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Red Hat 7.3 Coming Along
EyesWideOpen writes "I just read a review of a beta version of Red Hat 7.3 (code named Skipjack) over at Linux Journal. It's not the most complete review (being a little KDE heavy and GNOME shy, as well as focusing mainly on the install and desktop components) but it's a decent read. From the article: '...if you are a desktop user like me and you like the latest software, you will be hard pressed to find a more complete and usable piece of software...'.
If you're feeling adventurous you can download the latest beta from a Red Hat mirror site."
"If you're feeling adventurous you can download the latest beta from a Red Hat mirror site.".....in a couple of days when you can finally login.
Red Hat 7.3 beta: A Product Review
Date: Monday, April 15, 2002
Topic: Product Reviews
New beta distribution includes many of the recent releases from KDE, XFree86, Mozilla and other projects, making it easy, stable and powerful on your desktop.
The Linux community has remained active, developing improved software, and the desktop environment also continues to improve. Both the KDE and GNOME projects have added functionality, improved performance and made the desktop environment more fun and usable. The XFree86 project has continued to improve hardware support. The overall appearance, quality and selection of fonts continues to improve.
Red Hat has been working to incorporate many of these improvements into their next release of software. While Red Hat is probably best known for their Linux server systems, their desktop systems have undergone considerable improvement. Their latest development effort, code named "Skipjack", incorporates a number of these improvements.
My personal interest in Skipjack arose mainly because this release includes a test version of KDE 2.99, which is really KDE 3.0 Release Candidate 3. I was so excited about this release because there have been claims of great performance improvements. In fact, the final version of KDE 3.0 was announced on April 3.
So, how well does Skipjack, Red Hat 7.3 Beta Release 2, meet my expectations? Very well, indeed.
I installed Red Hat 7.2 on my Dell Dimension 4100 desktop computer a few weeks ago. Then I ordered a copy of Skipjack from Tech Broker. The unsupported download release came in a five CD package. Tech Broker CDs usually cost $4 per CD, so ordering Red Hat's Skipjack test release from Tech Broker cost $20. (You can download Skipjack during the testing period from ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/beta/skipjack.) I decided to install Skipjack as an update to the 7.2 distribution to see how well that would work.
I was very impressed with the results. It took between 30 and 40 minutes to complete the installation. Most of that time was spent detecting the existing software and determining which packages needed to be upgraded. On my system, I used the Workstation configuration (Red Hat installations provide a choice of Workstation, Server or Custom package selections). In addition to the Workstation packaging category, I also selected the option to modify the selection group and install any other software that I'm interested in. (I tend to install extra text editors, web browsers, and e-mail programs; these are the tools that interest me most).
The installation was flawless. Every menu was clear and concise. Every screen provided an explanation of the choices to make, so it is not even necessary to read a manual in order to install the software (if you are at least somewhat familiar with software installations). The appearance of the Red Hat software installation program is familiar; if anything, the graphics, explanations on each screen and mechanics of performing the installation are more streamlined than ever.
For those who have not installed or upgraded Red Hat software in a while, GRUB is now the default boot loader, though LILO remains available. The default GRUB boot loader now offers optional password security. If the system you're using is located in a public place where you have a need to secure the system loading process, this is a much-needed improvement (though it does not address the issue of physical system security, nor does it prevent someone from booting the system from a floppy disk). Still, this touch is a good idea, and it's not found on many other Linux distributions.
What about the desktop? I mentioned that I was interested in trying out KDE. How well does it work? It is incredible! I'd heard that there might be as much as a 40% improvement in the overall memory usage and performance of KDE 3.0 over KDE 2.2.2. While I did not confirm those numbers, I can attest that the Skipjack implementation of KDE is both solid and fast.
The Konqueror file manager and web browser and the KMail e-mail application are two core KDE applications, and like the KDE infrastructure, they have undergone appearance, functionality and performance improvements. Konqueror has much improved JavaScript support, major improvements in DHTML capability and fast loading times, to the point that Konqueror is worth considering as my main web browser.
KMail is KDE's full-featured and user-friendly e-mail client and supports both the popular IMAP and POP3 mail standards. Users can have multiple accounts and multiple identities. (Previous versions allowed multiple accounts to a limited degree, allowing you to read from multiple POP3 and IMAP4 servers but not allowing you to send to multiple SMTP destinations). Its address book is based on the vCard address book standard and is shared with the rest of KDE.
I don't personally use all of the KDE applications and tools, but it bears mentioning that the Personal Information Management (PIM) tools provided in KDE have also undergone considerable improvement. The list of PIM components in the Skipjack implementation of KDE 3.0 include:
* KMail, the e-mail client
* KAddressBook, an address book viewer/frontend for the K Desktop Environment
* KOrganizer, the calendar and scheduling program for the K Desktop Environment
* KPilot, a replacement for the Palm Desktop software from Palm Inc, which makes your Palm/Palm Pilot/Visor computer capable of exchanging information with your Linux-powered computer
* Kandy, a tool to provide synchronization of phonebook, organizer and other data on your mobile phone with the data stored on the desktop
* KArm, a tool that tracks time spent on various tasks. It is useful for tracking hours to be billed to different clients or to find out what percentage of your day is spent playing Doom or reading Slashdot.
* KNotes, a small tool to scribble down some notes
* KAlarm, a quick way of setting up personal alarm/reminder messages. The messages pop up on the screen at the time you specify.
In addition to the core desktop functionality and PIM capabilities outlined above, KDE also has a growing office suite called KOffice.
The following parts of the KOffice suite are being developed:
* KWord, a frame-based word processor capable of professional standard documents
* KSpread, a powerful spreadsheet application
* KPresenter, a full-featured presentation program
* Kivio, a Visio-style flowcharting application
* Kontour,a vector drawing application
* Krita, a raster-based image manipulation program like The GIMP or Adobe Photoshop
* Kugar, a tool for generating business quality reports
* KChart, an integrated graph and chart drawing tool
I don't use the KOffice suite often, but I can tell you that KWord is quite capable of reading basic Word documents. Advanced features, such as embedding Active X controls, cannot be handled by the KOffice tools, but in fairness, few if any competing office suites can accurately render all of the features found in Microsoft's latest arsenal of office applications. IF you're looking for a functional office suite that is bundled with a system, however, this suite is worth a look.
So far, I've mentioned that Skipjack installs effortlessly, contains a new boot loader that works well and has security improvements, incorporates most of what will be found in the final KDE 3.0 desktop and runs well. What about the other features?
Another thing I use my system for frequently is web browsing. Red Hat delivers here, too. As part of the available software, Red Hat includes not only the browsers that are integral components of the desktop managers, it also includes recent releases of the Netscape and Mozilla suites. You can choose between the "old style" version 4 Netscape browser, Netscape Communicator 4.79 and the most current release of the Mozilla browser, 0.99. Both browsers have web browser and e-mail client components.
Speaking of browsers, I have to mention the Galeon Web browser, which is included in the Skipjack release as part of the GNOME desktop environment. While Galeon requires both Mozilla and GNOME libraries in order to function, other than the obvious disk overhead, Galeon is a very effective and efficient web browser. Skipjack comes with the newest and best version of Galeon I've seen yet, version 1.2.0. Galeon is arguably one of the leading standards compliant web browsers currently available. So Skipjack gets my nod for including a very up-to-date and usable version of Galeon.
What about GNOME, the default desktop environment included in Red Hat distributions? The Skipjack release, as far as I can tell, does not incorporate any upcoming test releases of GNOME software. The good news, however, is that the Nautilus File Manager, which is a core component of the overall GNOME, seems more stable than I've seen in the past. Perhaps this is because the image rendering engine used with Nautilus is the Gecko engine that's part of the latest release of Mozilla. Since Mozilla 0.99 comes with the Skipjack release, Nautilus benefits from recent, significant improvements in Mozilla's functionality and reliability.
I have not touched on any of the server features found in Red Hat; that is beyond the scope of this review. During the installation, however, I did notice that Red Hat has continued to work on integrity, security and stability issues, and it really shows. Whether Red Hat decides to produce this software as an incremental update to it's existing release and calls the next release 7.3, or if they decide to create a new major release, from my perspective as a desktop user this is without question their best release ever. Even in beta form, it is solid.
I wrote this article using the Gvim text editor. I wrote the first part of the article while running the desktop using KDE, and I wrote the second part using GNOME. I tried out Konqueror, Konsole, KWord, Vim/Gvim, Netscape, Mozilla, Galeon, Nautilus, GNU Emacs, XEmacs, NEdit and GNOME Terminal, and I experimented with the GRUB boot loader. During my testing (while admittedly not exhaustive but representative of the kinds of daily tasks I perform) I did not encounter a single application or system failure. There probably are still some bugs out there, but this is great beta software, among the best that I've ever seen from anyone.
Was it worthwhile to run this release? Absolutely. While Red Hat explicitly recommends not running beta software in a production environment, if you are a desktop user like me and you like the latest software, you will be hard pressed to find a more complete and usable piece of software (at least until the other vendors incorporate this software into their release).
Slashdot, come for the goatse, stay for the trolls.
Skipjack is actually in its 2nd iteration, the first was also called Skipjack. If you do download it, make sure to use up2date, the RedHat Network's updating tool. It's a free registration for the beta channel.
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Random, useless fact: I type in startx entirely with my left hand.
And this is a problem because? Gnome 1.4 has been around for quite some time and has been hashed over in so many reviews, why bother to cover it again? Meanwhile, KDE is at a new version 3.0 and is on the tips of everyone's lips at the moment. I am all for equal representation of a desktop environment, but could you blame the reviewer for wanting to cover something new? Sheesh....
As for desktops, I have recently discovered Sorcery Linux. This has been a blast, and the best part is I only get those programs I want. There. My own mini-review of a Linux distro. Check it out, you won't be sorry.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
7.3, if it is called that, doesn't break binary compatibility like the way jumping to the next x.0 release does. 8.0 will probably use gcc3 and other newer components, and it will break compatibility with the 7.x series...
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Random, useless fact: I type in startx entirely with my left hand.
Upgrading is all well and good and it works, in theory. However, newly-released versions of distros tend to bundle all relevant new software into easily -installable packages, meaning that you won't bork your system with a faulty upgrade attempt. For example, I've had a devil of a time getting KDE 3 to work on my 7.1 desktop at work. We're skipping 7.2 and waiting for 7.3 to upgrade everyone's desktops. 7.3 is supposed to have a newly-revised kickstart process which will make our upgrades of everyone's boxes peachy.
Also, it's highly convenient for the bandwidth-impaired. Similar to the axiom "never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with tapes driving 65 down the highway".
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
Beta release mailing list has gone rather "developer-silent" as of late, usually signalling the imminence of a release. Also, there have been two recent massive package upgrades to Skipjack 2 with little to no public note of such, which is another indicator of release imminence.
Official release calendars would suggest an early June release; circumstances being what they are (and according to some traffic on the beta release mailing list) a mid-May release might end up being the actual case.
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
kgcc (which hasn't been used for the compiler since RHL 7... the kernel has since had that bug fixed) is egcs 1.1.2. We don't use gcc 2.95.x - next compiler (next major series) will be whatever is best (features, stability) at the time (3.1.1, perhaps)
Given that I am reading this thread specifically because I'm interested in upgrading a few existing boxes, I may be able to explain.
I suspect I'm lazy.
Can't get more "Occam's razor" than that. There's one box in pariticular that I'd like to have KDE3 on, but to do that I'd also need to update Qt to 3.something, and lib-this.so and dev-that.so.what and I don't really feel like it. I don't need KDE3 on the box, and, as I concluded the other night when I started to think about upgrading, I'm lazy. Or to put a (slightly) more charitable face on it, I'd rather code, and play with my kid, and web-surf, and read, and doodle arround on the piano. Not all at the same time of course.
The point of OSS (to me at least) isn't that I always do things myself, but that I have that option, and at varrious levels of granularity. I eat out most meals, but I'd be annoyed if I didn't have a stove in the house, or some unpaved dirt in the back where I could plant things. But I'm still willing to let the folks at RedHat, etc. cook for me if they want to.
-- MarkusQ
Well I touhgt I would DL and play with it.
So I , as I have done for years downloaded disk 1 and started to install, it asked for 2, I dl and burned it, put it in, and then, and this is a first, It asked for 3.
I can figure out for the life of me what the he** takes up 3 disks.
But if you are going to do anything other than a MINIMAL install do yourself a favor, download and burn all 3 Disks, you will need em.
Another thing I found interesting , albeit a pain since Ive never had a problem, is the CD integrity check, although you can bypass it.
Why dosent RedHat partner with Ximian and put the whole jobber together with the exchange connector and Ximian Gnome in a nice premium edition, hell I'd buy it....But then again I bought an Apple Lisa when they were new.....
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
This post is a last resort.... To Lisa, whom I met at the Brooks Café in Seattle last Saturday. Lisa, I lost your phone number and I'm trying to figure out how to reach you! Oh, that magical night we had. I never believed in love at first sight until I met you. I remember talking with you at length about the upcoming Redhat 7.3 release, so I thought maybe, maybe you will read this Slashdot forum. Oh, I hope I will get modded up to something where you will see it!!! I love you so much and I don't know what I would do without you! Love, Gerard P.S. if you do get this, meet me at the same spot this Saturday at 10!!!
Slackware was the greatest for the ultra power user until Gentoo came along.
Currently in version 1.1a, it's the coolest Linux to come along in a decade and includes an amazing Portage system that is the best (apt-get / BSD ports)-like package management system ever created.
Come on over to [irc.openprojects.net channel #gentoo] and see for yourself what all the fuss is about.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Amusingly, i'm not trying to start a flamewar here, but, i'm sure it will devolve into that anyway......
I think the reason why the review is "KDE-heavy" is because when it comes to GNOME, nothing major has really changed (functionally or asthetically) between the version that shipped with 7.2 and the version you see in 7.3..In other words, theres not really much to say that hasn't already been said.
The reason why KDE got so much coverage versus GNOME in this review is probably due to the fact that the changes between KDE 2.2.x and KDE 3.x are rather large. Theres no bias here on behalf of the reviewer. One desktop changed radically from 7.2 to 7.3, the other did not.
Moderate this post however you want. Just don't be a goddamn idiot and say "I like GNOME! KDE suxx!!! I'm going to mod this down!!" since this reply is neither pro-KDE or pro-GNOME.
Bowie J. Poag
That Saturday night was just incredible. I never met a man like you. I was so worried you would never call me. I thought you might try to finger me, lisa@brooks.com, after mounting your device. At least I thought that was your .plan, but to actually open yourself up to the criticism of the slashdot community shows your true love. Of course I will see you Saturday at 10.
I love this feature of the RedHat install. Since it's a beta, I don't want to waste 3 cds on it. No problem, I just downloaded the ISOs to another computer (with an NFS daemon), and installed it over the network. Just had to create a simple boot disk, and voila. This is a great and fast way to install the new RedHat if you don't neccessarily need it on CDs. And it is faster because my CD doesn't read as fast as my network can transfer.
RedHat 7.3 is simply an update and it's binary compatible to all previous 7.x versions - so you cannot play with file locations and binaries to be fully LSB compliant on an updated version..
I guess they'll be LSB compliant on 8.0
Hetz (Heunique)
As a long time FreeBSD user, being "forced" to run Linux because of some desktop issues (read, vmware3) I do NOT AGREE at all.
Everyone seems to be raving about how cool gentoo is, almost like FreeBSD; how the FreeBSD users formerly attracted to Slackware all run to Gentoo now. Well, I don't think so.
The FreeBSD ports system might have some technical similarities to Gentoo portage (which is even more advanced), but there is a huge and crucial difference:
Portage is instable, ports are broken all the time (just read the forum on gentoo.org); also in FreeBSD the ports are just an add-on, the base system is not ports-based, but is one monolithic (stable) block.
I still think that Slackware is the most FreeBSD-like Linux distro, even though it does not have a ports system. Because:
- it is stable
- it feels more like FreeBSD, because of little things such as simple init scripts (BSD based)
- the base system is not monolithic as in FreeBSD, but still installing the a,ap,d and l series provides you with a base that doesn't change all the time. Almost any slack installation has the same set of basic packages installed, it is much less a choose and pick than any other Linux distribution.
Portage looks nice and impressive the first day you use it, but becomes a nightmare after a few weeks useage (believe me, I was amazed at start and have used it some weeks). Everthing updates all the time, not all dependencies are caught and strange interactions between the ports begin to happen. Not one user of Gentoo has the same versions of packages installed together, because this depends on the (random) timestamps that you decide to run an 'emerge rsync'.
I think gentoo's approach is interesting, but it is not ready for prime time, it should be version 0.1, not 1.1(a).
No no, Slackware still is the greatest for the 'ultra power user', and shall remain so for a long time. Creating your own 'ports' is trivial, I wrote some scripts myself (and I think many slack users did) to create them easily. I like to figure out how to 'port' any package running on my machine myself, except for the packages of the only other person I trust (Patrick Volkerding) in this respect.