, Informative

    GNU GRUB != GRUB. I don't know which version this is, but RMS will be annoyed if they've left off a GNU... :D

    From the GNU GRUB Faq:

    1. How does GNU GRUB differ from Erich's original GRUB?
    GNU GRUB is the successor of Erich's great GRUB. He couldn't work on GRUB because of some other tasks, so the current maintainer Gordon Matzigkeit took over the maintainership, and opened the development in order for everybody to participate it.

    Technically speaking, GNU GRUB has many features that are not seen in the original GRUB. For example, GNU GRUB can be installed on UNIX-like operating system (i.e. GNU/Linux) via the grub shell /sbin/grub, it supports Logical Block Address (LBA) mode that solves the 1024 cylinders problem, and TAB completes a filename when it's unique. Of course, many bug fixes are done as well, so it is recommended to use GNU GRUB.

  11. Think mirrors! by French+Thias · · Score: 5, Informative
    I've put up a "known to be fully synced" mirror list here :

    http://freshrpms.net/misc/enigma.html

    Also, don't forget to go get all the "missing" goodies (xine, lame, nessus...) from http://enigma.freshrpms.net/

    Happy download! :-)

    Matthias

  12. Stress test time for the ftp servers. by Alan+Cox · · Score: 5, Informative

    UK folks should find
    ftp://zeniiib.linux.theplanet.co.uk/pub/distribu ti ons/redhat/7.2

    nice and fast (its the new linux.org.uk test box)

    Alan

  13. Re:step softly by s.a.m · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It has been my experience with RH that the .2 releases are the most stable and contains less bugs than the .0 or .1 releases. I've run servers with the 6.2 and the 7.0 release and the 6.2 always provides more stability than the 7.0

    Of course I never jump on the bandwagon as soon as something is released. I always wait around for ppl to say something and hear complaints.
    The only exception to this is Debian, apt-get upgrade using Sid and haven't had a problem yet ^__^

  14. Red Hat is not synonymous with Linux. by Bowie+J.+Poag · · Score: 3, Insightful



    But it may just as well be.

    I've been using RH since 2.0.27 on a 386SX/12, and like many of you, have stuck with Red Hat in one form or another for many years. However, recently Red Hat's distrib has begun to suffer, largely because of oddball decisions like the ones we're seeing in 7.2.

    LILO has been replaced with GRUB. Why? So we can confuse things even more for the people who we're trying to attract to the platform? If it aint broke, don't fix it, gang. You have an installed user base that knows the ins and outs of LILO, and has for years..Now that knowledge has been deprecated. Books will have to be rewritten, headaches arise, the whole nine yards will unfold as people have to sit down and digest yet another piece of Linux minutia..Why bother. LILO works. Sometimes switching one working part with another for only minimal gains is NOT a good idea..the situation doesn't mandate such changes.

    Cheers, and yes, PROPAGANDA is still running,

    --
    Bowie J. Poag

    1. Re:Red Hat is not synonymous with Linux. by bero-rh · · Score: 5, Interesting
      oddball decisions like the ones we're seeing in 7.2

      Such as?

      LILO has been replaced with GRUB. Why?

      Because it has a load of advantages we consider more important than staying with what we've shipped forever.

      • grub knows your filesystem. This means you can boot kernels you haven't listed in its config file (great for recovery, for example).
      • You don't need to reinstall grub every time you've modified its config file. Among other things, that means kernel updates can now add themselves to the boot loader. One of the big problems support was faced with in earlier (LILO based) releases was the number of people updating their kernel and forgetting to adapt /etc/lilo.conf and/or run /sbin/lilo.
      • It looks nicer (no more blocky 320x200 graphic at bootup)
      • It has better support for booting other OSes


      Sometimes switching one working part with another for only minimal gains is NOT a good idea

      You are right about this - and since lilo->grub is not minimal, it doesn't apply to this particular thing.
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  15. Redhat explained the choice of ext3 before by clarkie.mg · · Score: 3, Informative

    On this page, a redhat employee explained why they chose ext3.

    It was also the topic of a previous slashdot post.

    This extract sums it up :

    Why do you want to migrate from ext2 to ext3? Four main reasons: availability, data integrity, speed, and easy transition.

    [...]

    Again, we don't claim that every one of these points are unique to ext3. Most of them are shared by at least one other filesystem. We merely claim that the set of all of them together is true only for ext3.

    --
    Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
  16. Re:to forestall the inevitable -- why not reiserfs by bero-rh · · Score: 3, Informative

    An official statement on why ext3 was chosen (ext2 compatibility is a major reason, but not the only one) can be found here.

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  17. Re:Still no djbdns by bero-rh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's a pity they still use Bind instead of djbdns [cr.yp.to], which is a lot safer.

    If you want us to ship djbdns, convince its author to put it under an Open Source license.

    The current license is not acceptable.

    I'm also surprised about KDE 2.2, since KDE 2.2.1 has been out for quite a while now

    KDE is actually pseudo-2.2.1: We took 2.2, and merged all fixes from the stable CVS branch (and a couple of other patches).

    Couldn't update to the official 2.2.1 because of the freeze - but the 2.2-* packages in 7.2 have all the fixes from 2.2.1 up to the day before it was released.

    The same goes for the kernel version (2.4.7)

    Which is actually 2.4.7 plus a lot of bugfixes from later versions, plus ext3, plus new drivers, and more.
    Making sure the kernel is highly stable even under extreme load (and longer uptimes) takes time.

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  18. Re:to forestall the inevitable -- why not reiserfs by bero-rh · · Score: 3, Informative

    Please provide a testcase. Our tests have shown that (unless you compile in full debugging), ext3 is actually faster than ext2.

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  19. ext3 migration is seamless by James+Youngman · · Score: 3, Informative

    I migrated my / filesystem (only the one Linux filesystem on my laptop - it dual-boots) from ext2 ro ext3. Totally seamless. No time lost with fsck.

    I accidentally nobbled the ext3 module (by upgrading the kernel and omitting the initrd that normally loads the ext3 module from linuxrc). Red Hat seamlessly mounted as ext2 - no loss of data (but obviously no journalling). Puttng the initrd back brought me back into the ext3 fold, again seamlessly. It was completely painless -I was really impressed. This experience is with 7.1.93 - I have not yet tried 7.2

    In fact, I might not ever try 7.2 because of the really annoying ppp-watcher in 7.1. I had an ISP problem where the chat script would fail to authenticate, and the ppp-watcher just dialled again and again and again... Really annoying, and hard to change. I'm sure I'd miss RH if I stopped using it because I've used it since RH 2.1. For the moment I'm running Red Hat 7.1.93 at home and Debian on my laptop.

  20. 7.2 ALREADY?! by wrinkledshirt · · Score: 5, Funny

    My God, I just finished downloading 5.1, and now they're already up to 7.2? Great. Just great. Next you're going to tell me they've gone past the 2.2.14 kernel...

    --

    --------
    Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...

  21. Re:Question about the ISO files by chabotc · · Score: 3, Informative

    Disk 2 contains a few less-used packages, most of the -devel.rpm's, and some server daemons.

    All in all, unless you do a extrememe minimal instalation, you will _definatly_ need disk to.

    The point i'm trying to make, it is not a 'PowerTools' or 'Addons' disk, it is an intergral part of the instalation!

    They have merged the PowerTools into the main instalation set (leaving out not often used, or badly maintained, or conflicting tools). So currently there is no 'Addons' cd's.

    .. Unless you get the $199 Redhat 7.2 Pro set, which has (if i remeber correctly) 6 cd's containing quite a few extra apps and daemons.

  22. ipsec, freeS/WAN and RedHat by Kruemelmo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I understand RedHat cannot integrate ipsec / FreeS/WAN into the Linux distribution because of US export restrictions.

    Is there an "official" way to upgrade RH 7.2 to a kernel version with ipsec support (i.e. frees/wan) for European folks? The absence of this feature in RH becomes a more and more serious concern for my company.

    Of course we know how to patch and compile a kernel. Maintenance must still be easy, though. Installing a custom kernel on several customer servers also means that we cannot use Redhat's update kernel RPMs but must maintain our own ones, so kernel (and possibly other packages) updates get complicated. It will not possible to respond on security issues as quickly as when using RH kernel RPMs.

    It would be a great benefit for European customers if RedHat could at least draw the "official" procedure how to make this RH Linux version ipsec capable and then maintain this procedure as new kernel RPM packages or RedHat Linux versions appear.

    1. Re:ipsec, freeS/WAN and RedHat by bero-rh · · Score: 4, Informative

      I understand RedHat cannot integrate ipsec / FreeS/WAN into the Linux distribution because of US export restrictions.

      I don't think the export restrictions you're referring to are still in place.

      We're currently shipping cipe, which provides pretty much the same functionality.

      There have been some reasons for choosing cipe over FreeS/WAN. I don't remember the details, but I think it was related to not supporting non-x86 arches.

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  23. The usability of Linux (is pretty good by now) by RNG · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I just upgraded my home machine to Mandrake 8.1, which comes with the same general software packages that RedHat ships. While I (of course) haven't tried the new RH yet, I'll make a general observation based on KDE, Gnome and all the other little goodies which ship on a modern Linux distribution: Usability of Linux (on a well-setup machine) is no longer an argument against it's use.

    Let me explain: when people talk about usabuility, they typically mean "it is (or it isn't) like on Windows" and maybe "it is (or it isn't) like on a Mac". This is not what I would call usability, but rather something like "environment inertia"; people don't like change even if it is for the (long term) better.

    After seeing my mom (aged 60+, bought her first computer 1 year ago, never used a computer before that) struggle with Windows when needing to do rather simple/basic things, I've grown convinced that a (well set up) KDE desktop is just as usable as Windows and that the so often touted Windows usability is nothing more than a myth. Windows is usable once you're used to it; otherwise is't as difficult (or easy) than any other decent windowing system (yes, KDE certainly fits this description, GNOME probably does; this is *not* meant as flamebait but just an abservation of the way these Desktops are configured in the newest Mandrake 8.1 release; your milage may vary). These don't work quite the same way as Windows, but it basically do the same things, provides you with menus, with end-user friendly software (KOffice is pretty cool & looks nice, KMail is quite user friendly, etc) and nice GUI configuration tools. If you have a chance sometime, watch someone who's never used a computer try to figure out Windows; it's very instructive to see that Windows itself is not more or less intuitive than any other windowing
    system; once you've mastered the concepts and abstractions, it becomes easy. The so called usability advantange of Windows is mostly imprinting, inertia and FUD; the functional differences are starting to disappear or become neglegible.

    The biggest obstacle at this point is device/drive support and the need to recompile kernels to get some stuff to work. Usability is (generally speaking) just fine, provided you're working on a well-setup & installed box ...

  24. Re:Is RH including proprietary sw these days? by bero-rh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is any of this proprietary, or has RH managed to stay comeletely OS?

    With the sole exception of Netscape (which will disappear later), it's 100% OS.
    And Netscape will disappear with the next release - we're already including Konqueror, Mozilla and Galeon as free (and better) alternatives right now.

    Also, what RH specific changes are in this gcc?

    It's a stabilized fork of a CVS version. See http://www.bero.org/gcc296.html for a further explanation.

    Why isn't gcc-3.01 being distributed? Does it have major issues?

    It's included as a preview package, but it's not ready for a standard compiler.
    It breaks binary compatibility with the compiler used in prior 7.x releases (which is something we don't do in minor releases), and its C++ part is quite broken ATM (try running a version of KDE that was compiled with gcc 3.0.1 and you'll see what I mean - it crashes at startup).

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  25. What an uninformed troller! by opkool · · Score: 3, Insightful

    -ext3 maybe will not score the best in a single FileSystems comparison table. But, overall, is a pretty darn good filesystem. It is stable, you can migrate easily, is fast... We are talking about RedHat 7.2, that is, a stable distribution

    -Last time that I checked (5 minutes ago) you can choose between Gnome, KDE... as your default desktop environment/graphical login/workstation installation. Even if you choose to select as default graphical environment GNOME, you can select KDE for your use and set it as your default one. Nuff said.

    -Who cares about a programming language? If you do not like it, port it to C++. Show me the code.

    -You obiously have no idea of Linux. You can run Konqueror form within GNOME!.

    -Nautilus is pretty cool. It has a whole bunch of interesting features, like the "tabbed" way of displaying multiple webpages (instead of having multiple separated windows). This is A Good Thing (TM). If you don't like it, don't use it. Linux is about choice.

    -RedHat 7.2 comes with KDE 2.2.1.

    BTW, you sounded like a Troll.

    Enjoy the best RedHat!

  26. Comments on ISO files and cheap cd sets by MartinG · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why do people not gzip the iso files before they put them on the ftp sites? It's something I have never understood. Even with a great deal of the content already compressed, I have got a typical saving of ~10-15% on various distro install disks. Saving 80 odd megabytes of download per disk, per user is a lot. And how hard is it to type "zcat blah.iso | cdrecord" when you have it?

    Never mind that anyway - don't download it, buy it from Redhat instead. But does anyone else wish RH would sell cheap disk sets like mdk do? I bet it would only improve their profits. They would be bought mostly by ppl who currently download the isos (like me), not the ppl who currently buy the boxed sets ('cos they all want manuals etc otherwise they would download also)

    MartinG.

    --
    -- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz .@adgimnoprstu
    1. Re:Comments on ISO files and cheap cd sets by bero-rh · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I bought Redhat's 'Garage Edition' of RH 7.1

      This is a Europe-only product.
      It'll be hard to find it in any other place.

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  27. Re:What about ReiserFS? by Cheeze · · Score: 3, Informative

    the reason for ext3 over resier is the ability to non-destructively upgrade an ext2 drive. with reiserfs, you have to format the drive, which means dataloss for those that can't just 'tar zcvf /dev/tape /'. i'm sure there are other reasons too, but for most people, that ability is important.

    --
    Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
  28. Re:ext3, ok but what about reiserfs? by bero-rh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Will Redhat 7.2 support reiserfs?

    Support is compiled into the kernel and the required userland tools are included.

    It's not supported by the installer (but existing reiserfs partitions will be mounted) because the kernel team says it's still not 100% ready.

    It will be very hard to devfs and reiserfs to succeed if RH makes it difficult

    There are currently a number of known security problems with devfs, so making that easy is not a good idea just yet.

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  29. You want Poser Linux, of course! by alienmole · · Score: 5, Funny
    What is the coolest Linux distribution? I've installed Red Hat in the past (version 6 something) but I never really did anything with it. Anyway I was talking to a friend of mine and was kind of bragging a little bit more than I should and I was telling him that I used Linux. You know... because Linux like makes you "cool" or something. :) Anyway, now I'm in a bit of a pinch because I need to get Linux installed on my system again so I can show it off to him and I'm wondering what distribution is the coolest? Which one has the biggest "wow" factor? The slickest installation? The best default Desktop setup? The least amount of command line interaction (preferably NONE!).

    That's a very good question, AC. Since there really is no distribution that fits your criteria, I've decided to create a new distribution, which will be called "l33t L1|\|ux", of course, although its internal codename will be "Poser Linux" because that's easier to spell and means the same thing.

    I plan to replace all messages in the source code with their l33t_5p34k equivalents, for starters. It'll have an Enlightenment desktop, with a Matrix theme, of course - gotta stick to stuff that everyone recognizes as cool, even your parents, otherwise someone might not realize that you're cool. Best of all, this distribution is going to be 100% free - I'll even fedex you the CDs 2-day, for free! I figure the daemon I install to email me your parent's credit card numbers when you buy something online will more than make up for any distribution costs!

  30. Re:GCC 3.01 by bero-rh · · Score: 5, Informative
    Mostly for 2 reasons:
    • It breaks binary compatibility, which we can't do in a minor release
    • It produces broken code when C++ is used. Try compiling KDE 2.x (or 3.x) with it; every application will crash because of a miscompilation in kdelibs

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  31. Re:don't understand the need for constant upgradin by miniver · · Score: 3, Informative
    I'm still running 6.2 w/ any patches that concern me.
    I don't particularly see any need to upgrade to 7.0, 7.1 or 7.2 for that matter.
    What's the big deal?

    I've used every version of RedHat since 3.3, and several versions of Mandrake over the last 6 years. That's a lot of upgrading, particularly since I have several servers and workstations running Linux. My firewall/proxy/router is still running a heavily upgraded version of RH 6.1, and my mail server is running a butchered version of RH 6.0. My internal web server and all of the workstations are running RH 7.1, and I'll be upgrading some of those to RH 7.2 in the near future, as it stabilizes.

    Here's a short list of my reasons to upgrade to RH 7.X:

    • Convenience: I like RedHat and RPM, because it means I can spend my time developing and deploying applications instead of spending my time configuring software. Since I build distributed applications for a living, I find it convenient to be able to mirror my development and deployment environment at home, and RPM is a great way to make certain that all of the servers are configured correctly and running the same versions of the necessary software. Of course, convenience has a price, and with RedHat, the price is that RPMs for newer software are built for the most recent release.
    • OpenSSL/OpenSSH: you can't beat the convenience of having these pre-installed and working from RPMs. Anyone who's had to build these from scratch and then configure them will appreciate not having to repeat that procedure every time someone finds a new bug.
    • Apache 1.3.20: One word: security.
    • 2.4 Kernels: Much better for heavily threaded servers, because of the finer locking granularity.
    • XFree 4.X: Better support for graphics hardware for my workstations.

    Ultimately with Red Hat, they've done a good job of supporting older X.2 releases, but support doesn't mean adding new features. If you want the new features, you'll want to upgrade. If you don't want/need them, then stick with what works. At least Red Hat (and most Linux distros) give you that choice -- as opposed to certain eXtra Proprietary systems.

    --
    We call it art because we have names for the things we understand.
  32. Re:to forestall the inevitable -- why not reiserfs by bero-rh · · Score: 3, Informative

    I want to know why ReiserFS debugging was turned on in 7.1

    Because our tests have shown the version of ReiserFS in the 7.1 kernel to produce filesystem corruption under some circumstances.

    Avoiding that (or at least giving us a chance to debug it) was more important than getting it to full speed.

    We haven't seen fs corruption in the 7.2 kernel, so it's turned off now.

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  33. Re:Your mom needs RH7.2 by slamb · · Score: 3, Insightful

    RH 7.2 solves a real issue - sometimes (once a month) her harddisk stops working. A hardware error.

    While it's great that journalling filesystems let you get started up more quickly, this doesn't solve the problem*. If the hard disk does not consistently spin up, you can be assured that some day it will never spin up again. Get the data off it before this happens.

    Hard disks are cheap. I just bought a Seagate ATA IV ST380021A yesterday. It's 80GB with transfer rates from 24 to 41 MBytes/sec and unbelievably quiet: 2.1 bels idle (below a whisper). It only cost me $200.

    * - "issue" is a pet peeve of mine. A problem is something that needs to be solved. An issue is a point of discussion. While this has become a point of discussion, it was first a problem and hasn't ceased to be. Don't be like Microsoft. Admit there are such things as problems and bugs.

  34. Try out RedHat 7.2 by Test+Drive · · Score: 5, Informative

    We now have RedHat 7.2 up and running in the Compaq Test Drive Program, so you can try it on our systems before you put it on yours. It's running on a couple of dual-processor x86 systems, and using the ext3 file system. Sign up for a free account and give it a try.

  35. Re:GRUB ? by Saint+Aardvark · · Score: 3, Informative
    Amen to that, brother...last year after fucking up LILO for the nth time, I grabbed GRUB and installed it. Wonderful! Amazing! Can't recommend it enough! One of the cool things: you can tell GRUB to hide drives when certain operating systems are booted. What point, you ask? Well, I've finally got a dual-boot Linux/Windows machine with Windows NOT on the first hard drive, in the first partition. Go for GRUB, people. And one hint: if you're using Debian (like me) and you get "invalid device errors" when trying to install to the hard drive, get the latest version. I'm not sure if there's a .deb for 0.90 in -unstable; I just went to the source and got it there.

    Go, GRUB, go!

  36. RedHat 7.2 kernel and glibc updates. by Shane · · Score: 4, Informative

    kernel-headers-2.4.9-7.i386.rpm
    kernel-2.4.9-7.i386.rpm
    kernel-doc-2.4.9-7.i386.rpm
    kernel-source-2.4.9-7.i386.rpm
    kernel-BOOT-2.4.9-7.i386.rpm
    nscd-2.2.4-19.i386.rpm
    glibc-common-2.2.4-19.i386.rpm
    glibc-devel-2.2.4-19.i386.rpm
    glibc-profile-2.2.4-19.i386.rpm
    glibc-2.2.4-19.i386.rpm
    openssh-askpass-gnome-2.9p2-9.i386.rpm
    openssh-2.9p2-9.i386.rpm
    openssh-askpass-2.9p2-9.i386.rpm
    openssh-clients-2.9p2-9.i386.rpm
    openssh-server-2.9p2-9.i386.rpm
    squid-2.4.STABLE1-6.i386.rpm
    mew-1.94.2-12.i386.rpm
    util-linux-2.11f-12.i386.rpm

    --
    -- You can be a geeklord too :)
  37. Ximian GNOME for Red Hat Linux 7.2 is out! by Peter+Teichman · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ximian GNOME for Red Hat Linux 7.2 has been released. Please don't follow the instructions in the article for removing Ximian GNOME, as that will break your rpm dependency tree pretty badly.

    The recommended procedure for upgrading to Red Hat Linux 7.2 with Ximian GNOME is to perform the Red Hat upgrade, then immediately reinstall Ximian GNOME.

    lynx -source http://go-gnome.com/ |sh

    The mirrors will pick it up shortly.

    Share and enjoy,
    The Ximian release team

    1. Re:Ximian GNOME for Red Hat Linux 7.2 is out! by luge · · Score: 3, Informative

      You have to install specifically for RH 7.2 from the web; the Red Carpet on the CD won't be of any help because of changes in librpm between 7.1 and 7.2.

      --

      IAAL,BIANLY

  38. Please mod parent up and a note to Hemos and co. by luge · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just to re-emphasize, Hemos's instructions for 'cleaning' Ximian will seriously break your system- it'll remove glib (among other things) which will remove a large number of RH's system tools. So... don't.
    Luis Villa [Ximian Bugmaster, who doesn't want to have to deal with 'Hemos broke my system' bugs all day]

    --

    IAAL,BIANLY

  39. Re:I am stoked! by bero-rh · · Score: 3, Informative
    issue and issue.net get clobbered by a file called redhat-release at start-up

    This is intentional to make sure people calling up support can tell them which kernel they're running.
    The correct way to change it is to edit /etc/rc.d/init.d/rc.local.

    WTF can't you just use inetd.conf?

    inetd was dumped precisely because inetd.conf sucks.
    One of big advantages of xinetd is that packages can add themselves to xinetd without having to do ugly sed or perl tricks on a file.

    Now you've got this thing called GRUB. Do any of the other distros have it?

    Sure. Mandrake does, Debian does. Don't know about the others.

    What happens when I decide I want to upgrade to kernel 2.4.12 - does it automagically know how to install itself on this new, poorly named bootloader?

    If you install the RPM, yes, GRUB will know about it. If you install from source, you have to edit grub.conf (but you don't need to reinstall GRUB afterwards).

    Speaking of which, why is 2.96-RH STILL the default compiler?

    • We don't break binary compatibility between minor releases
    • It's still the most stable compiler out there - 3.0.1 miscompiles KDE and other C++ code


    But taking industry-standard files and replacing them with something silly

    If a standard is broken, it needs to be fixed. (Any website still running on HTML 1.0?)

    xinetd is pretty much a standard right now - almost every Linux distribution has it, and it's in FreeBSD's ports collection.

    Much the same is happening/has already happened for GRUB.

    RH, for some reason, can't be happy with keeping the samba files in /etc

    There is no standard whatsoever that asks for putting them straight in /etc.
    I don't know why the change was made (I don't do samba and I've never used it), but I'd think it's in order to make it more obvious which users need to edit nmbd.conf and which users can simply ignore it (or better yet deinstall the package, but there are quite a number of everything installs out there because people can't figure out which packages they need).

    What you RH people don't seem to understand is that some of us still like to edit config files

    Most of us understand. I for one don't use GUI config tools (except for testing, or to get a base configuration up to tune by hand later on).

    could you _please_ stop mangling the text files they parse in the first place?

    One of the things that sets Red Hat Linux apart from some other distributions is, actually, that most of our config tools try to parse existing config files rather than simply dumping any changes made by the user.

    if you guys have got the time to troll on /. as much as you're doing today, 7.2 had better be bug-free.

    This is a cyclic thing - right now, we have much less work than shortly before the engineering freeze for 7.2. The development of the next version has already started quite some time ago, of course - but a lot of the changes require waiting for other projects to finish, so at this time, we have some spare time. (And besides, it's long after office hours around here, so don't think I'm wasting work time. Granted, since I don't have a life I'd probably be hacking if I weren't reading /., but...).
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  40. Re:I am stoked! by bero-rh · · Score: 4, Informative

    That's why I said "most" config tools.
    I know there are some exceptions (mostly due to schedules that had to be kept - we can't always get all wanted features into the first version...).

    The non bandaid solution is to standardize on a particular format for config files

    This is true - but I don't think you can get every project to follow the same standard.

    We actually talked about something like this internally (basically, "provide one standard library for every config stuff, then fork every app to make use of it and ask maintainers to apply the patch"), but dismissed the idea quite quickly because that would definitely be a nonstandard thing giving people legitimate reasons to complain about ("Oh, you're using the Red Hat version of my application? Then I can't help you, I don't know anything about it, and I don't like their config layout"), and more "Red Hat is just like Microsoft, now they're forcing everyone to use their crap rather than compiling from source!" type FUD.

    In an ideal world, we'd all be using the same format for config files (how do you represent /etc/sendmail.cf in key=value or xml, by the way?) - but it's almost certainly not going to happen, at least not anytime soon.

    Even OSes that try to enforce one config scheme on everything (e.g. M$ registry) end up with applications that create their own config files using something totally different.

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  41. Re:I am stoked! by VFVTHUNTER · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I did actually have a good idea (hard to tell from my posts, but I do have them - its a zero sum game...have some really stupid thoughts, youre bound to have some good ones to even you out...).

    It goes like this. (I have no idea how GRUB works, so I'm guessing here). Let's say RH switches over to GRUB completely, and now there's no /etc/lilo.conf on the system. Someone like myself (this is what happened with xinetd) is going to sit down to admin one of these boxes one day, and assuming lilo.conf is there, type vi lilo.conf. As it stands now, when he/she does this on a GRUB only system, the response to discovering there is no lilo.conf might range from curious to semi-non-linear.
    But what if, instead of no file existing, a text file (/etc/lilo.conf) existed that explained why its not there, what has replaced it, and how to do everything with the replacement that could be done with its predecessor? This I think would actually be really cool, and it would still be there even if no help documentation was included during the initial install. You could even put some sort of shebang-style string at the beginning of every one of these "evolution" files, so that people who want to get rid of them can issue a simple grep or find command to search and destroy them.

  42. Re:RH just became a whole lot more expensive by rajumd · · Score: 3, Informative

    Huh? According to Redhat's site it's $990 for 10 machines for a year! And I suspect you can get even bigger discounts if you're going to register 50 machines.