Slashdot Mirror
New Red Hat Beta: LIMBO
joyoflinux writes: "Red Hat has released a beta version of its distribution, called LIMBO. It includes the latest desktop technology, gcc 3.1, Mozilla 1.0+, OpenOffice 1.0, and much more. You can download it here or use a mirror. Submit bugs here." Here's the announcement.
Will LIMBO eventually become RH 8.0? Or are RH major releases tied to another criteria?
We had to destroy the sig to save the sig.
It's got Gnome 2, KDE 3.01, GCC 3.1. Pretty good deal...
:)
But I will stay with Gentoo Linux.
It seems like every time I blink RedHat is releasing an updated version. Maybe they're beginning to acknowledge (read: "worry about") the surprising popularity of Mandrake?
(Although Mandrake hasn't updated in quite a while; it's still at KDE2.2 over there with a semi-difficult KDE3.0 install option available).
Code naming software has really annoyed me. Jaguar for OsX. Longhorn for Windows. Palladium for the upcoming hardware software venture. AMD Corvette (before it was renamed). Does this kind of naming have any point or relevancy? What does naming an upcoming code base LIMBO mean?
We had to destroy the sig to save the sig.
What's the best way to read /. at -1, apart from searching for all -1 messages and ordering the messages to be highest scores first, and then reading from the bottom up?
Are there any better ways?
Thankyou very much.
Anonymous Coward
Not that I NEED to upgrade, but I've got a 7.2 ISO I was going to put on another non-critical box (second desktop). Should I forge ahead, and head into beta-land?
Such as urpmi in Mandrake or apt-get in Debian?
The mirrors link in the writeup is all the mirrors, I checked and most of them havn't updated yet.
/ limbo/ (http and also rsync access)s /redhat/redhat/linux/beta/limbo// linux/beta/limbo/l imbo/i nux/beta/limbo/ (also rsync access)l inux/beta/limbo/ Europe:h at/linux/beta/limbo/m bo/l imbo/u x/beta/limbo/i nux/beta/limbo/ (http and also rsync access)r edhat/linux/beta/limbo/ (also rsync access)i mbo/
These mirrors are from the announcement link, so they all have the beta:
- ftp://redhat.dulug.duke.edu/pub/redhat/linux/beta
- ftp://carroll.aset.psu.edu/pub/linux/distribution
- ftp://ftp.cse.buffalo.edu/pub/Linux/redhat/redhat
- ftp://mirror.hiwaay.net/redhat/redhat/linux/beta/
- ftp://limestone.uoregon.edu/redhat/beta/limbo/
- ftp://ftp.shuttleamerica.com/pub/mirrors/redhat/l
- ftp://mirror.cs.princeton.edu/pub/mirrors/redhat/
- ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/redhat-ftp/red
- ftp://ftp.linux.cz/pub/linux/redhat/linux/beta/li
- ftp://alviss.et.tudelft.nl/pub/redhat/linux/beta/
- ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/site/ftp.redhat.com/redhat/lin
- ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/pub/linux/redhat.com/dist/l
- ftp://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/MIRRORS/ftp.redhat.com/
- ftp://ftp.uni-bayreuth.de/pub/redhat/linux/beta/l
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The notes just mention "the latest desktop technology". Does anyone know whether that means it includes gnome 2?
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
I imagine some of them are SRPMs or something but they aren't labeled as such. They have open office and a bunch of stuff on there though, maybe not. I am afraid that if I don't d/l and burn all five I'm going to get half way through an install and need disc 5 for some silly package. The last time I installed 7.3 on a server I needed all three, the install size was only 400 MB too.
Why can't Red Hat build thier disc images with Disc 1 being the base, disc 2 being X and Gnome, 3 being Open Office, etc. I can't imagine any benefit to spreading things out so much.
If I wanted to karma whore, I would. I post what I feel like posting. If it happens to get modded up, then so be it. I've got 50 karma for two years now (or whenever they put the cap in), why would I want more?
Um newsflash
MODERATORS ON CRACK
film at 11
I don't know much about gcc, but will it remain incompatible with lesser-used apps? Some apps have been completely ignored by their maintainers for years and it would be a pain not being able to compile them.
Can someone tell me what version it's running?
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;
Yeah I think there should be a -2 Karma Whore ability on Slashdot. KW to me is worse than trolling so should have a more strict moderation.
I was hoping on having official redhat rpms for 1.0
I guess I'll have to use the ones on mozilla.org
Where were you hidden in the last centuries?
The whole thing about Red Hat is that they are a distribution for servers. Go again through the whole articles following the UnitedLinux thing, and you'll see.
That being said, Limbo does indeed looks like a more desktop-focused distribution.
"tunah" is BRAND NEW to the internet!!!
I was just thinking today, as I was compiling Apache 2.0 and Mozilla 1.0.1 from Rawhide SRPMs, how nice it would be to have a Red Hat 7.3.999 with the new KDE and Gnome (actually, I'm hoping Gnome 2.0 will be nice enough for me to switch back from KDE, or at least have a KDE with more of these little bugs fixed).
And of course I'd want Apache 2.0, Mozilla 1.latest, and whatever else. I guess since the gcc is upgraded this will be 8.0? I hope they change some more stuff besides Gnome, Apache, and GCC to justify a point-oh.
Anyway, I'm anxious for the offical release of whatever this is.
LIMBO doesn't seem to be a terribly good name for a release, is it saying that they just barely kept the release from going straight to hell? On the other hand, it's nice to see that they're using a real version of GCC. I'm running 7.1, and I had to upgrade GCC from the broken 2.96, which wasn't easy for me, me being a linux n00b.
Don't give me none of this "nature theme" business.
Man oh man, bloatware. I mean, I'll install it all, but man, DVD time!
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
I don't see Abiword. Why was Abiword dumped?
alien, fvwm2, elm, netscape, rxvt, xbill, xlockmore, xpilot
I really can't understand why they removed fvwm2.
In the ISO dir there are 5 images. Now I'm fairly sure that the final version of RH 8(?) will still keep the 3CD binary RPMS + 2CDs of SRPMS format from RH 7.3. But there is one thing that really bothers me about that setup. Even for a fairly basic install, I was still required to use all 3 CDs.
/usr, and I believe I could get a lot under that. But the problem is, it's still too much, and it's too hard to keep the installation small and easily manageable. If I chose any of the preconfigured instalation methods (I think server, kde, gnome workstation, custom system), none of them worked for me. The only one that did the job was custom, but it took a very long time to select individual packages. All the other options left me without some devel tools, or without some servers (e.g apache) or without some smaller apps.
I know I included too many packages in the instalation, and if I were to do a clean install, I could trim it down a lot. Right now I have 2Gb in
I've been using RH since 4.2, and I used to like the fact that it was an easy to install, configure, and maintain distribution. But ever since they moved to 3CDs of binaries, it doesn't feel like that anymore. It's cumbersome to install (with the individual package selection). It's not very easy to configure, especially for more esoteric configurations like mine (I need a bit of server, workstation and devel stuff). The config files are becoming more fragmented, moved into several directories. Sometimes the only way I can make sense of them is by using linuxconf and the other setup tools, which I don't like.
And maintainance, well, that's a story in itself. The couple of times I used the up2date were a nightmare. The first time it installed amanda, and that thing filled up my 400Mb / partition to the brim before I figured out what was going on, and I managed to clean up the mess. The second time, many apps (including X) got broken. I suppose it works just fine with standard instalations, but with modified ones, it just doesn't. So I gave up on up2date. But there are so many packages that I don't know what they do exactly, that it's impossible to update them all manually.
I'm not pretending to be a great RedHat admin. But I have been using that distro for 5 years, and I'm becoming lost. This is not happening to me with Slackware or gentoo (my other 2 distros) or with OpenBSD. While I'm getting much, much better in these other ones, I feel I'm getting worse in RH.
I would really appreciate any ideeas, any help I can get with this problem. Maybe I'm doing it all wrong, but it feels that RH is getting far too complex to run. Is it just me, or does anyone else share this feeling?
For those people who are moaning about 5 disks, all you really need is the net install disk image, which conveniently fits on a 1.44 floppy. Then you can spend 4 hours downloading the beast, 3 hours configuring, 2 hours cursing, then reboot and continue playing MoH:AA on the other system which we wont mention ;-)
Revolution = Evolution
Debian has already started using a DVD installer in addition to the more traditional CD installers.
Most Debian users hardly ever use DVD or CD installations... as they somehow get Debian installed once, and after that, Debian's robust package management system makes updating the OS fully automatic.
The latest pcmcia with wireless networking support included finally? You know considering 802.11b is only being unsed in about 90% of new laptops... You also think they will have it recognise Lucent Orinoco Gold cards? I'm still hacking at 7.3 to get it to work. Maybe I am just doing something wrong, but you would think that it would immediatly recognise this card considering it was the market setting card when 802.11b came out (and still is one of the top 3 in my opinion).
Anonymous because karma is meaningless, but changelogs are not. This took a lot of hand editing to get past the lameness filter, thanks Malda and thanks crapflooders.
/usr/lib/rpm/RPM-GPG-KEY
/proc filesystem to report numbers as if using the default HZ=100, but it is possible that issues could arise -- please test and report bugs, as always. Adaptec's latest hardware that supports the new Ultra 320 SCSI standard is now supported. It is a new driver, so if you have the hardware, test and report any issues that you encounter.
u mp/index.html
u mp/index.html
The Netscape Web browser has been removed.
The RPM Package Manager (RPM) verifies digital signatures when reading packages during installation. In order to verify signatures for packages after installation, the package's public key must be imported into the rpm database. For example, to import the Red Hat public key, type the following as root at a shell prompt:
rpm --import
After importing the public key, you can verify package digest and signature information using the following command:
rpm --checksig package_name
RPM will also suggest package(s) that will satisfy unresolved dependencies if the rpmdb-redhat package is installed. For example, if you are attempting to upgrade the gnumeric without a necessary library, you will see the following message:
rpm -Uvh gnumeric-1.0.5-5.i386.rpm
error: Failed dependencies:
libbonobo-print.so.2 is needed by
gnumeric-1.0.5-5
libbonobo.so.2 is needed by
gnumeric-1.0.5-5
libbonobox.so.2 is needed by gnumeric-1.0.5-5
Suggested resolutions:
bonobo-1.0.20-3.i386.rpm
The above mechanism is equivalent to (and will replace) the existing --redhatprovides mechanism.
GNU Ghostscript has been upgraded to version 7.05.
By default, top and ps only display the main (initial) thread of thread-aware processes. To show all threads, use the command ps -m or type [H] in top.
The junkbuster proxy filter package has been replaced by the privoxy package which can now filter animations, pop-ups, refresh tags, and webbugs. Privoxy is configurable at run-time by pointing your browser to http://p.p and choosing options from the menu.
Red Hat Linux 7.3.92 contains the following new configuration and system tools:
Red Hat Log Viewer (redhat-logviewer)
Red Hat NFS Configuration Tool (redhat-config-nfs)
Red Hat Samba Configuration Tool (redhat-config-samba)
Red Hat X Configuration Tool (redhat-config-xfree86)
Red Hat Sound Card Configuration Tool (redhat-config-soundcard)
Red Hat Language Selection Tool (redhat-config-language)
Red Hat Keyboard Configuration Tool (redhat-config-keyboard)
Red Hat Mouse Configuration Tool (redhat-config-mouse)
Red Hat Root Password Tool (redhat-config-rootpassword)
Red Hat Security Level Configuration Tool (redhat-config-securitylevel)
Package Reorganization
The following packages have been replaced.
ucd-snmp - replaced by net-snmp
gtop - replaced by gnome-system-monitor
gphoto - replaced by gphoto2
console-tools - replaced by kbd
junkbuster - replaced by privoxy
The following packages are currently not included but will be in a future version.
gnomemeeting openh323 pwlib rpm2html rpmfind
The following packages have been removed from this release of Red Hat Linux.
alien blt dip fvwm2 ee elm extace gnomeicu gnome-pim gnorpm ical jikes kaffe metamailmi cq netscape playmidi rxvt sliplogin taper xbill xdaliclock xlockmore xmailbox xpilot
The following packages have been deprecated and will be removed in a future release of Red Hat Linux.
LPRng
Kernel Notes
The kernel used in this release supports the following list of improvements and new features. The kernel is based on the 2.4.19- pre10-ac2 release for this beta.
HZ=1000 on i686 and Athlon means that the system clock ticks 10 times as fast as on other x86 platforms (i386 and i586); HZ=100 has been the Linux default on x86 platforms for the entire history of the Linux kernel. This change provides better interactive response, lower latency response from some programs, and better response from the scheduler. We have adjusted the
The latest aacraid driver now has 64-bit support, and so should have much higher performance on systems with more than 4GB of memory when you use the "bigmem" kernel.
The network console and crash dump functionality from Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 2.1 has been ported to this release. Documentation for setting this up is included in the netdump and netdump-server packages and is also available as a whitepaper at the following URL:
http://www.redhat.com/support/wpapers/redhat/netd
This beta contains a kernel providing EA and ACL support for the ext3 for setting this up is included in the netdump and netdump-server packages and is also available as aw whitepaper at the following URL:
http://www.redhat.com/support/wpapers/redhat/netd
This beta contains a kernel providing EA and ACL support for the ext3 filesystem based on the patches and user-level tools from
http://acl.bestbits.at/
The support for EA and ACL is included in several packages:
kernel provides the support for storing EAs and ACLs on disk for ext3 filesystems provides the system calls to manipulate EAs and ACLs; and provides the mechanisms to enforce ACLs on file access.
e2fsprogs includes knowledge of the new on-disk extended attribute formats so that fsck can check filesystems using the new feature.
attr provide access to extended attributes attached to libattr files
acl provide tools to set, modify and query the ACLs set libacl on files
libattr-devel libraries and include files to build programs using libacl-devel, acl, and attr
Others might disagree, but I've found that, in general, in the (GNU)Linux world, the maintainers of large projects are very causious of calling them "stable releases".
:-) ), I would encourage you to use development versions.
While I generally wouldn't advise their use in a live server, some Linux newbies might think that development versions are only for developors. They are not. If you have a secondary machine that you use for non-critical desktop type work, (E.G. word processing, games, etc), you could help a lot by using development versions, and reporting bugs.
Back in the Linux 1.3.X days, a lot of people used the development kernel tree, because it had features that they needed that were not in the 1.2.X tree, (I think that that is less so in 2.5.X vs 2.4.X), and personally, I always found that it was very stable.
So, basically, Linux newbies - if you want a feature of a development version, and can cope with the *possibility* of a crash, (in the same way that many people cope with the possibility of a crash in other OSs
I just wanted to warn you that over half of those links point to the evil goatse anus pic :/
Taco, can we do something about this?!
So, what's the story with this thing and Python? Did they finally manage to get rid of 1.5.2 ( == port their own scripts to 2.2.1)?
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
How could they!?! Where can I find the source for it. Really now, it's quite fun squashing Bill before his OS gets on my network. Level 21 has been my best for the few times I've played.
As in their stock price?
That's complete BS. KW'ing actually does serve a useful purpose -- it brings facts into the discussion that would not otherwise be brought up. The people who get the +5 get it because they contribute to the discussion.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Even if I have used RedHat for several years, I have never recommended it to new PC users. The reason is that (even if they probably be satisfied if I set up a Linux ystem for them) they be more happy if I set up something running MS Windows.
To be an alternative for the ordinary user on the desktop, Linux must have:
* A decent office suite
* A decent browser
* A decent e-mail program
* A streamlined desktop
* A sentralized way to change the system settings
A year ago, Linux didnt have any of this. Open Office 1.0, Mozilla 1.0 and Evolution (or KMail) are brilliant programs. I have no problems recommending them instead of MSOffice, IE, Outlook. (To be honest MS Office is a better program then OpenOffice, but MS Office is way to expencive for an ordinary user, and Open Office is GoodEnough(TM)).
With Gnome 2 and KDE 3 the desktop starts to look fairly streamlined. It still some work to be done on Gnome 2, but hopefully Redhat will fix the most annoying bugs before releasing 8.0.
With "a sentralized way to change system settings" I do mean that the most important settings should be reached from a "control panel"-like program. To the ordinary user it is very hard to explain that the desktop resolution have to be changed by editing a text-file, while the desktop backgroud can be changed by right-clicking the desktop. I hope Redhat have a better control-panel in 8.0.
If they fix the last two items, this could be the first Linux distribution I recommend to a novice computer user. Im looking forward to it..:-)
RedHat's more about the corporate environment than desktop users, which seems to be Mandrake's forte.
Maybe they're acknowledging the (*chortle*) threat of (*snicker*) UnitedLinux.
Or will it be v7.4? If I read correctly, GCC version major change result major change in Linux version for Red Hat. Is this still true?
:)
Thank you in advance.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
It seems to me that rpms is kde 3.0.2 cvs.
nice that LVM is now supported by default, so you dont have to mess with kernel modules and initrds ..
the question is: does it support online growning of ext3 ?
Slashdot'll post on the front page news about a new beta version of Red Hat but doesn't post on the front page a new *RELEASE* version of FreeBSD. Seems like Henry Ford's comments about what color the Model T was availabe in: "any color as long as it's black." Slashdot: News for Nerds. Stuff that matters. As long as it's Linux news, E/N crap (Katz, movie/book reviews), or an OSDN promotion.
Now that mplayer has been GLPed (I think), would it get included in the distro?
Any RedHat people (bero-rh?) willing to comment on this?
(by the way, I submitted this article hours before this one, but what the heck...)
bero_rh usually gives us plenty of useful information aroung here when theres any kind of RH news.
bero! where are you today?
The version of samba is way out dated hope they get up to speed soon
Stranger is the removal of ee -- I haven't seen them adding anything to replace it. Not that it's a problem for me, as I still use xv, but it seems an odd move.
Well, they addes EOG los of time before, so the transition in the last 5 years is: Xv --> ee --> EOG
Having seen the progression, the next name should be Polevault.
One simple rule for its versus it's
There was a time when Red Hat were seemingly pushing Linuxconf as the system admin tool. Now they have developed their own. Anyone know why?
Starting to sound a lot like M$ pouring out WinXX's. When will people tire of installing new distributions every month or so and settle on a distro that does automatic package updating, like gentoo?
RedHat offers a free 'public' Red Hat Network. It is almost always busy.
There is an open source free (as in speech) alternative to RHN called 'current' on SourceForge. It works very well.
Has anyone else tried the network install? I found it quite confusing. It seems the colours were switched for the buttons after downloading the install image, and I would answer the opposite of what I thought I was. This caused me to reboot instead of installing twice. I won't bother trying one more time.
--I like redhat up to the point of security, then the default install, even checked on high security and NOT selecting the 'server" install, just doing a minimum "workstation" install, leaves ya wide open. Yep, I got owned fairly soon after that install. I've had to reinstall 3 times to finally have something that might be close to bare minimum secure. I had to find a third party GUI front end for IPtables to have some sort of maybe it's working firewall. NO WAY most n00bs can command line IP tables or even know what all that stuff is.
./package, but how do you turn it off then? and sometimes that ./ doesn't work, but yet, I have all these packages.
My other serious major beef is I can go to gnorpm, I see a zillion packages, yet my gnome desktop only has very few clickable menu items. Wazzup with that? What IS all that other stuff, where is it, how do you get it to work, or is it working, or what? And just TRY to find out on the web, it's not happening. And WHY are so many services running by default, when you aren't running a server? Again, what is this stuff? Granted, I'm still on 7.2, I have been using up2date to up2date stuff I don't even use but it says I have! ARRRGHHH! I haven't even been able to find out how to use 9/10ths of the stuff on here. Ya, I know, somehow find the package correctly and do
Is there some way to differentiate between the traditional "program start" from something that isn't a program but some library or widget or name I don't even know what it is? I have a smallish harddrive, do I REALLY need all this stuff on here just for casual home use? I had so little diskspace left over after installit ain't funny. I'll get another large hardrive when i can afford it, I'm on a low fixed income, I can't take what for me is a week's pay to buy a "new" hardrive. I got almost a 2 gig hardrive, why isn't this enough, why can't it fit on a much smaller area? Why does "boot" partition waste many many megs that are apparenbtly never used? Why is there this need for some huge "swap" partition if you have 200-odd megs of RAM? Ain't that enough? I've surfed for years with a maximum of 64 megs on both mac and windows, now I got over 200 megs of ram and a "swap partion" that is large than that. WHY? Why is a swap partition even needed? Isn't RAM enough as it is? the 7.2 install I have comes from a full release set of disks and what passes for a couple of manuals that are really just pamphlets, I was expecting actual books for 50 some bucks.
I want to support linux, and I chose redhat after mandrake refused absolutely to dial out on a normal modem, I mean it just WOULD NOT DIAL, at least redhat dialed out. I'll support the company directly by getting their offical releases, but I'm not popping 60$ every 6 months or now less, and even though I have used cheapbytes to try the mandrake release, I would rather support the distro maker itself. I fully appreciate that they need the loot, they offer a product, they lose money on the bulk of the people who use their products. Bandwith isn't "free" although a lot of folks here seem to think it is. "Download the ISO image". That costs money for that company.
And I honestly hope that someone will realise this isn't a troll, maybe a professional redhat sys admin will actually take the time to type a paragraph to answer a few of the questions I have. I've tried those newbie forums and stuff, I am not a newsgroup person though, not comfortable with huge volumes of email that are mostly flamewars and half of them have apparently malicious scripts in them.
Thanks in advance to anyone.
Try networked install, its real easy but remember to write down the full path to the directory of /i386 on you ftp of choice.
HTTP/1.1 400
Go back to yer cave.
HTTP/1.1 400
Skipjack->Valhalla, islands maybe (skipjack is also a fish)
:) or something like that.
Valhalla->LIMBO
At least this time i can see the connection, both are to do with the afterlife.
Valahalla, where Norse warriors go when they die.
Limbo, a kind of non-place where (some) Christians (used to) believe some go when they die. Neither Heaven nor Hell, Limbo was supposedly the place where good people who are not Christian (or babies who die before becoming Christian) go when they die, but that is the old ways and we are more progressive now and God loves you all (even aethists
(Dont mod me down just because you dont appreciate my religion or are against organised religion on principle. I choose not reject my religion despite some of the misguided leadership and crazy zealots. Dont mod reply.)
In 2.96 they're not standard, and some things, like width(), don't appear to work on strings...
G.
He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
-- J.R.R. Tolkien
>>The way RH handled this release...
;-)
Release? Hmmm, I definitely AM a newbie then! The article title says "BETA."
I have labored long under the misunderstanding that BETA sort of meant "TEST."
Is it also compiled with GCC 3.1, or does it only include the compiler ?
Isn't this the Java-like programming language for Inferno, the Plan9-like operating system? Isn't it also the slang term for pergitory (which, iirc, is also the name of some other component of the Infernon system).
:)
It almost sounds like they're about to jump mascotts to Beastie as well
I'm not a troll, I am a relatively new (this year only) user who has tried three different distros so far. I am NOT a programmer or software coder. I'm NOT a professional IT person at all, I just happen to like computers in general, I enjoy reading about them and other sorts of new devices, and am attempting to learn more. I'm coming from a mostly mac classic background, but I have used windows as well, but I switched years ago. I first started using DOS in the 80's and can honestly say I never liked copmmand line, my brain doesn't work that way, I can think in pictures/concepts easier, ie "GUI" interface, that's why I switched to mac classic first time I used one. I'm trying linux now based on what I had heard about it, to whit, it could run on older slower but still functional machines. latest releases of both apple and intel world machines I just cannot afford, that's my personal bottom line, I just don't make that much money, that's reality. I'ver gotten ahold of some older i86 machines and are using them, some I fix and give away, some I fix and sell for the cost of the parts I have in them, so that people with limited budgets can have 'a computer". that is what I offer to 'the community". but to repeat, I am not a coder, and saw linux as away to put an operating system inexpensively on these machines. My personal machine I'm keeping only has a small hard drive, but it works OK. the machine itself although several years old was "new in the box" literally and I got it really cheap.
I was posting an honest sort of "review" of my experience with both mandrake, and rh 7.1 and 7.2, which is all I have used so far. From someone coming from a non professional background, my personal observations and experience learning/trying to learn/ trying to use linux in other words, so I was a good example for the parent post I replied to. I'm on a linux machine right now. I qualify as a joe average home user newbie, and that doesn't automagically make me a "troll". I'm semi retired, don't make a lot but can pay my bills and have a very small amount left over, which I usually put into computer stuff as I like this as a hobby. I had some legit questions and observations, that's about IT. I have a background in other technical matters that aren't "computer", that's where my primary interests over the years have been, and they are varied. I'd say not counting power tools I have around half a ton of just hand tools for example, and I can use them. If you count power tools I have many tons of them, tons as in thousands of lbs. None of these things-my other interests and what I have done professionally and still do very part time even ever come up on this forum, so there's no posts from me about them. I've done a lot of mechanical repairs on engines large and small, from single cyclinder two strokes to custom 4 stroke small racing engines, built elaborate and expensive custom furniture and cabinets, constructed and built a lot of homes and additions, operated large farms as a general manager, owned and run a bicycle shop a long time ago, worked as a gunsmith, and etc. I currently am learning a lot more about alternate energy, and maintain a huge personal solar installation, probably the largest for this state I am in in this general region. It is quite sophisticated. In fact, when it comes to alternate energy, something a LOT more useful than your fucking video games, "Mine is a lot bigger than yours" when it comes to this technical amount of hardware and knowledge, GUAR-AN-FUCKING TEED it is.
Assholes like you here brag about your latest video card and how elite you are playing childish childrens games. childish, immature, resource wasting bread and circuses jack off games. Or how cool it is to have the latest lcd screen PDA which basically is mostly a waste of electrons. YOU and people like you are the idiots and trolls and a drag on the planet earth, despite touting "open source" or whatever your favorite 'distro" is, which anotyher thing, that word "distro" is about as faggy as you can get. Must be too hard to just say "distribution"..
SO FUCKING SORRY none of that applies to slashdot or linux. I enjoy learning new things, this is fun for me, I have problems still but I expected that, what isn't fun is dealing with teenage or older punk masturbators who feel so superior on slashdot because they can hack into some poor person's windows machine or know some obscure coding language. And I get labeled as a troll? I also don't like the linux community in general "fuck you" attitude to newbies, as your post was and as I have seen on other linux forums when attempting to find out the answers to something. My post had a lot of "why's?" in it because they are legitimate querstions I have. I have yet to find out why I need a swap partiton when the same thing can be done on other computers just with ram. I hardly ever have used "virtual memory" on computers, I have found for my purposes that ram was sufficient. It's faster and cheaper in the long run to add more ram. I've taken ancient mac computers and figured out how to run a complete surfing/browser experience entirely inside a ramdisk. This is "cool" I guess, getting almost new machine surfing performance out of 25 mghz machines. That was one of my questions I had, the swap partition, and the wasted megs of space in this "boot" partition that are just sitting there unused and probably never used from a default redhat install. I have a lot more, but just simple things like "why are there 500 apps in an install but only a few dozen show up in the desktop menu, where the fuck are they" are LEGITIMATE QUESTIONS.
Red Hat usually releases upgrades about four times per year. It varies, depending on how the development goes. Frequently the release cycle is roughly March, June, September, December. There is a lot of variability in the cycle though. Possibly they have been slowing down toward 3 releases per year.
I'm not really sure what the Mandrake cycle is, or whether they are even that regular. They could time their releases to match significant changes in KDE.
Both of them have already upgraded this year. So have many other distributions. Even Debian is coming close to an upgrade, and they tend to have the slowest cycle (though you can get on the unstable tree and run at the bleeding edge if you want to).
I'm sorry if you are feeling impatient to move faster, but things are really moving at about as fast a clip as is safe already. Perhaps a little faster (even the major distributions don't always do enough testing before a release).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
http://dillo.cipsga.org.br/m ff.cuni.cz/~clock/twibright/l inks
http://atrey.karlin.
What's wrong with those!?
These are good questions. These are the type of questions that a lot of experiences Linux advocates forget about or ignore.
/bin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, and all those other 'bin' [binary] directories you have. I wouldn't suggest just sitting down and going through them all unless you have a LOT of time, but searching through the 'man' and 'info' pages are how you can learn a lot about your system.
n -4.html#NUMBER
.
n -4.html#AEN347
. In general the
Linux Documentation Project is a wonderful place to find answers.
Well, I'm not going to be able to give a lot of very specific answers to everything here, but this should help. I would first point you to your local Linux Users Group (LUG), if there is one. I've found that there's almost always someone in the group who can help me. It's one of the closest things to true tech support the Linux community has. Chech out http://linux.com/usergroups.pl to find one nearby. You should also do a google search since not every LUG is listed.
Many of the packages you see in gnorpm are libraries or applications that run only via the command line. Only a few of these are GUI applications you'll actually see under one of your menus. Now you may think that's a LOT of libraries and system utilities, but (from a Windows point of view) if you ever check out all that's in your C:\WINDOWS folder or C:\WINNT folder, you'll find all sorts of stuff you never seem to use (that doesn't make them unnecessary though!). I've been using Linux coming on two years now and it's only been in the last couple of months that I feel I really start to know what the different core packages are and what they do. And this is after doing many many installs of Linux. A good way to 'explore' what you've got is to check out the 'man' pages for the applications you find under
You're 'boot' partition is where the libaries and programs that start up your computer reside. This partition in general does NOT have to be very large. Space is usually given on the boot partition if you what to do some configuration and cusomization. Try reading http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/Partition/partitio
As for the swap space, check out http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/Swap-Space.html and also: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/Partition/partitio
Linux still has a horrid learning curve to it. While some love that (I for one), it's a rough climb for many. Learning about your system and about linux is a process of doing exactly what you did here--ask questions, participate in the community. And eventually, you'll get the hang of it.
As of Linux for Joe User, I would say we're getting close, very close, but there will always be more to do.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Jaguar has these features (my favorites are bold):
Quartz Extreme - Hardware-accelerated Quartz engine, faster interface, Quartz Compositor (and apparently in newer builds, even more things) powered through OpenGL on GPU on powerful enough cards.
Rendezvous - Brings simplicity of AppleTalk to TCP/IP networking. Automatic detection of computers over TCP/IP.
Rendezvous-aware iTunes - share music libraries over network (Airport streaming, etc.)
FreeBSD 4.4 equivalency
GCC 3.x compiler - system speedup as result
Ink - Handwriting recognition built in to the system.
iChat - Fully compatible AOL Instant Messaging client.
Quicktime 6
Spring-loaded folders
Minimize windows to the Dock or to floating mini-windows
Change Desktop picture after specified time period
Desktop Picture changer fades between images like screensaver does
CUPS Printing system
Printer sharing
Internet Connection sharing (Airport Software Base Station on steroids)
Firewall control in System Preferences
New Menu Extras (Bluetooth File Sharing, Eject, etc.)
Bluetooth File Exchange app
Audio/MIDI Setup app
New System Preferences for "Digital Hub" (control of DV Camcorders, digital still cameras, audio CDs, blank CDs, iPods, etc. etc.)
Many improved System Preferences
System Preferences can be viewed by category (as in OS X 10.1) or by alphabetical order (as in OS X 10.0)
Developers can now use Brushed Metal interface appearance
Control of font sizes in the Finder
Display icon labels below or to the side of icons
Forward button in additon to back in Finder
New "Small Icons" option for app toolbars
Vastly upgraded Preview - new thumbnail drawer, new toolbar, etc.
Support for scanners in Image Capture
Beefed-up contextual menus
Vastly improved Calculator - brushed metal appearance, "paper tape" drawer, full Scientific mode, convert units
New Sherlock 3 - no longer does file searching. Internet only. Features new
"channels" like Watson - Internet search, Movies, Pictures, Yellow Pages, News, Stocks, Flights, Package tracking, Dictionary, Translation, and AppleCare Knowledge Base search. Brushed metal appearance.
New Find dialog in finder - search with multiple rules, etc.
New Search box in Finder toolbar - enter search terms and results are displayed in the current Finder window with a split view
Vastly improved Address Book
Improved Mail - much more robust Rules support, intelligent Spam filter, better performance, interface tweaks, consolidate multiple accounts into one Inbox, etc. etc.
System Sounds are back - sounds for removing from Dock, Trash operations, loggin in/out, iChat, system, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
New Zoom Windows - opening folders, etc. gives Quartz-smoothed "zooming window" effect like Scale Dock option
Vastly improved Show Info - Command+I opens individual Show Info windows (as in OS 9), with many more options, improved Permissions control, etc. Command+Option+I opens dynamic single Show Info window as in OS X 10.1.
Vastly improved Networking in Finder, vastly improved Windows sharing.
VPN support in Mail, etc.
Exchange support in Mail
Improved Finder (better multithreading)
Support for more systems in DVD Player
Can take screenshots of DVD Player
When using "snap to grid" in the Finder, files and folders will smoothly slide into place.
Ability to turn off Preview in column mode.
Application icon added to lower right corner of minimized windows to aide in differentiating them.
Spoken Interface option in Speech Preferences
Improved Disk Copy
Improved Apple System Profiler
New Aqua interface ("flatter" buttons etc)
The amount of antialiasing can be controlled (4 levels)
Subpixel rendering on LCDs
A removed user's home directory is saved as a disk image.
Netbooting
More info under the filename, like ID3-tags, size of images and number of files in folders - Examples: Display Hard Drive total/remaining space under name on desktop HD icon, display Track Length of MP3 files under file name in Finder windows.
Minimize in place of windows.
"Poof" sound effect when removing from Dock
Screensaver "Slideshow" is improved, can download images from the 'net.
Anti-aliased mouse pointer with shadow.
Connect to FTP in the Finder
More man-pages.
Spellcheck in 10+ languages.
Python, TCL och Ruby included
Account features, quotas
No lines in the Dock
Better Terminal: new Inspector, scrollback in split windows full UNICODE support
Mail integrated with iChat. Can run AppleScript based on the new files
Address book can send SMS, control global variables in system?
Translation in Sherlock
Net installation
Can run AppleScript when new Digital Hub devices appear (drives, CDs, cameras...)
Disable trackpad when inserting mouse (optional)
Black-and-White screen (Universal Access)
All network activity (FTP, SSH, SMB etc) controlled from sharing, integrated with firewall
Classic programs will store settings in the users' folder, not OS 9 Preferences
Can see memory reqs of all Classic programs, even background.
Services in context-menu
New menu for PC-Card support (like the Eject menu).
Clean install option in Installer.
It's the programming language for Bell Lab's (you know, the original Unix people) Inferno embedded O/S.
--thanks for the decent reply! I appreciate it and will save it to disk!
Modes "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1024x768"
(This is on XFree86-4.2.0-8.)
No Apache at all! No 2.0. Not even 1.3.x !?
I don't use RedHat(tm), so I can't answer some of you r questions specifically, but these should be useful pointers:
/etc/fstab to include noatime in the fourth column. For example, here is my /etc/fstab: /dev/hda1 / ext2 defaults,noatime 1 1 /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0 /proc proc defaults 0 0
/. all day every day, (I am a freelance programmer, without enough contracts!).
Security:
I highly recommend that you read some on-line documentation about network security. There is absolutely no reason at all for your machine to offer any services to the outside world. I suggest that you set up a firewall to deny all access to ports up to 1023, if you are not running a server. Then you can install various server applications and use them locally for educational purposes. If you log packets that are being denied, don't be suprised when you get lots of attempts to access various ports and servers.
Swap partition
IGNORE THIS ADVICE:
"You should set your swap partition to X, where X is double the amount of physical RAM".
That advice is COMPLETELY INACCURATE.
The VM system in Linux has changed a lot, so there is no one 'rule' anyway.
Linus DID say at one point that for the VM system to work efficiently, that you should either have no swap space, or at least double the amount of RAM. Personally, I have 128 megs of RAM, and no swap partition. My system works fine. My 4 Mb RAM laptop has a 20 Mb swap partition, and my 8 Mb RAM laptop has a 16 Mb swap partition. If you have over 200 megs of RAM, I suggest you do not have a swap partition at all.
General suggestions
To get a bit of extra performance out of your system, why not try mounting your partitions with no access time updating - this means that every time you read a file on disk, a write doesn't occur to record the date and time you read the file. This can increase performance significantly. Just modify your
none
none
Anyway, let us know how you get on, and if you need more help just ask, as I browse
I am currently running Limbo after my second fresh install. The first one I did to give Gnome2 a spin, and boy did it Suck. I had tried Gnome2 betas and they weren't that great, but I had to give Gnome2 final a spin to see if anything changed.
First problem was I installed sawfish and metacity. If you install both, metacity takes preference. So I uninstall metacity and try to find a way to use sawfish. Well I found a setting for window manager in gconf_editor, but it had no effect. Finally after doing a few searchs on Google I found you just manually run the window manager and make sure the session gets saved on exit(Lame). So I tried Sawfish for a little bit and it isn't too bad, but is missing viewports and many other features I require. So I install Enlightenment and find I need to recompile it. So I recompile it, install, and run it. It runs, but Gnome2 and Enlightenment 0.16.5 don't get along. First the panel isn't sticky across viewports. Second the panel becomes very resistant to unhiding. Three Enlightenment's viewport hotkeys go wacko. After reinstalling Limbo and replacing Gnome2 with Gnome1(remarkably not that hard of a thing to do, tho will require some recompiling to get near perfect) unsurpisingly enough Enlightenment 0.16.5 and Gnome1 work great together under Limbo.
Another problem with Gnome2 is the lack of settings. You may have heard of they just hide all the settings in Gconf, NOT! After looking through gconf_editor I can tell you, yes, there are a few settings in gconf_editor that aren't normally visible, but not nearly as many as were in preference panels in Gnome1.
Then there is the stupid stuff like when you go to change a panel's type. You can't change a panel's type. You must make a new panel, configure it how you want, and then move everything over. In Gnome1 you would just turn a edge panel into an aligned panel, and then move it where you wanted it.
Yet another problem was the lack of a gtk1 theme selector. In Limbo the Majority of the the applications are still gtk1(Xchat, xmms, galeon, gaim, etc).
There is the inconsistant Cancel/OK mess. Gnome1 uses OK/Cancel and Yes/No, Gnome2 uses the silly reversed Cancel/OK and No/Yes. Sawfish2 uses OK/Cancel.
Havoc Penington, the bane of my Linux desktop.
What is glibc 2.2.90? Something like gcc 2.96??
when can I expect that XFS journaling filesystem is included in this distribution? or do I have to move to gentoo?
likewise, I'm amazed that they removed jikes. The speed difference between it and the regular jdk javac is required.
xdaliclock would be another disappointing removal. what does it hurt? such a cool and useful screensaver.
jason
Since the Limbo is also a dance, I bet that the next Red Hat release will be codenamed something like Mambo or (dare I say it) Macarena? ;-)
cpeterso
If glibc is going to break compatibility for its next version, I think the glibc maintainers should consider removing functions which KNOWN SECURITY RISKS, such as gets(), strcpy(), strcat(), sprintf(), and friends. There are safer alternatives, such as strncpy(), strncat(), and snprintf(). If glibc removes risky functions, then application writers will be forced to improve their applications by use safer functions and coding practices. Shouldn't known "best practises" be encouraged by the libraries we use as the foundation of our software?
Unfortunately, even some of those "safe" functions can be difficult to use safely. OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Solaris libc libraries include strlcpy() and strlcat(). Theo de Raadt co-wrote an insightful paper about these new functions: strlcpy and strlcat - consistent, safe, string copy and concatenation . Why does glibc insist on not supporting these safer alternatives?
If removing these risky functions is too controversial, then glibc could use a transitional approach. Move the risky functions' prototypes into a separate header file. Name it something scary like "unsafe.h", "securityrisk.h" or "bufferoverflow.h". Application writers who are too lazy to fix their use of risky functions, can simply #include "bufferoverflow.h".
cpeterso
I hope that DVD sized images become more widespread. (Kudos to the distributions that use them now.)
I also hope that soon DVD(+/-)RW drives are available at a price comparable that of CD-RW drives.
Wouldn't it be better if they waited until they had major improvements before they released a distribution? I buy my CDs from the store, and this is ridiculus! Every 6 months I upgrade and there isn't that much difference.
Make it much better and release it as version 8. Get the new GCC in there, and make it support more processors and throw in StarOffice for the price you charge for the Distro.
the default gtk1 font sucks and there is no easy way to change it in gnome2
I hope that the next Redhat distro is out before I start me next semiester at Rutgers University.
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
Generally because Linuxconf wasn't stable. It would often eat hand edited configuration files (though that improved with time), and had a nasty tendency of asking you to perform actions that weren't necessary to make your changes take effect (eg, wanting to postfix when you made a change to samba) with no logical explanation. The system also seemed to want to perform actions necessary for changes to take effect two or more times before it would let you quit.
Anyone out there from Red Hat listening? If so, why not put the important stuff on CD1, & have something next to the packages saying which CD they are on? Or even making it possible to install from CD 1 & if there's anything you selected that wasn't on the CD, you can download it after the initial install?
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/05/202620 9&mode=flat&tid=129&threshold=0
The name just kills me. Kills me!
It reminds me of an electronic design package from Innoveda - the software is named BetaSoft. BetaSoft! Hah! It's a released product! I'm dying here!
Limbo! Ho-hooo! "How's the project going?" "It's in Limbo."
"A generation which ignores history has no past and no future." -- Robert Heinlein
The changelog doesn't mention it but maybe you'd know: Does 7.3's or newer up2date show currently installed version in addition to newly available version?
Reason I ask is that I prefer Red Carpet in 7.2 for updates (I did the go-gnome thing). But Red Carpet is updated less often and without kernel updates (and doesn't have upgrade advisories easily available), and up2date doesn't warn that it's going to overwrite a ximian rpm with a non-ximian rpm.
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
I have tried some of the patch collections for 2.4. They are made by fairly random people, so I think it should be about as stable as alpha releases. After it locked up hard three times when I did some serious stress tests (yeah, the mouse suddenly stops moving, and absolutely nothing appears in the logs), I returned to a safe kernel version and have never been in a good enough mood to meddle with kernels since then. After all, my machine has crashed about 6 times altogether in linux during the past three years, so every crash makes my heart faint.