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

Comments

to forestall the inevitable -- why not reiserfs?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

First impression

[geirt]

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).

Re:First impression

[bero-rh]

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>

Re:First impression

[Alan Cox]

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.

Re:First impression

[cybrthng]

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

Without Fail...

[Knunov]

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...

Re:What a crapfest

[|DeN|niS]

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.

Re:Is RH including proprietary sw these days?

[Alan Cox]

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)

Re:GRUB ?

[bero-rh]

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

Re:GRUB ?

[Haeleth]

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.

Think mirrors!

[French Thias]

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

Stress test time for the ftp servers.

[Alan Cox]

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

Re:Still no djbdns

[bero-rh]

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.

Re:Nicking arteries

[Rogerborg]

• 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.

Re:Red Hat is not synonymous with Linux.

[bero-rh]

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.

7.2 ALREADY?!

[wrinkledshirt]

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...

ipsec, freeS/WAN and RedHat

[Kruemelmo]

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.

Re:ipsec, freeS/WAN and RedHat

[bero-rh]

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.

The usability of Linux (is pretty good by now)

[RNG]

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 ...

Comments on ISO files and cheap cd sets

[MartinG]

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.

You want Poser Linux, of course!

[alienmole]

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!

Re:GCC 3.01

[bero-rh]

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

Try out RedHat 7.2

[Test Drive]

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.

RedHat 7.2 kernel and glibc updates.

[Shane]

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

Ximian GNOME for Red Hat Linux 7.2 is out!

[Peter Teichman]

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

Please mod parent up and a note to Hemos and co.

[luge]

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]

Re:I am stoked!

[bero-rh]

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.