Red Hat 8.0 Reviewed

Jon writes "Eugenia from OSNews is giving Red Hat 8.0 a run for its money. She posted a very detailed and balanced review for the new version of Red Hat, which aims to be a "business desktop". Very interesting article and discussion over at OSNews." Several people also sent in the stories from InternetNews as well as LinuxPlanet.

Comments

The 2 best distros

[Anonymous Coward]

I switched from Redhat 7.3 to Mandrake 8.2 last week. Mandrake is much better in terms of user friendliness. Redhat is up there though. If you're thinking of getting into linux give both a go.

Re:The 2 best distros

[gazbo]

I can't believe that Slashdot, who have been a staunch supporter of GNU/Linux for so long, would link to such an ill-informed and negative review.

Firstly the review advocates Windows users not bothering to switch unless they absolutely have to, but also the FUD about Linux + Apache being insecure due to the (now patched) OpenSSL vulnerability was ridiculous. Sounds like a MS shill to me...

Then, to cap it all, advocating choosing RH7.2 over RH8.0 was ludicrous. The reasoning goes along the lines that 7.2 has been in development longer than 8.0. WTF? That doesn't even make sense.

I've downloaded 8.0 for my home network and installed most services, and it all works fine for me. Whoever wrote that article doesn't know what they are talking about.

Re:The 2 best distros

[rmadmin]

I got the same feeling from the article. Like the person who wrote it just doesn't have a clue about linux. At one point the author says something to the point of 'I prefer stuff to just work, like in XP and Mac'. Well, when I installed FreeBSD on my laptop, the PCMCIA and NIC took off with not problem. Windows 98... nope, no PCMCIA here, 2000, Nope, no PCMCIA here, XP, 'Is this a lapto*CRASH*'. So much for windows 'Just working'.

Re:The 2 best distros

[Anonymous Coward]

You're so full of shit.

Re:The 2 best distros

[eno2001]

Hmmm... Before you misread me as another MS shill, I will state up front that I am a big Linux supporter/user. All my systems at home run Linux only. And all of them are pretty much built by me from the ground up with custom compiled kernels and apps. But, I've been using XP at work and on my laptop for the past month. I have to say, regretfully, that MS got a LOT of things right in this version of Windows.

My laptop is a Compaq Armada D500 (PIII 600/w 128Megs of RAM). The system seems to run a lot faster under XP than it did under RedHat 7.2 or SuSE 8.0. Even compared to when I had a custom compiled kernel and apps on it. The wireless PCMCIA worked with no need to grab drivers (my Windows 2000 experience on this laptop) or recompile anything. All apps load quickly. The suspend feature works exactly as expected. The environment is much more organized and task oriented. Etc... The bottom line is that Linux distro makers can't rest on the old laurels (Linux is more stable, secure, you can tweak the code, etc...) and ignore the MS camp. Take a look at what Windows is today. I mean a REAL look. Most of today's Linux distro's are great alternatives to Windows 2k, but they leave something to be desired when compared with Win XP.

I have been forcing myself to use XP here at work for the past month and it really does blow most Linux distros away in terms of a basic work environment. The only problem I've had so far is that I can't get under the hood and tweak as much, but I haven't found that there is a need to either...

As far as your experience goes, what make/model of laptop were you trying to install Windows XP on? That could be the key to understanding why it didn't work.

I still won't use it at home, not because it isn't as good as Linux, but because I can't afford it and the licensing sucks. Joe User doesn't think that way though...

Re:The 2 best distros

[Anonymous Coward]

I have never EVER *EVER* wanted to use XP over 2000. You are a shill. You just don't know it.

Re:The 2 best distros

[Travis222]

I have tried out Mandrake(v.?) and Redhat(v. 7.3) as well. I guess it could just be me, but I feel much more comfortable in Redhat. Mandrake for various reasons just reminds me to much of Windows. I personally think that Redhat is plenty user friendly for just about anyone to use, but at the same time has more advanced things (e.g. terminals) for the users who are sort of coming along from comuter illiteracy. Not to say that Mandrake doesn't have those same features, I just don't see how it could be better for new users (besides that its like M$).

Re:The 2 best distros

[eno2001]

Here... here's a little troll snack: Don't let your inability to learn newer, streamlined interfaces obscure your judgement of an improved OS. Windows XP Pro is easier to install, use and configure than Windows 2K. It's too bad that it's not fair to consumers and has DRM all over it. Linux distros will have a little catch up to do again. But... this is a constant state in the OS market (the software industry overall). One side is always slightly ahead of the other in some way. Linux still has stability and security, but MS will catch up there too. That's why distro makers should focus on end user things like usability, eye-candy, "geewhiz" stuff, etc... Who can refute that there is a need for something like the stateful sessions that Windows XP has in the Linux world? Go back under your bridge now troll.

Re:The 2 best distros

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe that Slashdot, who have been a staunch supporter of GNU/Linux for so long, would link to such an ill-informed and negative review.

Becuase Slashdot isn't really that much of a supporter of GNU/Linux in general, but more of a few specific distributions, Debian in particular. RedHat always gets a hard time on this site.

Re:The 2 best distros

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I have completely opposite experience.

I bought new Toshiba Satellite in May with XP
on it. I installed Red Hat 7.3 on the partition.

Experience:

I use XP only for DVD, Spanish and hardware testing
and XP hangs and crashes quite often in
all three case.

Linux - I use it for 95% for everything and
it almost never crashes. The only case when
it crashes is when I play with drivers
and hardware. And one more problem is since
I use PS2 2 USB adapter sometimes mouse gets
crazy.

Lucent ORINOCO I use works with both out
of box. Epson scanner - out of box. Nikon
Coolpix 995 - out of box.

The only thing worse in Red Hat 7.3 is crappy
driver for i830MG - too slow for DVD/divx.

Apart from that - RH 7.3 blows away XP.

And I am curious what do you mean by
work enviroment ? MS Office ? Or gcc/g77/apache ?

Re:The 2 best distros

[eno2001]

My experience with RedHat 7.1 and 7.2 on the Compaq wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great either. I haven't tried 7.3 yet, so I can't say anything about it, but I do hope that WLAN support improves. A friend of mine with a fairly new HP latptop (2001 model) tried SuSE 8.0 on it. He is a Windows guy who wants to get into Linux, so he has some stuff to learn. But, the things that didn't work out of the box for him were WLAN and CD-R/CD-RW burning as well as DVD playback. I had to recompile his kernel to add support for DVD (ufs). But, I couldn't get the WLAN stuff to work (ORINOCO based). (I also couldn't get his CD/RW drive to work either.) The WLAN card not working seemed to have less to do with the WLAN driver than the PCMCIA driver. Oddly enough his NIC and modem (also PCMCIA worked.

In my case, I got wireless working on my Compaq, but I had to recompile the kernel as well as PCMCIA support and the orinoco driver. Once it was working, it wasn't totally reliable. It would pick up signal when it felt like it whic was about 20% of the time, and there was no GUI applet to let me know that there was a signal. I could use iwconfig, but I have to keep refeshing it every second to see if there is a signal or not. Under XP with the identical hardware, the signal comes in immediately no matter where I am in the house. The only thing I can chalk it up to is that the drivers for orinoco are still in development. In my friend's case, it was a PCMCIA problem. Unfortunately, he re-installed XP because he couldn't wait for me to get some free time to look at his SuSE installation. His opinion of SuSE was, "Almost there... but needs a little more work. It should be able to support standard (hah!) hardware right out of the box."

So far, my XP laptop has been running for a few days with no problems. I've even been able to keep the uptime going with suspend. I know it's possible to set up suspend in Linux too, but it doesn't happen out of the box with RedHat. So uptimes in Linux on the same laptop were never very high. I have yet to see XP crash on my laptop though... Maybe after running with it for a few months, it'll happen. (Remember, I'm primarily a Linux dude! I just have an open mind...)
Haven't tried DVD under XP, but it probably works too. I used Ogle on that laptop before and it played DVDs just fine, so I don't expect much of a difference. MPlayer ruled as well, but I only used it for MPEGs and DiVX (nothing in the Windows world can compete with MPlayer)

As far as "work environment", I'm a net admin by day, so I don't have a whole lot of use for devel tools, etc... All I need is a mail client, web browser, help desk management software and NT admin tools. There are plenty of things I wish Windows had (I did install Cygwin so I could use the X server in XP), but to do my day to day stuff, Windows XP works just fine. A lot of my peers still prefer the classic mode, but I don't. I like the new XP mode since it's very logical and puts pretty much everything I need right at my fingertips for a day's work. I have been using Linux at work for the past two years with Win2K in VMWare for managing the NT domain, but XP really hasn't been that bad. As I said before, there's a lot less to tweak though. And I hate the licensing. I think it's braindead to tie the OS to the machine for life.

I know I'll go back to Linux at work within the next few months because I still tire of Windows in general, but I have to take a look and see where things are in the other camp from time to time. I think a lot of you who are totally ignoring Windows XP are still thinking it's Windows 95. Well... it isn't. But don't let me tell you that, just take a deep look at it yourself if you can. You won't love it (I don't), but you will find yourself thinking that there are some good features there that really need a counterpart in Linux. If you really look at it with an objective mindset that is. Think of it this way, when you made your transition from Linux to Windows, some of you must have felt that "oh... it doesn't do X" feeling. You'll feel the same way if you try Windows XP. Especially if you've been avoiding using Windows on a regular basis for as long as I have. As TurdFerguson said in another post on another day, "Know your enemy". That's what a lot of us have been avoiding.

A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Nailer]

You can read a users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE here/ I'll update it soon with screenshots and soem more info on the services bug.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

a few remarks about ur site:

1- you should consider that freedesktop.org IS mostly RedHat. So what standards are you talking about ?

2- about Qt+Xft, it's simple: they have shipped Beta Software. This is not good, and, unsurprisingly, they have done it for KDE, not GNOME. The same about VFolders. About this, RH's attitude looks very close to a (bad) fork.

3- Mozilla uses GTK, you're apparently not aware of it.

4- About Mozilla & Konq again, you're making a small mistake. You say that Konqueror doesn't render properly web pages. This is false, for the simple reason that Konqueror can use KHTML or Mozilla, precisely, to render web pages.

5- about changing default apps, you failed to notice that this will prevent interaction between apps when using KDE. Namely all those nice interactions between KMail and Konqueror and KOrganizer and Kaboodle, through KPart or DCOP, that most users point as the "added value", the "big plus" of KDE, are simply nonexistent if you use most RH default apps (simply because these default apps are not KDE apps). Also, don't fail to consider that _most_ users _will_use_default_apps_ that they are proposed because this is the attitude that years of microsoftian lobotomization has lead to. Only "aware" users will use other software. For all Linux newbies using RH, the mandatory conclusion if they try KDE instead of GNOME will be "KDE is crap".

These are indeed most of the remarks that people are really making about RH's KDE. About the unified look, everybody agrees that it's a good thing, including KDE developers. Don't listen too much to Mosfet, he has often an excessive behaviour (that lead him out of the KDE project by the way). Bero has usually a much more balanced view of it, and what he did leaves no doubt about what they're doing.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad it's factually inaccurate in 100s of places, including naming draft proposals "standards", inaccurately claiming that "About KDE" boxes do not provide credit information as "all contributors are listed in the about app box", and claiming that RedHat somehow wrote Xft2 support code in Qt 3.1.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Telex4]

Not having any mod points atm, I just thought I'd say I thought that page was really good :-)

You answered Mosfet's points very well. So far as I can see, all of the points made against RH on this one have been driven either by ego or misinformation. I use KDE, I dislike GNOME, yet I use Mozilla, and wouldn't consider using Konqueror until it works as well as Mozilla. To an IE user, Mozilla is *far* nicer. Though Mozilla does use GTK+, you're right in saying that it isn't really a GNOME app. The same goes for KOffice/OpenOffice. You could almost say I use the "toolkit" that RH8 ships with by choice, despite KDE giving me othe rdefaults. Man, I'm so awful, I'm just hitting on KDE ;-)

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Nailer]

1- you should consider that freedesktop.org IS mostly RedHat. So what standards are you talking about ?

That's simply false. Red Hat host the site, but non Red Hat developers from KDE, Gnome and many other projects have contributed to many of its standards - eg, the Window Management specification that's supported by both environments and a increasingly large array of leightweight window managers.


2- about Qt+Xft, it's simple: they have shipped Beta Software. This is not good, and, unsurprisingly, they have done it for KDE, not GNOME. The same about VFolders. About this, RH's attitude looks very close to a (bad) fork.

Both the QT addons and the standard VFolder support stuff are a patch by Red Hat. Just like your distro doesn't ship a standard Linux kernel (most major distros don't). Yes, they'll be in future versions, but that doesn't mean that Red Hat 8 hasn't goen through extensive beta testing.

3- Mozilla uses GTK, you're apparently not aware of it.

GTK is not Gnome. Especially when its a backend for XUL.


4- About Mozilla & Konq again, you're making a small mistake. You say that Konqueror doesn't render properly web pages. This is false, for the simple reason that Konqueror can use KHTML or Mozilla, precisely, to render web pages.


Its not false, I'm assuming the default renderign engine of the software - which is a reasonable asummption to make as kmozilla isn't anywhere near as maintained as khtml is.

5- about changing default apps, you failed to notice that this will prevent interaction between apps when using KDE. Namely all those nice interactions between KMail and Konqueror and KOrganizer and Kaboodle, through KPart or DCOP, that most users point as the "added value", the "big plus" of KDE, are simply nonexistent if you use most RH default apps (simply because these default apps are not KDE apps).

Then choose a different app. Or better yet, standardize the interface. The bug isn't that peopel dare use applciation from other toolkits, the bug is that doing so often gives them a worse user experience because these application use nonstandardized mechanisms to interact with each other.

Also, don't fail to consider that _most_ users _will_use_default_apps_ that they are proposed

Good - Red Hat have taken some time selection good defaults and its nice that they showcase the best of what OSS has to offer.

because this is the attitude that years of microsoftian lobotomization has lead to.

No offence (I think your post is quite intelligent), but many people won't take you seriously if you use words like `Microsoftian'.

For all Linux newbies using RH, the mandatory conclusion if they try KDE instead of GNOME will be "KDE is crap".

By that same logic Gnome is crap, because they're missing out in Abiword, Gnumeric, and Galeon, in favor of non Gnome alternatives. Wait a sec. Abiword can't open, edit, and save MS Office documents reliably. Neither can KOffice. If a new user is given these defaults, anmd reasonably assumes they're the best the platform has to offer, the user may very well incorrectly l assume Linux is crap.

Thanks for your post. But I think what Red Hat's doing provides for a better desktop experience for end users. I love and use KDE, but no matter how hard the developers try, my platform is Linux - not KDE. I can and will choose the best apps avaliable to me regardless of toolkit. If that means those apps will miss out on some functionality because of that, the solution is to allow those non-KDE apps to integrate with KDE to the best of their ability - not to tell Red Hat that they should include a beta-quality office suite as a default because it uses the Right Toolkit.

The same goes for Gnome too.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Nailer]

Too bad it's factually inaccurate in 100s of places

I've only had my own experiences and information from other people I've researched the topic with. If there's errors there (and there undoubtedly are) then I suppose you'll send me some email explaining exactly what's wrong, and providing supporting evidence. You do believe these opinions are correct, right?

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article:
*** Renamed .desktop files, breaking the execution of KDE apps by other apps which using KService::serviceByDesktopName.......Think about that â?" none of the people ranting about Red Hat 8's KDE setup reported the one true, provabaly serious bug throughout the entire Null beta cycle. ***

Huh? It's not a bug to Redhat - they did this unnecessary crap _intentionally_. With a HUGE patch. The RH GNOMErs (Havoc & Owen) defended what they did on kde lists.

http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=103203349 125767&w=2

It's not a huge deal anyway - only breaks a relatively unused pattern. There's plenty of stuff for (real) KDE users to be upset about. Or not...I'm trying SuSE when 8.1 comes out.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Nailer]

PS. I'm checking out Havoc's posts now.

There's plenty of stuff for (real) KDE users to be upset about.

Is there anything specific that's not covered in my article? I'd be happy to add it if you wish. As you can tell I don't think everything Red Hat changed has been beneficial, so if you have real criticisms and evidence to prove their case, post here or send me an email.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

1- you should consider that freedesktop.org IS mostly RedHat. So what standards are you talking about ?

That's simply false. Red Hat host the site, but non Red Hat developers from KDE, Gnome and many other ... large array of leightweight window managers.

And where do you see that these drafts have been approved ?
Moreover, on some point RedHat makes _planned_ modifications to KDE, but doesn't submit them as a contribution to KDE. Doesn't seem very smart to me.

About point 2, considering how bad were the RH'sKDE packages in the past, i'm almost sure it wasn't tested enough.

About point 3 and 4, i just advise you to use as correct and accurate language as possible in your article, if you want credibility.

About point 5, you are missing my point. I'm just saying that for me KDE as a whole is an application, because of the high level of interaction between its components. This is the KDE "big plus". GNOME is aiming at that as well, btw.
About OpenOffice you seem to ignore that it includes some GNOME interaction (not a lot for now though, granted), and that it will include even more of it in the future. See here for instance. (well, it's very unsurprising, since Sun is the owner of StarDivision, and a big GNOME backer).
Anyway, that said, i have to say that KOffice is still far away from being equivalent to OpenOffice, as for the features. However KOffice is very light and coherent when used within KDE, and i'm sure that for a lot of people such qualities are very important. This raising the question: on what basis did RedHat determine what is "best" Linux software ? KWord imports very well Word document as far as i know and have used it.

That said, i know i'll be able to reconfigure everything, but most users will simply not do it.

Another thing, about RH's linux kernel: well, it's a bit non-standard certainly, but it's basically an -ac kernel, so it's not _that_ non-standard. And when most companies change the kernel for their own needs, they very often backport features/modules from the next kernel version, which can be justified considering the very long time between two major kernel version. RH did nothing comparable with KDE.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

That's simply false. Red Hat host the site, but non Red Hat developers from KDE, Gnome and many other projects have contributed to many of its standards - eg, the Window Management specification that's supported by both environments and a increasingly large array of leightweight window managers.


Too bad you don't understand that proposals aren't standards until they're adopted by the developers.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Nailer]

And where do you see that these drafts have been approved ?

That's a true point, one I'm about to add to the page, but not what we were talking about. You said Red Hat was freedesktop.org, I provided soem evidence that it wasn't.

About point 2, considering how bad were the RH's KDE packages in the past, i'm almost sure it wasn't tested enough.

As someone who used those packages, I disagree.

About point 3 and 4, i just advise you to use as correct and accurate language as possible in your article, if you want credibility.

Fair enough, I can see your point and will add it to the page.

About OpenOffice you seem to ignore that it includes some GNOME interaction (not a lot for now though, granted)

Interesting. Could you be more specific?

However KOffice is very light and coherent when used within KDE, and i'm sure that for a lot of people such qualities are very important. This raising the question: on what basis did RedHat determine what is "best" Linux software ? KWord imports very well Word document as far as i know and have used it.

Does it export it? For most users, the ability to save to the file format that `everyone else' uses outweighs some sense of desktop interoperability. Likewise, being able to view web pages. Not everyone has the power to change other people's desktop habits or HTML coding skills.

That said, i know i'll be able to reconfigure everything, but most users will simply not do it.

I did. I don't know about other people, but I think if desktop users are unsatisfied most be aware they can chaneg and might do so. The best idea though is to keep them satisfied from the start.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Read this:
http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/

Noting the words like "proposed"

and this:
https://listman.redhat.com/pipermail/xdg-li st/2002 -August/000631.html

To quote *RedHat's* Havoc Pennington:
"In short the site is a collaboration zone, not a standards body."

And tell me how you claim that their patches somehow implement "standards", while they're merely implementing proposals. Sure, some of them may be implemented by both KDE and Gnome in the future, at which point they'll become standards, and it'll certainly make sense for RedHat to submit the relevant patches for discussions, at that'd probably help everyone involved; but to say that they're implementing standards is inaccurate.

Further, you claim that every contributor is listed in "About App" boxes. I invite you to look over commit logs of any KDE application, and you'll see that there are dozens of contributors who aren't listed in the about box - bugfixers, proofreaders, people who fix up UI improvements. Heck, a casual look at kde-cvs archives will show that. The only place some of developers are credited, in fact, in the general form in the "About KDE" box.

And, BTW, I consider opinions based on inaccurate information meaningless.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Nailer]

Too bad you chose to be rude than to inform me of this politely. Regardless, someone with more tact already has and I'm adding it to the page.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Nailer]

I'm correcting the document now to reflect the vfolder and system tray specs status as draft specifications.

Cheers for the correction, but you could be a bit more civil about it. As the document states, I'm approaching this from a users point of view, oddly enough, where Red Hat are aiming.

PS: The second URL you posted doesn't seem to work.

Further, you claim that every contributor is listed in "About App" boxes. I invite you to look over commit logs of any KDE application, and you'll see that there are dozens of contributors who aren't listed in the about box - bugfixers, proofreaders, people who fix up UI improvements. Heck, a casual look at kde-cvs archives will show that.


If this is the case (I doubt anybody would assume it was off the bat) then have you reported it to bugzilla?


And, BTW, I consider opinions based on inaccurate information meaningless.
That's nice dear. Meanwhile, in the real world, peole can and do make mistakes. My article certainly debunks more myths than it propogates, and unlike many of the critics, my page will be corrected when I find better information.

Mike

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Nailer]

Huh? It's not a bug to Redhat - they did this unnecessary crap _intentionally_. With a HUGE patch. The RH GNOMErs (Havoc & Owen) defended what they did on kde lists.

I agree that it seems unnecessary (I can't udnerstand why they'd do it either) but I think you're missing the difference between the problem and a side effect. The side effect was unintentional - otherwise Red hat wouldn't have a highly priority bug concerning it, and wouldn't be working on a patch to fix it.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Nailer]

If I want to read the Redhat party line responding to what they've done, I'll go find Owen's paper. Your bias for Redhat is pretty clear: covering for them by calling their intentional breakages a bug. LOL.

You don't seem to understand the difference between Red Hat's changes and the resulting side effects. Red Hat didn't rename the .desktop files for the purposes of breaking that system call. If they didn, they couldn't be reversing their behavior by filing a high priority bug report - that makes no sense.

Stop trying to include me in the Myterious Anti KDE Sinister Organization. I always acknowledged the file renaming has no benefit I can see for end users, and I've criticised other Red Hat desktop decisions in the article too, such as the poor menu setup. Just because I agree with Red Hat on a few points doesn't mean I don't think independently: clearly I do, or I wouldn't be disagreeing with them on other points.

Oh well, your loss. The article's getting a few hits and I think you look bad by not providing evidence to support your claims of other breakages that you say aren't mentioned.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it? I find more bullets points that are incorrect than correct.

For instance, you have some outlanding idea that RedHat's fork of Qt3.0.5's font handling was somehow the base of official Xft2 support in Qt3.1 Beta . It's nearly certain that it wasn't, they were just both based on the same patch -- Keith Packard's original one for Qt 3.0.3.

And as to Konqueror plugins - I've never seen anyone allege them breaking them on purpose -- just that they made changed that can potentially break Flash w/o having any clue of what they were doing, and then reverted. See:
http://www.rpmfind.net//linux/RPM/rawhide/1. 0/i386 /RedHat/RPMS/kdelibs-3.0.3-6.i386.html

"Removed gcc31 patch as it breaks the Netscape plugin in gcc32."

That's confidence inspiring, isn't it?

And for service changes, do you think it's a good idea for RH to apply a giant diff changing many lines due to their namespacing idea without going "Hmm, maybe what we're doing isn't a good idea. Let's ask some KDE developers", instead of waking up a week or two before going gold and trying to frantically fix it.

Oh, and as for running app right, in the Beta, BlueCurve couldn't even draw Konsole scrollbars properly. Talk about quality. (Of course, could be fixed in final)

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

About the toolkit, i think it's the greatest part of the problem. I think RH has nothing against KDE, nothing at all. But they have a lot of things to say against QT, that happens to be GPL and not LGPL, making it impossible to write proprietary software using it, which is a big problem considering the market they are trying to enter.
kdelibs are LGPL, GTK is LGPL and gnomelibs are LGPL, for the record.

My guess is that they want to silently shutdown QT, or make it so ubiquitous with GTK, that nobody can see the difference between the two.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

that they are proposed because this is the attitude that years of microsoftian lobotomization has lead to.

That one line just nullified your entire rant. You are a Linux Zealot. Nothing you say matters.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Nailer]

Thanks for the info re: QT. I haven't been able to get as much in depth information on the content of the patch as I'd like, and I've had to reply on heresay (much as I'm doing now unfortunely - do you have a link with mroe info?). I've heard this from a couple of people and I'll update the document accordingly,

People can and have have hinted that Red Hat broke Konqueror plugins (and caused every other bug that has or will appear in their KDE) on purpose to discredit KDE. Yes, these people are idiots, but others still believe them.

Konqueror plugins and Bluecurve are both fixed. I think they have have been for a fair while.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Dehumanizer]

You are an Anonymous Coward. Nothing you say matters.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

People can and have have hinted that Red Hat broke Konqueror plugins (and caused every other bug that has or will appear in their KDE) on purpose to discredit KDE. Yes, these people are idiots, but others still believe them.

Perhaps those idiots are just paying more attention than you are.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cg i? id=64756

Only RHKDE had this problem. Note that RH never fixed this bug.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Nailer]

So, we have a massive Redhat patch
to KDE written by GNOME developers
that serves no purpose except to
break things in KDE, but in your
mind this is somehow a "side effect".

No, the patch is not a side effect. I never said it was. The services breakage is a side effect. if it was the intended purpose of the patch, they wouldn't be trying to fix it.

But I think you know this and you're trolling me.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Nailer]

Only RHKDE had this problem. Note that RH never fixed this bug.

That seems odd when according to your link "The problem is khtml doesn't correctly interpret the tag and thus, flash animations which are not inside a pair work ok. Like
the one above." Doesn't look as if it was Red Hat's bug to fix...

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the patch is not a side effect. I never said it was. The services breakage is a side effect.

The services breakage is a side effect of a patch that (you admit) serves no other purpose.

You don't see a problem here?

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[redtuxxx]

Just to clarify - the reason for the name change was very simple.

It was to avaoid name collisions with a unified desktop

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Nailer]

I can't see a purpose for that patch - I've read Red Hat's point of view and I still don't see how a naming conflict would realistically occur Yes
see a problem here, I've repeatedly said I see a problem. However I've also corrected you when you said the side effect was intentional. It clearly isn't, or they wouldn't be fixing it.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

For the love of God, man, how many fucking times in a row are you going to post?

Either learn to be more concise or put it all in one....I'm not going to read a boatload of posts by you all in a row.

Review

[Pros_n_Cons]

Her apparent view is that If you run Windows or MacOS dont switch, but if you are tired of the constant crap being pulled by MS and are on a PC, this is the linux for you (so far) She also said xine isnt included, mp3 players, etc.. im not convinced she's running the real deal or maybe got a shotty copy, I am downloading RedHat 8.0 right now (the real deal) so i'll see if what she's spreading to be fact is actually that.

Re:Review

[Pros_n_Cons]

BTW dont ask what mirror im using slashdot one one mirror would...HAHA I ALMOST posted it cause im in BAD need of karma but I cant help it, im just too damn greedy.

Re:Review

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW dont ask what mirror im using slashdot one one mirror would...HAHA

JEFF K LIVES! HOW'D YU LIEK THEMS APPELS?!?

KDE and Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

all shook hands, and everybody lived happily ever after.
And then I woke up :-[

gentoo

[Anonymous Coward]

You can tell redhat sucks cuase it's easy to install.

That's why i use gentoo.

It's so eleet it doens't even have an installer!

you just copy the stuff over by hand!

that just proves you have to be eleet to use it!

my mom got mad when i installed it on our dell in the family room but it's just cuase she's not leet!

you posers in the data centers running redhat on the huge server farms are pussies compared to my leet mp3 server!

uh my mom needs to get a recipe off marthastweart.com, gotta go!

keep it leet!

w3rd em up!

Re:gentoo

[Anonymous Coward]

HEy d00d! aRen'T j00 la+3 ph0r $Cho0l?

Re:gentoo

[Anonymous Coward]

What's sad is that many people actually do think like that. Ah well..

Re:gentoo

[Anonymous Coward]

gentoo difficult to install, NO its not

its overwhelming, but if you can read left to right, and follow directions. it is extremely easy.

of course some people screw up making chocolate chip cookies too, so who knows

Re:gentoo

[Anonymous Coward]

Hilarious! Keep it rockin', bud! :-)

Re:gentoo

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny because it's true.

Re:gentoo

[Anonymous Coward]

When your really leet, and grow up a bit, maybe you can code the kernel and bootstaps etc yourself, then maybe you can call yourself leet.

- From: A nother Gentoo User

Re:gentoo

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny you should say that... CMDRTACO once said something similar. I compared him to a "muscle man" who brags down at the gym - because as we know, only real men can install Linux that doesn't require any configuration!!

I hope CMDRTACO has changed his muscle bound ways (as I hope the Linux community is developing a better attitude) to those affectionately referred to as lamers (well they were in my day)... but that's another story ;)

AC

Very interesting quote

[PhysicsGenius]

I use KDE myself and have for years, so I can't speak to the accuracy of this review, but I found the below very helpful.

From the article: "I fully expected KDE to blow GNOME out of the water (because they follow good engineering and UI design standards) but even I was shocked at the shoddy state of the GNOME code. It was like looking at a trainwreck. No wonder RedHat is starting to edge away from this embarassment."

Re:Very interesting quote

[hanwen]

From the article:


Troll.

That quote is not part of the article.

Re:Very interesting quote

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're really a Physics Genius, why don't you tell us the total displacement of that spork you've got shoved up your ass?

In a thread about Redhat...

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't it bother anyone that there are ads for Visual Studio.NET and MS server software? No?

Re:In a thread about Redhat...

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean that you don't already have your browser looking at 127.0.0.1 for all the /. adds yet? And that doesn't bother you?

Eugenia Linux!

[xyrw]

> Eugenia from OSNews is giving Red Hat 8.0 a run for its money.

Wow, Eugenia sounds like a cool new distribution!

Re:Eugenia Linux!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like genitailia.

Re:Eugenia Linux!

[Ratso Baggins]

Eugina Linux is not a distribution per se, rather it's a powerpoint presentation (made with a Mac*TM) chock-full-o-screen-shots about how to do it like WinXP, OSX or BeOS.

Re:Eugenia Linux!

[Anonymous Coward]

cough

Objection, your honour...

[Anonymous Coward]

[Eugenia] posted a very detailed and balanced review for the new version of Red Hat..

What the fuck? Has hell finally frozen over?

RH 8 is out

[hanwen]

RH 8 has appeared on the RedHat Network channel.

It's scheduled for release at 10:00 AM -4GMT.

Re:RH 8 is out

[BohKnower]

You can check it here, please save some link for me.

Re:RH 8 is out

[Anonymous Coward]

It's already on Gnutella, search for Psyche - the codeword for the release

Ha.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny, because that's not in the article, yet you got modded up. Good one!

No multimedia??

[tanveer1979]

Also, there is no Java installed. No Macromedia Flash or Real Player either. And that brings me in the multimedia offerings of this distro. Or its lack there of. Red Hat 8 has to be the poorest multimedia-ready distro by default that I ever ran (except Gentoo of course, which comes with virtually nothing by default :). So, there are no movie players on Psyche (except the limited Kaboodle which is not even installed by default). None. No XINE, no VLC, no XMovie, no NoATun, no nothing.

Wonder what the are trying.... it is a real funny business decision, I wonder how many home users will really want a distro without those...time to switch to mandrake 9?

And the KDE hacking sucks.. those people have not even given them credits... all abouts have been removed... It is really unethical

Re:No multimedia??

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please, if they included that crap all you free software jihadis would be screaming "redhat pushes non-free software on people! THEY ARE EVIL I TOLD YOU SO!!!!" so obviously they only included software released under Free licenses...

You can't have it both ways people.

Bitch if it's included, bitch if it's not included.

Make up your mind.

Re:No multimedia??

[goldorak_dan]

Aren't they advertising this as a corporate/business distro?

Still, no multimedia whatsoever is kinda wierd.

Re:No multimedia??

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's not forget that the about dialogues are still there. *snort*

More "Waaah, I don't like the GPL anymore now that I'm not the one directly benefitting from other's work!" FUD.

Re:No multimedia??

[imperator_mundi]

KDE license allows you to pick the code change it as you want end release your new version as long as you release the source code with it.

KDE code don't belong to KDE.ORG, it's free software after all.

Re:No multimedia??

[Jacco de Leeuw]

Fair enough, but are you still allowed to call it KDE then?

Re:No multimedia??

[Bert64]

Personally i think the "about kde" option in every app is annoyingly unnecessary self-promotion.
About boxes in programs should show information about the current program, not the toolkit it is based upon. About KDE should be placed inside the kde configuration tool, or somewhere accessible from the kde menu. Afterall, if your running kde apps under gnome, the about kde option may be somewhat confusing to people.
It would also be nice, if about boxes showed some compiletime configuration options and memory/cpu usage stats instead of just an advert.

Re:No multimedia??

[eastbam]

None. No XINE...

I made a few screenshots of the last RedHat 8.0 Beta installation that I did over the weekend and just to show that it DOES come with XINE:
Screenshot3.png

Well, they may have taken it out in the final version.

Re:No multimedia??

[Anonymous Coward]

I think no multimedia is a good idea:

• Less stuff to go wrong
• Most people working at a desktop just don't need it - really
• Less bandwidth used by these users - corp's like that

Re:No multimedia??

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, they really are trying to go for the corporate desktop - sounds just like the "out of the box" Solaris "experience".

Re:No multimedia??

[jeremy_hogan]

Many things, like Flash Player and Acrobat Reader are available on the Applications CD.

We don't put closed source, or binary only software into the distribution itself, that's what keeps our distro fully GPL'd.

As for the decision behind not shipping mp3 players, that has more to do with the nature of mp3 patent licensing and royalty scemes. There used to be very clear terms allowing us to ship such things, but that seems to be changing, at least enough to put it in the gray area.

That said, nothing is stopping an end user from getting any of the software they are used to having on Red Hat Linux, we chose to err on the side of caution and not become someone's test case for litigation down the road.

On the other hand, try using Ogg Vorbis instead of mp3. It's not so encumbered with gray area, it's open and patent/royalty free.

Re:No multimedia??

[N3WBI3]

Umm I thought KDE was open Source (I could be wrong) so how does hacking it suck..

Re:No multimedia??

[Anonymous Coward]

...particularly if RedHat apparently doesn't allow you to call modified version of BlueCurve "BlueCurve"?

Re:No multimedia??

[Karn]

And the KDE hacking sucks.. those people have not even given them credits... all abouts have been removed... It is really unethical

Where did you get this from? I haven't verified the 8.0 release, but in the beta the authors are mentioned in KDE apps, under About -appname-... or are you basing it on those old IRC chat logs which were pure speculation?

Re:No multimedia??

[Karn]

Right.

So since they "don't give KDE enough credit", they need to remove all references to KDE from the software? What sense does that make?

I guess some people will never be happy, and will always bitch about something regardless of how hard others try.

Re:No multimedia??

[minkwe]

This is authoritiative information from a RH employee not somebody's opinion so moderators mod this as informative not insightful!!

Re:No multimedia??

[Azghoul]

Just one question, who gives a flying fart whether it's modded as Insightful or Informative? Either way it gets up to 5 so peeps like me can read it.

Re:No multimedia??

[HiThere]

Personally, the only change that they made that I *know* of that I object to is the replacement of the KDE logo for the desktop menu with the Red Hat logo.

This is definitely legal, but quite impolite.

OTOH, they sat still when Mandrake took their (was it 5.2?) distribution and started a new company. Perhaps they deserve some slack. (Yes, they had to allow it, but they were polite about it.)

Still, they *are* being impolite now. And I suspect that they will continue to be so. This is coloring my perceptions of them ... up till now they were the certified Good Guys, now, they're another company, and they usually act in a friendly way, but aren't really trustworthy friends. It's a small matter, but I find it significant. (Also, lamentably, to be expected. Corporations always seem to evolve in that direction. Even companies have tendencies to do that as management changes, but it's more pronounced with corporations.)

Re:No multimedia??

[N3WBI3]

So how does changing the KDE theme make it not KDE?? If its still KDE they should use the logo. Frankly I consider changing the Gnome foot print with a red hat as more rude than leaving the KDE logo..

Re:No multimedia??

[Anonymous Coward]

... modern offices and businesses need full multimedia capabilities by default on their desktop.

What kind of office does she work in? I manage all the computer desktops in my company and that stuff is usually the first I take off! Most of it is buggy (admittedly, this is under windows, I haven't looked enough to see what it's like under Linux), resource intensive and useless to a business.

We NEED to do Word for manuals, AutoCAD for drawings, Excel for spreadsheets and Netscape for Web browsing and e-mail. Some of us need to do schematic capture, PCB layout and Labview. Tell me one of those things that is helped by full multimedia capabilities!

Once again, most people reviewing/specifying/purchasing desktop computers just don't get what a business desktop is about. At least MY business desktop. The environment she describes doesn't fit any business I worked in.

Re:No multimedia??

[FooBarWidget]

Yet for some reason the GNOME community have been very mature about this and don't think that their GNOME hacks are impolite, while the KDE community have been constantly flaming at modding down RedHat.

It's not impolite. All apps are still there, they just changed the defaults. Even the About KDE box is still there, it's just removed from all apps except KDevelop and Kicker (which are the *only* right places for a KDE ad). People only *think* it's impolite because they have been hating RedHat for years just because RedHat's primary desktop is GNOME. In my view that's immature behavior. You don't hear the GNOME guys say "oh god I hate SuSE" just because their primary desktop is KDE, do you?

Re:No multimedia??

[Isldeur]

Can you tell me if reiserfs is supported out of the box? I've been trying to find this info everywhere but can't seem to find it much - and all of our labs run reiserfs exclusively.

Re:No multimedia??

[cheekyboy]

I just installed mandrake9 on a vmware VDISK, and it installed well and fast, and final install was only 900meg. It had an mp3 player in it. OGG is not an option, my dvd player/mp3cdplayer wont play it, and besides having 9000 mp3s, i wouldnt want to convert them to OGG. Even though some are 160-256kbps

Check your mirrors...

[moZer]

...if you want to try it out yourself. I'm downloading RH 8 isos as I type.

ftp://mir1.ovh.net

Re:Check your mirrors...

[pyrodex]

I thought it was called bluecurve?

Re:Check your mirrors...

[Squareball]

Bluecurve is the new theme that RH created and added and made the default theme/look for Gnome and KDE

Re:Check your mirrors...

[linux_student]

Thank you moZer...I tried get it from ftp.redhat.com, these guys had it first!

Re:Check your mirrors...

[Anonymous Coward]

Its already on Gnutella, search for Psyche - the name of the distro

Re:Check your mirrors...

[FyRE666]

Ssh! When you find a nice fast mirror, for god's sake don't tell everyone about it on Slashdot!!!

I'm still waiting for my favourite little known one to open its doors. It always maxes out my adsl line no matter when I go there! No, I'm not telling ;-)

Re:Check your mirrors...

[minkwe]

I know the one you mean, I'm currently getting 1M/s from it. It's been open for a while.

Re:Check your mirrors...

[Anonymous Coward]

Inside the ftp.redhat.com directory you'll now find a single readme.txt file, the contents of which you'll find below:

"we are sorry, but according email we recevied from redhat,
ovh has been removed from mirror program, because we allow
download of rh8 before the annonced time.

you can download the last image from
ftp://mir1.ovh.net/ftp.redhat.com.NO.MORE.MI RRORED
http://mir2.ovh.net/ftp.redhat.com.NO.MORE.MIRRO RE D

Octave
"

Re:Check your mirrors...

[Billly Gates]

When your downloading, could you be kind enough to post the link here. That is after your done. Thanks. I tried 30 links so far for the last 2 hours and I only got one that was downloading at 500 bytes a second. Every single other one is slashdotted. I have seen slashdotting before but nothing ever like this. This is crazy!

A shame

[cca93014]

Why did they get a reviewer who has trouble speaking English?

Re:A shame

[Anonymous Coward]

Point out her mistakes to her, and she'll without a doubt learn from them.

However, there's nothing in there that's near so grievous as what we see in the average local newspaper.

Re:A shame

[trash eighty]

this is the internet you know

in any event, don't you mean "Why did they get a reviewer who has trouble writing in english?" - not that i had any problems with what she wrote

Re:Review - mirror?

[mokeyboy]

What mirror? Even the redhat FTP site has the 8.0 directory chmoded so you can't get in

Usability

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not all about what kde / gnome has done wrong to make life a living hell for new users, but the biggest problem is the attitude of current users.. For example try to talk to debian user about redhat and most likely you have jihad about distributions..

What comes to kde beating gnome, personally I think that it's good to have a choice.. Afterall this was the reason linux was originally made for..

Re:Usability

[Hobophile]

It's not all about what kde / gnome has done wrong to make life a living hell for new users

Come on people, try and have a little freakin perspective here. "Life a living hell for new users"? Yeah, sure. Somehow I don't think this Red Hat build would've made it out of Quality Assurance if this were the case. I can picture it now:

Project Lead: So, what do our testers in QA think of Red Hat 8.0?

QA Manager: Oh, it's great! They love the ease of installation, the sexy new themes, the way it's easy to find the program they are looking for, whether it be a web browser or a word processor.

Project Lead: Any complaints?

QA Manager: Well, ordinarily I wouldn't bring this up, but since you asked, 99 out of 100 testers say the minor alterations to KDE, such as making the slipshod KOffice suite harder to launch so they can marvel over what a terrible job of opening Word documents it does, and changing a couple About boxes they have never opened, have made their life a living hell. Never mind that this is just a day job, no sir -- it's hell for them 24/7 and no getting past that. Most say they can no longer sleep at night, as their dreams are haunted by emaciated KDE developers crying out in anguish. One claimed his dog bolted from his house, never to be seen again, after Mozilla came up instead of Konqueror. Another got into a terrible accident because he was so preoccupied with guilt over his part in butchering KDE.

Project Lead: Oh that's terrible! We must not release this distro into the world! Quick, let's start over. I hear Slackware and Gentoo are doing great things on the ease of use front.

QA Manager: Yes sir! Our focus groups have reported that secretaries and housewives everywhere wish their computing experience included more compiling software for a 0.00001% increase in speed and less out-of-the-box functionality. Not that we could really go so far as to call Red Hat 8.0 "functional" with so many life-is-a-living-hell bugs plaguing it.

... get real.

Re:good lord

[Anonymous Coward]

I also share your disdain for hyphenated name having bitches. What happens when the children of some hyphenated name having pussies get married? do they have a super long name with like 4 hyphens? or do they fucking get real and drop some of the names? I never met a hyphenated name bitch who wasn't some kind of fucking pseudo intellectual prude.

Bluecurve kicks ass. .

[MrLinuxHead]

I just tried Mandrake's latest release on a dual Celeron 533 and a Tecra Laptop, both dual boot systems. I had the latest Redhat beta ((null)) and installed it right after installing Mandrake. No comparison. The Redhat interface looks much better, and the intergration of the menus is a much needed improvment. All of the program defaults make logical sense to me, as I use OpenOffice, Moz, and Evolution by choice.

I am waiting for the mirrors to update RH 8.0 like a Lion waiting for fresh meat.

Re:Bluecurve kicks ass. .

[warpSpeed]

I am waiting for the mirrors to update RH 8.0 like a Lion waiting for fresh meat.

I'm not waiting, I'm pulling 8.0 from RedHat directly. Rather then buying a CD copy, I bought support a while ago. I am able to log in directly and download the ISOs. I'm getting 90kB/sec at the moment. Should take about 2.5 hours for each CD. I pull all of my ISOs down from them, and I know that some money goes back to them directly. Best $50 I spent all year.

Re:Bluecurve kicks ass. .

[Anonymous Coward]

It's already posted on Gnutella. Search for Psyche

Re:Bluecurve kicks ass. .

[Anonymous Coward]

Bluecurve is not a reason to use redhat over Mandrake. Bluecurve is just a theme, and has already been repackaged for Mandrake 9.0 (Before Red Hat even released 8.0). Texstar at pclinuxonline has rpmd it at

ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/co nt rib/texstar/linux/distributions/mandrake/9.0/rpms/

Also, using things on texstars directory there, and plf.zarb.org, you can get Mandrake 9.0 looking great with minimum work. You can urpmi liquid, keramik, etc... urpmi freetype2 from plf, and use the mandrake control center to install all the truetype fonts from your windows partitions in one fell swoop. On top of this, all my multimedia programs are there, and the only thing I had to do to them was urpmi the d4d and d5d plugins for xine, and I was done.

So you can install bluecurve on mandrake, install fonts easier, and have all your multimedia programs upon install... I don't see where Red Hat would be better.

Re:Bluecurve kicks ass. .

[Anonymous Coward]

I read somewhere that a new feature in Red Hat 8 is that you can drop all your TrueType Fonts in a .fonts/ subdir in your home folder and they will automagically be installed. At least that's what Eugenia's review said.

That's a helluva lot easier than navigating the Mandrake Control Center (Although both are real easy!). I think Red Hat did something right with that.

Re:Bluecurve kicks ass. .

[mickwd]

".....the intergration of the menus is a much needed improvment."

Errr.....hasn't Mandrake had this menu integration since at least Mandrake 8.2 (probably earlier, but I can't remember now) ?

Or is that what you meant by "No comparison" ?

You may have a point about the default interface looking better - I don't know, I've not used the new Red Hat distribution. But I don't know a single Linux user who doesn't tweak his/her environment to get it just the way they like it.

Re:Review - mirror?

[Pros_n_Cons]

Yes I know, hint: Its always good to support your favorite distro with your wallet. the Mirrors are already being synced I hear so it'll be soon for you guys.

Upgading from 7.3

[mgkimsal2]

Will it be a smooth upgrade from 7.3? Or will I (once again) simply be reinstalling everything from scratch?

Re:Upgading from 7.3

[Anonymous Coward]

Try apt-rpm, I upgraded 4 webservers with that to 7.3 redhat (one rh 7.0, two rh 7.1, and one rh 7.2), everything went fine, no reboot needed..
Only problem that came up was openssh server, which didn't restart after it's package was updated and so I had to manually restart it..

Re:Upgading from 7.3

[Anonymous Coward]

If you wanted maintainability, you would have choosen Debian, wouldn't you?

The real question on my mind is if they've fixed their security policy. Or is a default install of RH still analogous to picking up the soap?

Re:Upgading from 7.3

[mgkimsal2]

Not been able to ever get the apt-rpm stuff to work. Just keeps complaining about not being able to find package info or something stupid. Yes, I followed all the (mostly not there) documnentation to no avail.

More to the point, though, is that the GCC and underlying libraries may be radically different enough so as to make upgrading like that not work - what were the jumps in gcc from 7.0 -> 7.3? I can't remember.

Re:Upgading from 7.3

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the upgrade is smooth. Did 2 machines this weekend. The only thing that i saw that went weird was my DHCPD config.

Something in the new version requires you to put in a single like about DDNS AD-HOC mode.

Other than that... smooth as silk

Re:Upgading from 7.3

[Nailer]

Null coped pretty well with upgrading a 7.3 system with lots of Freshrpms updates to Null, the 8.0 beta. However, if you've got Gnome 2 already set up on your 7.3 box (most likely from the apt respository which stores 7.3 rpms), I'd remove it before you update, simply because your custom updates might seem newer than the 7.3 ones. You should probably do this before your install, but you can do it later if you wish.

The installer will however tell you about any conflicts as a result of your custom packages, and if worst comes to worst, you still won't loose any data - the Linux packaging system will use your existing configs (and create [config].rpmnew for any config files from new packages) or back yoru existing configs up as [config].rpmsave if the config file format has changed.

Re:Upgading from 7.3

[MrLinuxHead]

Ahemm. Watch out, Apache 2.0 will bite you in the ass if you're not careful.

Null used Apache 2.0 as apposed to 1.3.26 in RH 7.3. So yer default config files are now somewhere else, and all of your carefully massaged virtual things are now nowhere to be found. It can be fixed pretty easy, just RTFM.

There are probably a few more "gotchas" but that one stuck out like a sore thumb.

Re:Upgading from 7.3

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had to reinstall from scratch to upgrade, you are most likely a moron and should not be using a computer.

By the way, you don't have to reboot a Linux server to solve a hung process either. Just a helpful bonus tip, since I'm sure that's probably your most likely troubleshooting method.

Re:Upgading from 7.3

[Anonymous Coward]

AC - how do you get rid of zombie processes?

Re:Upgading from 7.3

[s20451]

My experience is that the RedHat X.0 releases suck ass, the X.1 releases are a little better, and X.2+ are best. RedHat 6.0 was one of the most unstable OSes I have ever seen (most of the fault for that was probably the beta-release of Gnome that they included). RedHat 7.0 was a little better, but I remember a lot of unpleasant issues. I'm happy with 7.3, which is a nice, stable release, and I don't think I'll move to upgrade until at least 8.1 is out.

Re:Upgading from 7.3

[guacamole]

Huh?

I have done the following upgrades and all of them went mostly smoothly:

5.1 -> 6.0
6.0 -> 7.3
6.0 -> 6.2
7.1 -> 7.2
7.2 -> 7.3

and probably other cases that I don't remember right now. What's your definition of an update that's not smooth?

Re:Upgading from 7.3

[Anonymous Coward]

excuse me? you are obviousally some kind of wacked newbie...

a clean fdisk/format/install is ALWAYS better than any upgrade.

anyone saying differently is an idiot.

hi Idiot!

Re:Upgading from 7.3

[DJPenguin]

what's your definition of "mostly smoothly"? :)

Re:Upgading from 7.3

[Anonymous Coward]

I upgraded from 5.2 with a 2.2 kernel (manually upgraded) all the way to 7.3 with no problems...minus the fact that all my services start twice :]

Re:Upgading from 7.3

[Anonymous Coward]

and if worst comes to worst, you still won't loose any data

Worst is already worst. Always. Worse, however, can come to worst.

By the way, 'loose' sometimes can be a verb, but in this particular case, that's not what you meant. '...loose any data...' means '...making any data loose...' which certainly paints a colourful picture. That said, I blew some Moderator points on this article, but I would have called your post Informative.

Re:Upgading from 7.3

[rossifer]

I have never once had an upgrade run successfully, and I've been using RedHat since 2.2.

After each and every attempt, I've had to wipe and fully reinstall the whole system. Now, I keep my /home and /usr/local in separate partitions that I back up religiously and they're all that I keep when installing a new linux release.

It's possible that 7.3 to 8.0 would be the first successful upgrade for me, but I'd rather spend my time doing what I know will work: wipe and install from scratch, bringing over my /home and /usr/local.

Regards,
Ross

Re:Upgading from 7.3

[Bakaneko]

That "something" is the move to the 3.x versions of DHCPD...

Fortunately, I did that a few months ago (with rawhide RPMS) on my 7.3 box, so things should be pretty smooth there.

I DO like having all my systems register their names in DNS when they get an IP. Its great fun to be able to ping ps2.gaastra.net.

Re:Upgading from 7.3

[mrobinso]

> Will it be a smooth upgrade from 7.3? Or will
> I (once again) simply be reinstalling
> everything from scratch?

Well I sure as hell can't get it to upgrade from 7.3. It hangs at the "looking for packages to upgrade".

So good luck. The x.0 series tend to be shit.

RH8 for business - question then...

[Mantrid]

Red Hat 8 is meant for the business desktop. I've got a question then - is there a distro that is meant for games and multimedia?

Re:RH8 for business - question then...

[larien]

There's a couple of audio specific based distros; one based on Debian and another on something else. I don't think there's a games specific distro, but anything with decent sound support and 3D drivers will do the trick.

Re:RH8 for business - question then...

[ananke]

mandrake 9.0 would be probably a good choice for that.

Re:RH8 for business - question then...

[Dstrct0]

Didn't Mandrake have a "Gaming Edition" a while back? I think it came with The Sims and an early version of WineX, possibly a Transgaming subscription, but I can't remember.

I think it was the only distro on the shelf when I saw it. It'd be REALLY nice if Linux distros had some better retail representation.

Re:RH8 for business - question then...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's called Windows.

Re:RH8 for business - question then...

[sethadam1]

Yes -

"Re-H-Mu-Di" and "De-Mu-Di" are both audio oriented. They are hacks of the words "Red Hat Multimeia Distribution" and "Debian Multimedia Distribution."

Re:RH8 for business - question then...

[jdkincad]

That's correct, it's based on their 8.1 version. I haven't heard if they're planning to release another based on a more recent version.

Re:RH8 for business - question then...

[0x0d0a]

Instructions for "media distro":

Step 1: Install Red Hat
Step 2: Install mplayer and xmms

Re:RH8 for business - question then...

[KeyserDK]

Debian and mandrake. They are the "big mofo dist's".

For multimedia Mandrake has an unofficial package site (they dont host it/or are affiliated in any official way) located at Penguin Liberation Front (TM). Silly name ;).

The packages are mostly plugins to xine/mplayer/gstreamer for codecs that arent free or the ones that mandrake doesnt feel safe to include(legal issues). So Divx/wma/dvd etc. shouldnt be a problem.

Other noteworthy stuff includes

Game emulators

Extra funky themes, an example is the KDE Liquid theme.

Various usable p2p apps.

And yet more stuff. The way it works is just like adding another source to your apt-get. Mandrake has a similar tool for rpm packages.

Re:RH8 for business - question then...

[GuildPort]

Gosh I hope so! I've been dying to play MOHAA and... Oh... shit, guess I'm stuck with that penguin racer thing. GO LINUX!

Re:RH8 for business - question then...

[GlassHeart]

Instructions for "media distro":
Step 1: Install Red Hat
Step 2: Install mplayer and xmms

A few things you'll also need:

• Professional audio editing application (Pro Tools clone)
• Professional video editing application (Avid, Final Cut Pro clone)
• One word: Photoshop
• Professional 3-D graphics modeller and renderer (Maya, Lightwave clone)
• Professional DVD authoring software
• Painless hardware support - access to Firewire devices such as video cameras, tape decks, and external drives; multi-monitor support; hell, even IDE CD writers

Please don't cite Linux "equivalents" unless you really know the stature, sophistication, and polish of the professional versions you are comparing them to. I like Linux. I use Linux, but don't underestimate the amount of work needed to match Windows or Mac OS is this arena.

Re:RH8 for business - question then...

[FooBarWidget]

> One word: Photoshop

Yeah, home users like to brag about how "professional" or "better" Photoshop is while the real professionals use Gimp.

Face it, Gimp is good *enough* for most people.

Re:RH8 for business - question then...

[zerocool^]

Yes, and no.

It's hard to argue that something sucks when it's free and being compared to something that's not free.

However, I'd use photoshop anyday over gimp, based on the interface alone, without even going into the capabilities.
The photoshop palette windows (or whatever they're called) are fantastic, easy to use, useful. The menu system isn't convoluted. It looks like the rest of the operating system. It looks like one app, with a common workspace.
Gimp - it looks like a bad port of a worse linux interface. Come on, use windows menus and styles. It doesn't seem like one application, with all of the different windows, most of which are useless. Don't tell me it's a Linux app, if you want it to be better than photoshop, we have to go with the app that uses the same OS as photoshop.

Then there's the text editing capabilities. You can do so much more in PS 6 with text than in Gimp - balloon, scrunch, drop shadow with a click, outline, gradient overlay, pattern overlay, inner shadow, etc. In gimp, well, you can resize text.

And don't display articles about professionals using gimp over photoshop that are from sourceforge and gnomedesktop. That's equivilant to a link to a slashdot editorial proclaiming how popular linux is. Go out and buy a graphics art design magazine at borders. They talk about photoshop and nothing else, because it is the industry standard. There is nothing in the graphics art world that needs doing that photoshop does not do that gimp does. Gimp has a selection of the features that make photoshop great, implemented poorly.

Here are some links to professionals that use photoshop (and I trust these people more than some dude on gnomedesktop): popular photography imaging insider Mac World Mag Fortune Magazine Fotophile.

Gimp is not, and never was intended to be a photoshop replacement. I'm not saying it's a bad program. Actually, for being free, it's very nice. But don't compare it to photoshop. If you think gimp is better than photoshop, you've never done any graphics art design.

~Will

Re:RH8 for business - question then...

[0x0d0a]

You can do so much more in PS 6 than in Gimp - balloon, scrunch, drop shadow with a click, outline, gradient overlay, pattern overlay, inner shadow, etc.

So? You could do this for years with plugins for earlier version of Photoshop, or by hand. Same goes for the Gimp.

The Gimp does nothing but RGB and has basically no for-press features, just stuff designed to make nice online output. It sucks for making things intended for print output. That pretty much sums up its failings. In terms of features for making output designed for online use, the Gimp is just as good as Photoshop.

Also, if you like *Photoshop* palettes, take a look at the development branch of the Gimp...mmm, tasty.

Re:RH8 for business - question then...

[cheekyboy]

I personally hated gimps sheet arse interface, and plugins that failed to load even basic file formats that PS could load. (yes older versions)

I truly hate 12 little windows, a proper graphics app should be one big window with attached tool-windows.

Another gripe i had was with the crapp submenus that were hard to select because they were 50% aligned off the -> arrow. (yes GTKs fault).

Face it, GIMP needs 'themes' or 'visual emulation' modes to make it look like Photoshop or PaintShopPro for it to be taken seriously as an alternative, people are not going to learn 190 shortcuts and methodolies new menus, 320 plugin properties etc. Oh and scanning...

Re:RH8 for business - question then...

[FooBarWidget]

> However, I'd use photoshop anyday over gimp,
> based on the interface alone, without even going
> into the capabilities.

Yes, you would. But I wouldn't. I've been using Gimp for years, and I'm completely used to it's interface. Thanks to rightclicking (I don't have to move my mouse all the way up) and things like tearoff menus I can access operations faster than, say, Paint Shop Pro.

Everything you know and think is "normal" is learned. Gimp's interface is not worse, it's different. I prefer Gimp's interface over Paint Shop Pro.

> Then there's the text editing capabilities. You
> can do so much more in PS 6 with text than in
> Gimp - balloon, scrunch,

Well that's nice, but Joe Average doesn't need or almost never use those functions.

> drop shadow with a click

Gimp has a drop shadow script-fu.

> outline,

Bonus point for you.

> inner shadow, etc.

I don't know what you mean by that.

> gradient overlay, pattern overlay,

What's this?

> And don't display articles about professionals
> using gimp over photoshop that are from
> sourceforge and gnomedesktop. That's equivilant
> to a link to a slashdot editorial proclaiming
> how popular linux is. Go out and buy a graphics
> art design magazine at borders.

Have you read those pages at all? They're not trying to convince you why Gimp is so good, they informing you that Hollywood is using Gimp for actual production use!

> There is nothing in the graphics art world that
> needs doing that photoshop does not do that
> gimp does.

Yes yes Photoshop is better, but that's not my point. But what really matters is that Gimp is good enough for most people. Linux is better than Windows as a server but that doesn't stop people from using Win2k webservers.

> If you think gimp is better than photoshop,
> you've never done any graphics art design

Re-read my post. I never said it is better. I said it is good enough, even for professional usage (Hollywood).

Re:RH8 for business - question then...

[FooBarWidget]

> and plugins that failed to load even basic file
> formats that PS could load. (yes older versions)

Which "basic formats are those"? GIF, BMP, PNG, JPG, TIFF, and even PostScript, they all load fine in Gimp.

> I truly hate 12 little windows, a proper
> graphics app should be one big window with
> attached tool-windows.

You know, one big window and attached tool-windows are exactly why I hate Paint Shop Pro's interface.
And 12 little windows are acceptable when utilizing the power of virtual desktops.

> Another gripe i had was with the crapp submenus
> that were hard to select because they were 50%
> aligned off the -> arrow. (yes GTKs fault).

Fixed in Ximian's GTK+ 1.2.10 and vanially GTK+ 2.0.

> Face it, GIMP needs 'themes' or 'visual
> emulation' modes to make it look like Photoshop
> or PaintShopPro for it to be taken seriously as
> an alternative,

Interfaces are learned. What you think is a normal interface depends on what kind of apps you've been using.
I've used Gimp long enough to be very productive in Gimp. Gimp's UI has no secrets for me anymore.
I have PSP installed on my Windows partition too, but I always end up using Gimp for Windows or Gimp for Linux.

> Oh and scanning...

There's a Sane plugin for Gimp.

Re:RH8 for business - question then...

[GlassHeart]

Face it, Gimp is good *enough* for most people.

You've managed to miss the point of my list quite completely, so I'll explain.

The first step is to provide replacements for these applications I list that are featureful and easy to use.

The next step is to gain mindshare.

What you want, ideally, is for people to ask for your multimedia OS because Gimp runs better on it. Failing that, then the comfort that Gimp will still run just as well.

What you have right now is "go ahead and switch, nevermind that you know Photoshop really well, and it'll all be okay." That's not enough, and that's why Mac OS X needs Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop, not OpenOffice and Gimp whatever the relative technical merits are.

^^ mod up

[chegosaurus]

best /. post so far this year. w00t!

Yes multimedia

[Anonymous Coward]

There is multimedia, just not in the default install. You'll need to add those from the CD. While it is true that MP3 is missing in RedHat (due to patent issues), you can find it here:

http://psyche.freshrpms.net/

Over all, RedHat appears to be trying to slim down their base distribution to be something that people can actually use and making it easy to expand it to whatever you want.

www.redhat.com just updated

[MrJones]

Check out:
RedHat.com was just updated with 8.0 info!

It will upgrade (no msg)

[Pros_n_Cons]

it will work

Support

[mokeyboy]

If you really want to support, try looking towards the real economics. RH is a service based company. Get your RHCE (or twice if you can get your employer to pay for it!) and convince your enterprise to take linux seriously and look at support contracts. You could even pressure your desktop/server supplier to get their machines certified.

Kant spel

[Anonymous Coward]

Both Eugenia and Ed Boyce need to install and use
a spelling checker. Come on people now. This is
the 90's.

Apparently, the difference between the Death Star
and RH8 comes down to a default ability to play
MP3's.

I'm so happy :-)!

Re:Kant spel

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Mr Coward: It's '90s not 90's. It's MP3s not MP3's. -William Safire

Did it have smth to do with Mandrake 9.0 release ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you dare ...

Redhat is starting to do annoucement MS-like : "When you got nothing new but an opponent release something that will hurt you, do release a annoucement that say you will -no date here- release the killin-your-mother-f**er stuff". And people just wait ;-)

Thy did it with win95 (vs OS/2), age of empire II (vs startcraft), MS.net (vs Java), XBox (vs PS/2) ... but facts are here : MS lies !

I'm sad that RH is going the same way ... :(

-4R34'.

Another write-up...

[decesare]

... here. Don't be misled by the title of the article ("Mac poses as much of challenge to Linux and Windows"). Most of the article discusses the new RedHat release, with comparisons to M$ and MacOS X.

Re:Another write-up...

[GauteL]

There are a couple of misleading bits in this article.

"This much software from Microsoft would cost about $400"

This is just plain wrong. This much software from Microsoft would cost a lot more than $400.

The office suite and the Operating system alone would cost more than $400.

The other thing is the statement about Microsoft Internet Explorer still being the best browser out there, without any argument to back it up. Why is it better than anything else out there? For me it certainly isn't, since I'm way too bothered by all the pop-ups..

Otherwise a decent piece.

Re:Another write-up...

[Draoi]

"Red Hat 8 is still a ragbag of code, written by amateurs and part-timers and jumbled all together. And it shows."

Ouch - that's harsh!

Re:Another write-up...

[Anonymous DWord]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002-07 -22&res=l

fiddlesticks!

[DJPenguin]

ncftp /pub/redhat/linux > cd 8.0
Could not chdir to 8.0: server said: Failed to change directory.
ncftp /pub/redhat/linux > ls -l 8.0
dr-x------ 3 218 0 4096 Sep 17 20:35 8.0
ncftp /pub/redhat/linux >

Has anyone managed to get it yet? And what about the ISOs - will they be releasing them this time?

James

(who spent all last week migrating to 7.3, lol)

Re:fiddlesticks!

[Anders1]

I've been running 8.0 since Wednesday, because there was a mirror site with misconfigured permissions. :-)

Re:fiddlesticks!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had all three posted to Gnutella for about 2 hours, connected to dual T3's and an OC-3 to Internet2 and GiGE to to the box that it is on and nobody is biting...does this indicate what the majority of this network is being used for? I would hope that sombody would use it for legitimit uses like distributing the LINUX distros.

Search for Psyche or i386...it's there, nobody is downloading it...yet..

The next Debian unstable

[Pac]

Buzz -> Rex -> Bo -> Hamm -> Slink -> Potato -> Woody -> Sarge -> Eugenia

Pushing Linux desktop evolution

[jvmatthe]

One of the biggest problems I have with the current UI is the inconsistent, confusing and bloated "Start" Red Hat menu. You are free to like it as much as you want, I just don't. What is the point of having similar menus all over the place? You have a "mouse" entry on your Preferences, and you got a "mouse" entry on your System Settings. Granted, the panels loading from each menu are doing different things, but it is just not clear enough just by looking at the menu items what is what and which one does what. You have to click both to see if it is the one you needed. A UI should be intuitive enough to clear up such misconceptions right away.

Wouldn't it be nice if developers in the free software community read things like this and took the criticisms to heart as seriously as if someone had knocked them for not using a free license? That is, the community has some peer pressure for acceptable software: using a free software license (GPL, LGPL, BSD), sharing code but with appropriate attribution, using open standards and tools (autoconf, etc), and so on. The openness of the community and this system of taboos have arguable produced better software and certainly gotten us closer to a free software world. Could the same pressure potentially lead free software application developers to enforce good GUI design habits as well as good programming habits? When users give feedback like the above that says "hey, your program may be cool, but you aren't following good UI design principles" and this criticism carrys weight similar to telling someone that they should use a free software license, then perhaps free software can really evolve past its geek-oriented roots to something that the masses can embrace.

Re:Pushing Linux desktop evolution

[stubear]

Open software, closed minds. I've hit this brick wall a number of times. I'm currently working with the OBOS group developing the GUI and hopefully working towards pushing the group into desiging the UI with typical users in mind. Part of this has been developing functionality but my achilles heel is my lackof programming ability so I'm left only contributing ideas and graphics. Granted this is an important contribution, IMHO, but I'm limited as to how far I can demonstrate the ideas and why they are usefuland/or needed. Hopefully this OSS group will have an open mind and listen. So far so good but far too many OSS groups have closed minds.

Re:Pushing Linux desktop evolution

[gosand]

The author wrote:
One of the biggest problems I have with the current UI is the inconsistent, confusing and bloated "Start" Red Hat menu. You are free to like it as much as you want, I just don't. What is the point of having similar menus all over the place?

Wouldn't it be nice if developers in the free software community read things like this and took the criticisms to heart as seriously as if someone had knocked them for not using a free license?

I think your point is a little off, by targeting "developers in the free software community". This is RedHat's distribution of GNU/Linux, and it sounds like the author's gripes would need to be addressed by RedHat. It doesn't really sounds like a programmers view of the UI, but the distributor's. I am not disagreeing with the author's point, just that the comments should be directed appropriately. If RedHat wants to put the same menu in 15 times in 15 different places, you can' fault the person who coded the menu.

Re:Pushing Linux desktop evolution

[pubjames]

I absolutely agree. I would really like to see a good single set of guidelines (like the Apple guidelines) that all open source programmers could reference. I think this would really help with the 'peer pressure'. If you could point to respected guidelines and say, hey your interface breaks rule X, then I think a lot more programmers would listen.

Problem is of course such guidlines do not exisit, but it would be great if, for instance, the KDE, Mozilla, Gnome and OpenOffice people could each appoint a team member for a group to put something like this together. This would also be much preferable to having changes forced upon them by RedHat.

Re:Pushing Linux desktop evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you looking for this?

Re:Pushing Linux desktop evolution

[pubjames]

Are you looking for this [gnome.org]?

Not exactly, but close. I would like to see guidlines that are meant for all projects. I believe currently, for instance, Gnome and KDE both have their own guidelines. I would like to see a set of guidelines which has the universiality and authority of the LSB, written by people from KDE, Gnome, OpenOffice and Mozilla, etc., not just the Gnome people.

Re:Pushing Linux desktop evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

*cough* Ximian *cough*

Quite simply, it's the cleanest menu layout I've ever seen.

If they're going to release it...

[liposuction]

...then they should take the password off the FTP server and all of the mirrors.

downloading

[Anonymous Coward]

...if you want to try it out yourself. I'm downloading RH 8 isos as I type.

was downloading you mean

The lady's gotta love watching...

[Anonymous Coward]

...installer progress bars!

The /. Effect Rides Again

[TitusC3v5]

Text from the article:

World's First Review of Red Hat 8.0-Psyche
By Eugenia Loli-Queru - Posted on 2002-09-30 01:10:59

Gentoo, Lindows and Lycoris arguably were the big surprises of the year in the Linux land, but everyone is waiting the release of Red Hat 8.0 with, possibly, the biggest anticipation ever for a Linux distribution. Since Red Hat posted the Limbo and Null betas, fans of the most popular distribution on earth were making waves and even called this new version a Windows killer. Does this really hold up though? Will Red Hat be successful on their quest to infiltrate the business workstation/destkop market? Read more to find out and view some of the high resolution screenshots we have for you!

Red Hat 8 Review - Part I

Some preferences with the unreleased BlueLightHouse theme The installation of Red Hat 8 is similar to the previous versions. While Anaconda, the RH installer, was updated to support AA and GTK+ 2 resulting in a more spiffy look, little has been changed to the installer itself. One of the changes is that now you have to click "Advanced" to tell LILO or GRUB to only install themselves to the / partition and not on the MBR (I usually use the BeOS "bootman" bootloader), the option is not right up there as it used to be. Other than that, the installation went very smoothly; it only took less than 30 minutes with my 52-max CD-ROM I have here on this AthlonXP 1600+, 768 MB Ram (KM266 VIA Apollo PRO chipset, Asus GeForce2MX-400 AGP card and on board S3 SavagePRO, Yamaha YMF-754 and VIA VT8233 sound cards, RealTek 8139 onboard NIC). The OS rebooted and I loaded it into text mode, and from there I loaded X-Free.

As always, the default environment for Red Hat is Gnome. I haven't seen any Gnome version numbers anywhere, but I think that RH comes with a modified Gnome 2.0.2. It looks pretty slick, and the fonts (default font is "Sans") are looking sharp, even being fully antialised, but personally I found them a bit too big for my taste (and I am currently running on 1920x1200 resolution). There is this new feature coming with RH8 that you create a directory called ~/.fonts and you throw in all your TTF fonts in there, and they get recognized automatically from the system! This is pretty neat, only problem is that not many people know about this feature. I think it should have been part of the font panel under preferences. Anyway, in no time I was up and running with Verdana as my main font on the Gnome2 desktop. I think Verdana and the rest of the web fonts I installed, render very nicely in this distribution (X Server included is 4.2.0)

The Gnome desktop included on RH8 looks sharp and clean. It has brand new icons, and only important plugins and launcher icons are included in the Gnome taskbar. For example, you will find a workspace switcher, Mozilla 1.0.1 (default browser), Evolution 1.0.8 (default email client) and the OpenOffice.org icons on the left side of the bar, while you will find the Red Hat Network Update Daemon (up2date) on the right, along the Time. On your desktop you will only find your Home icon, the "Start Here" preferences open in Nautilus and the trash, named "Wastebasket."

Along with the brand new icons, you will find a new GTK+ theme, called BlueCurve, and a new window manager theme. I admit that it looks much better than many other themes from previous versions or from other distributions (the window manager is clean and up to the point - I like it), but there is still quite an lot of stuff to be improved in the UI itself. None of the suggestions we did here and here a month ago made it into this release. I hope the UI at Red Hat developers will consider some of the suggestions for the next version of Red Hat.

A nice surprise is OpenOffice.org's looks in this desktop. Red Hat made some good work to make sure that OOo looks good, with full AA support on its menus, even when you try to type something on a document. Too bad that OOo does not recognize the TTF fonts I installed on my ~/.fonts dir, though. Other GTK+ application can't see them either, eg. gedit, while other can (eg. Gnome2 Terminal). This is an incosintency issue and, in my opinion, it should be fixed.

Mozilla, Evolution, Gimp, XMMS One of the biggest problems I have with the current UI is the inconsistent, confusing and bloated "Start" Red Hat menu. You are free to like it as much as you want, I just don't. What is the point of having similar menus all over the place? You have a "mouse" entry on your Preferences, and you got a "mouse" entry on your System Settings. Granted, the panels loading from each menu are doing different things, but it is just not clear enough just by looking at the menu items what is what and which one does what. You have to click both to see if it is the one you needed. A UI should be intuitive enough to clear up such misconceptions right away. Same goes for "Keyboard" and Networking panels. And if this is not enough, the Red Hat menu is cluttered with similar --at first glance-- menus: "Preferences, Server Settings, System Settings, System Tools". And if that is not enough, under the Extras menu, you will find submenus (with different apps in them) called... "Preferences, System Settings, System Tools." Same goes for the Office, Games, Sound and Video. That "Extras" submenu is not needed. It duplicates things in a bad way, even if the apps offered there are different from their counterparts in the root Red Hat menu. The Extras should have been included in the master menus, and to avoid clutter, they should have been included under a submenu. For example, under Preferences, include a submenu called "More Preferences" and put there the not-so-needed prefs. Lycoris does it that way and it works well. The way it works now, after a while, you can't remember under which "Preferences" menu you saw a specific item. Was it under the root's Preferences menu, or under the Extras? Messy.

Red Hat 8 Review - Part II

The Red Hat Network (up2date) is a pretty nice service and, via it, you are able to update your Red Hat installation automatically, via a GUI application. Only registered users are able to use the service. For the package management, Red Hat has created a nice to use "Package Management" application that will let you install/remove software from the RH8 CDs. I couldn't find a way to actually make this manager to see other "sources", for example rpmfind.net, but it is nice when you right-click on an RPM file it will load the "Install Package" application and take care of the installation. I installed a number of RPMs created for Null (there were no dependancy issues), so I don't know how this installer behaves in the case there are dependancy issues. I downloaded an RPM (the "Downloader for X" application) created for RH 7.3, and it also installed and worked perfectly.

System Settings Red Hat still includes the Desktop Switcher application, so I momentarily switched to KDE 3.0.3. I think Red Hat has done a good job modifying a Qt theme to look similar to GTK+'s BlueCurve. Whoever said that Red Hat modified KDE to look like Gnome is wrong. The BlueCurve theme is not Gnome's either. Red Hat wrote it pretty much from scratch. So, KDE applications now looks similar to Gnome's, and Gnome's applications are looking similar to KDE's. This is a good thing. As you can see from the KDE screenshots the desktop now has an (almost) unified look (the buttons and some other details are not the same as in Gnome). If you do not count the plethora of GTK+ 1.x important and default applications (Evolution, GIMP, Balsa etc), XUL (Mozilla), God-knows-what-toolkit (OpenOffice.org), Java, some Python GUI apps I installed and some KDE 1.x and 2.x apps, well... the rest of the Red Hat 8 looks unified. Well, as you can see, not entirely. It is a step in the right direction, but until all these applications get ported to either Qt 3 or GTK+ 2 or create a BlueCurve theme for their toolkit and force AA to them, the desktop won't feel entirely unified yet.

But as I said earlier, this is the most unified look and feel achieved today in the Linux world and it should be embraced by the community of users, instead of bitching at Red Hat for doing the Right Thing (TM) for their business. Yes, the "About KDE" is not there anymore, and very correctly it is not. I give props to Red Hat for taking this intrusive propaganda from the KDE Project to throw in this menu item on each and every Qt/KDE application. It is a completely reduntant, duplicated information for 99.9% of the users and it is there only to consume space. And yes, I am mostly a KDE user, but speaking as a UI designer (and not as a KDE user), RH did the right thing to remove that always-ever-present menu. The KDE About box should be included in a central place, somewhere else. Currently, you CAN view the About KDE box by clicking the KDE menu, then on the Panel menu, then on the Help menu and then you will find it there. It is a bit hidden I have to admit. But it is there, as you can see from the screenshots we feature here.

Gnumeric, AbiWord, Quanta, ImageMagick, games... Red Hat 8 comes with quite a number of applications, it even includes KOffice 1.2. Suspiciously and funny enough, when you install additional packages from the RH CDs via the Package Management application, all the GUI apps I installed were showing under the Extras menu, but KOffice was never joined the Gnome's Extras menu as other KDE apps did after installation, while it does join KDE's Extras submenu (which is identical to Gnome's otherwise). Anyways, you can find a number of apps, FTP clients, KDevelop, Emacs, File-Roller, Gaim, Galeon, Gnumeric, lots of puzzle games, preferences for the http server, NFS, Services, hardware information, X11 resolution/monitor panel, Internet wizard with support for wireless, modems, nics, ADSL, ISDN etc. However, there are other things missing, equally important. I couldn't find a samba configuration tool coming from Red Hat, no visual way to change your sound card from a list, and no visual way to change your monitor's refresh rate or printers.

Also, there is no Java installed. No Macromedia Flash or Real Player either. And that brings me in the multimedia offerings of this distro. Or its lack there of. Red Hat 8 has to be the poorest multimedia-ready distro by default that I ever ran (except Gentoo of course, which comes with virtually nothing by default :). So, there are no movie players on Psyche (except the limited Kaboodle which is not even installed by default). None. No XINE, no VLC, no XMovie, no NoATun, no nothing. I don't know what Red Hat means by saying that this is a "business desktop", but I can tell you that when I used to work at Montal.com in UK, which is a business ISP and AIX/WinNT provider, the girls at the marketing and PR department needed the ability to play avi and qt or mpeg files daily. Our design company was sending us either Flash presentations, or real avi files to show us the progress for our marketing/advertising material they were creating for us. So, no matter how much I might bitch later in this article for not including 2D/3D drivers from nVidia, this is an even bigger oversight/issue. This is 2002, people, and modern offices and businesses need full multimedia capabilities by default on their desktop. And Red Hat fails to deliver these. Hurrah for Windows XP and MacOSX in this particular issue.

Red Hat 8 Review - Part III

OpenOffice.org On a less important matter (possibly equally important for some IT engineers working at their dark room with RH8 trying to listen to their music - eg. my beloved husband) is the lack of mp3 capabilities. Because of the licensing issue of mp3 (which exists for YEARS for the SAME price, but for some reason people seem to think that this is a 'new thing'), Red Hat decided to not include mp3 libraries on their OS. This is their liberty, but let's be realistic here, most people use mp3s, no matter if both ogg vorbis and even wma are better technologies comparatively. Be paid that $50-60,000 USD needed to include mp3s on its BeOS back in year 2000, at a time that they were with one foot off the cliff, financially-speaking. And Red Hat, a much larger company, with more money and millions more users (Be never had more than 100,000 active users at the same time), decides to not license the technology. Well, maybe that was an ideologic decision rather than a business one, but the bottom line is most of their customers won't be entirely satisfactied by this decision. No matter how you turn it, this is a limitation of the default system, as mp3 is a very standard audio format these days. And manually downloading and installing the already created mp3 RPMs for Psyche, it will only make you an outlaw and not the solver of the real, larger issue at hand here.

On another XMMS issue, it refuses to play online playlists, like my favorite one (works on Lycoris, doesn't work either on Xandros).

There are good things in Psyche, don't get me wrong. GCC 3.2 rocks; all the binaries are really fast, the system feels fast, and by modifying the services to load on boot, will make your booting even faster (dunno why Red Hat decided to load things like wireless and PCMCIA daemons on this PC though - I don't have any such hardware). The default blue background image is pretty good too. WindowMaker, is the fastest between Gnome2 and KDE 3 and it works great too. The system is very stable too so far, except for the problems I describe later about the graphics driver. The filesystem used is ext3 while the kernel used is 2.4.18 (yes, it would have been nice to get some of 2.4.19's goodies, but hey, Red Hat's kernels are always kinda modified and patched with special patches for stability and they get a long time testing - which is a good thing).

On the downside of things, my mouse was not recognized to have a wheel mouse and after changing its type via the mouse system panel (one of the 2-3 mouse preference panels with the same name... see above to understand the sarcasm) to get it recognized as a wheel one, the mouse would jump like crazy on the screen, as if I had selected the wrong type (I didn't). Killing the X server (couldn't use the mouse or shortcut to logout - there is no shortcut) and reloading X, fixed the problem and I now have full wheel operations. I am not the only one with the problem. It seems that Red Hat does not enable wheel operations for all mice. Mandrake and Lycoris recognized the mouse with no problems though.

And talking about the X server... Hmm.. should I start about it, or not? I better do, it's part of the whole experience at the end of the day.

More system tools So, here is the story: First of all, there was no resolution available to pick above 1600x1200. This baby, a high-end SGI Trinitron 24" monitor, I got here can do up to 2048x1440, but I wanted to set it up for the much more "conservative" 1920x1200 at 90 Hz. The X preference panel does not let you pick VESA resolutions except the very standard ones, and to make things even worse, you can't pick the refresh rate you want. I hand-edited the XF86Config file, I double checked the monitor's sync info, and then added the 1920x1200 res to the confing file. Restarted X, and I was indeed at 1920x1200. But it wouldn't go more than 73 Hz, even if both the monitor and this graphics card can do more than 90 Hz for that specific res! I tried everything, I created a modeline via XTiming, nothing! It wouldn't go more than 73 Hz. I downloaded nVidia's official drivers, and install them successfully (I had 3D and all now). I reloaded X, and again, even nVidia's drivers X wouldn't let the refresh to go up to 73 Hz. To make the long story short, I had to email Andy Ritger at nVidia and ask him to give me his opinion of what's up here. Andy is an incredibly helpful engineer (thanks Andy!) and he sent me his GTF command line application that creates VESA modelines. Even by using this app's modeline, X wouldn't go above 73 Hz. By forcing the X server to go at 85 Hz, it would downgrade itself automatically at 1600x1200. By sending the XFree log to Andy, he figured out that for some (stupid most probably) reason, X thinks that when you are on 24bit, the pixel clock of the card can be only 300 Mhz, while it is 350. So, if I downgraded to 16bit color, I would get 90 Hz as requested. It took some more experiementation and my husband's additional help to modify BY HAND the modeline that GTF created and be able to get to 1920x1200x24bit @ 90Hz. There is no possible way that even Joe Admin in a remote office in Alabama would have figured out how to fix that without asking directly XFree or nVidia employees. For me, that is one more reason why X just doesn't cut it, and as a result, why RH8 doesn't cut it when configuring high-end monitors or other not 100% standard resolutions. Especially when Red Hat hopes to get all these ex-SGI animators over to their platform after porting their custom multimedia applications. These are issues that XFree should fix, include the (proprierty) GTF mechanism (there is no other way) and update the modelines for more VESA resolutions for up to 2048x1536. This is 2002 we are living in, not 1995.

Red Hat comes with DRI 3D drivers for Voodoos, i810, Matrox, Radeon and SiS. There is no 3D support by default for nVidia cards though. I was a bit unhappy about this a few days ago, but now I am over it. I mean, at the end of the day, this is a business desktop and as such it does not really need 3D, right? Well, not exactly. Think the... poor ex-SGI animators trying to port and work with Blender and other GL-enabled animation packages on a PC with Red Hat, or game developers. Developers are employees too and this a business desktop, right?

Red Hat 8 Review - Part IV

Red Hat Network, System Monitor, File-Roller, Gconf, Grip etc I downloaded and installed successfully the nVidia 2D and 3D drivers. OpenGL works fine in 3D game, except that the GL screensavers have a problem to start in accelerated mode (yes, the memoryLimit is set to 0). After running a bit happy with them at the resolution and refresh rate I wanted, X would crash. SSH'ing in the machine and either stopping, or huping or killing X (which would now consume 99% cpu), it would completely kill Red Hat 8 (sign that the kernel was crashing because of the nVidia driver) and I would need to reset the machine. Andy told me to set the AGP settings to 0, and I did so. In the beginning, it was looking more stable, but after a while it would still crash in the exact same way. So, I just reverted back to the generic 2D "nv" driver that comes with XFree. The problem is that this nv driver could not drive my monitor at 90Hz. I could see the windows' edges to render as zig-zag, which is a sign that something is getting overclocked (while the gfx card _can_ do it with other OSes or drivers). So, here I am back on 73 Hz, writing this. I can tell you, I am not happy about the nVidia and nv drivers situation. The nVidia driver, which I compiled from the .tar.gz packages are NOT stable under Red Hat 8 on my machine even if when I disabled AGP support. I wish that Red Hat, who are now a big respected company (I wrote recently about their dominance in this year's LinuxWorld expo), could partner with nVidia to include these 2D/3D _better_than_nv nVidia drivers by default, but most-most importantly to have these drivers fully tested and ready for download for the time when their OS is about to come out. As for the standard XFree "nv" nVidia driver is so basic and untested on high resolutions that if it was something real that I could touch, I would have already thrown it in the river, which runs outside my house. And please don't tell me to dive in to the code and fix it, I am not a device driver programmer, neither I want to be one. I am a user when it comes to Linux and I expect things to work as nicely as they do on Windows XP and MacOSX (I do some C/C++ development only for OSX and BeOS these days).

There are three last points I would like to discuss in this review, because these are indeed real issues in the last 5 days that I am using Psyche. First, the focus of windows does not always work and this is either a window manager or a toolkit issue. For example, I have Nautilus, gedit and the preferences/mouse panel open and I click between them (in the application body, not in the window manager) and while the clicked app gets the focus, it does not come into the front (I am using the default "click to focus" btw). Half of the time it would work and the clicked apps would come to the front, while the other 50% of the time1 it wouldn't do it. This might be a toolkit bug, because if I click inside a tab view area, the window will always come on focus, while if I click outside of this specific area, but still inside its window, it wouldn't. Weird.

Most important bug in my opinion is the GTK+ 2 combo box bug. Example: I get to the System Settings/Display panel and I open the graphics card panel which has a combo/drop down box on its right side, with the name of the driver loaded. About 60-70% of the time I hit the little arrow to open the combo box's menu, the combo box would get a different value, EVEN if I did not click to any value! In my case, it selects automatically the "mga" option! This is a toolkit bug, and while it does not happen all the time, it happens MOST of the time and if a user won't be very careful of what got selected without his consent, he/she would end up with a non working X server until he/she gets to hand-edit back the XF86Config file. Messy.

KDE, KOffice, Konqueror, KontrolCenter, Gaim The last gripe I have is the shortcut and navigability this distro does not have. For example, as I described above, by selecting the correct mouse driver for my mouse to give it the wheel ability, until I restart X, the mouse would move like crazy and I was not be able to click anything. I had to ALT+CNTRL+BACKSPACE my X Server (which was something that was not nessesary, X was fine), because none of the Windows Keys worked. By just clicking the windows key and the context menu key on my keyboard, nothing would happen, no menu would open. Yeah, yeah, I know. These are keys that the evil empire introduced. But they are freaking useful for God's sake. USE them! They are here, present on each modern keyboard! And what about the complete lack of navigation via other keyboard shortcuts? How do I logout via a shortcut, or even better how do I open a Red Hat menu (in order to navigate through it and do stuff or log out) via a shortcut or via the Windows key? The Gnome Help didn't help at all on this issue!

Conclusion

So, there are two questions remain: How well this distribution would do as a business desktop? Let me answer this like this: Psyche is better than most of its Linux competitors, but still way behind in both the desktop experience and feature-set from both WindowsXP and MacOSX. How well this would serve as a server OS? I am sure it would be good server OS. It is stable and fast. Some GUI utils are missing for configuring more servers, but for the admin who does not need GUI tools, Red Hat 8 would be better and faster than ever. But as a (business or not) desktop, I am sorry, but I am still skeptical about it. It isn't ready yet, it has a number of rough edges, and I really do not understand where the whole fuss was about the last two months about Red Hat 8 being a Windows killer on the desktop. It isn't one. Not yet anyway.

Installation: 8/10 Hardware Support: 8/10 Ease of use: 7.5/10 Features: 8/10 Speed: 8/10 (UI responsiveness, latency, throughput)

Overall: 7.9 / 10

Thanks to Ed Boyce for going through the pain of proof reading this article.

Lack of default multimedia stuff

[SweenyTod]

My wife does only a few thing with the computer. Webpage editing (Quanta), web surfing (Mozilla), email (Kmail), watching movies (Xine) and listening to music (xmms).

8.0 comes with only about half of what she'd use it for. I know it's easy to install them, but I'm sure that isn't the point. The OSNews reviewer is spot on when she says that it's a big mistake to not include that stuff. I really don't think RedHat want the first opinion of somebody being "So where is everything I want?"

Re:Lack of default multimedia stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

2/5ths, moron. evolution is there.

xine is in (null)

[xiox]

Xine was shipped with the (null) beta. I'm surprised if it itsn't in 8.0. Perhaps it isn't installed by default? Perhaps it isn't on the menus. I can't check as I don't have access to 8.0.

Re:xine is in (null)

[N3WBI3]

Actually I prefer it without xine installed by default. I think RPM's make it easy enough for a n00b like me to install off of a download..

In other news...

[Truckle]

In other news SuSE Linux 8.1 is expected on the October 7th

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

If SuSE were worth a shit they would post ISO images like EVERY OTHER FUCKING DISTRO.

Thanks but no thanks.

Slashdot grammer!

[Xpilot]

Other GTK+ application can't see them either, eg. gedit, while other can (eg. Gnome2 Terminal). This is an incosintency issue and, in my opinion, it should be fixed.

Looks like she is on par with CmdrTaco as far as grammer and spelling is concerned. Yup, that's a quality review alright.

Re:Slashdot grammer!

[Anonymous Coward]

I do so hope that you wrote "grammer" on purpose. You do know that it is "grammar", right?

Re:Slashdot grammer!

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that supposed to be grammar?

Who the fuck do all you people think you are, anyway? As if your grammar/spelling is any better than theirs..

Re:Slashdot grammer!

[Xpilot]

It wouldn't be slashdot if I spelt it correctly now would it? I do know how too spell grammar... duh :)

Re:Slashdot grammer!

[Anonymous Coward]

You do now, anyway. Hell, English isn't even Eugenia's first language. What's your excuse?

Re:Slashdot grammer!

[gosand]

Looks like she is on par with CmdrTaco as far as grammer and spelling is concerned. Yup, that's a quality review alright.

I thought that too, at first. I thought that some of the mistakes she made sounded like English wasn't her native language. So instead of choosing to be a smart ass and make some "clever" comment about it, I chose to educate myself. I looked up the info on the author (by simply clicking on her name at the top of the article). She is Greek, so English isn't her first language. While it isn't perfect English by far, it got the point across. In the author's own words:
I am Greek and english is not my native language. We do OSNews for fun (however, OSNews takes most of my time every day), so if you have a problem with my spelling and grammar either a) do not come back (spare us and save your time too) b) send me a proofread version of the article in question. Whining about something I can't radically improve overnight, is not an option.

Re:Slashdot grammer!

[Xpilot]

Then why does everyone keep bashing slashdot about it then? BTW, you missed the "too".

Re:Slashdot grammer!

[cwells]

ROFL you guys kill me with all this grammar crap. if anything is true about email/message boards/mail lists/etc.. is that spelling and grammar doesnt matter. why should it? this isnt a fuckin paper for an english class, is it? anyway..just had to say something.

later,
cw

http://www.biker-needs-a-harley.org

Re:Slashdot grammer!

[uk_greg]

Granted, but at the end of the article she makes a point of thanking someone for proofing the article. The grammatical errors are there, and a better effort could have been made, IMHO.

Re:Slashdot grammer!

[plugger]

Heh, the funniest thing about Slashdot corrections is that there is about a 50% chance of them containing another error.

Re:Slashdot grammer!

[Xpilot]

Even funnier is that nobody knows how to use the word "too" correctly on the internet.

odd review

[Anonymous Coward]

" Developers are employees too and this a business desktop, right? "

And I'm sure every business has an IT department that just sits on their ass, hands out a CD, and says "install, configure, and tweak this yourself".

Most of this review was about "this looks like such", and "this doesn't behave properly". So at least half of the review is about Gnome/KDE, not Red Hat. I also have little sympathy for someone that wants to run 1920x1200 24bit resolution at 90hz. I'm sure we'll ALL have that problem =P

Re:odd review

[Amazing Quantum Man]

I also have little sympathy for someone that wants to run 1920x1200 24bit resolution at 90hz. I'm sure we'll ALL have that problem =P

Maybe not, but I'd sure like to get my GeForce2MX to run at 1024x726x24x85Hz

Way off topic

[sys49152]

I read this article all the way through, and now my head hurts. Did anyone else notice that there was nary a sentence that was gramatically correct. What was especially irksome was this final remark.

Thanks to Ed Boyce for going through the pain of proof reading this article.

Online or not, I think a modest respect for the English language should be maintained. If English is not your first language, well then, that's what copy editors are for.

No need to mod this post, just venting.

Re:Way off topic

[sethadam1]

Psssh....Maybe you didn't see the article on l33t-speak last week. At least Eugenia tries to spell correctly.

U r so l4me cuz the kidz all spell this way now. i 3 all the short w0rds and wuz happy 2 c psyche stuff b4 the rel34s3!

Re:Way off topic

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for your unwanted insight, professor english.

A dilemma

[ACK!!]

Ok, I am a UI whore. I fully admit it. I liked SuSE because they seemed to care about the UI. I put my wife on KDE and she is happy and I compile and manually muck with my my Gnome 2.0.2 environment and I am happy. So what is the problem?

Redhat has some nice advancements in terms of integration of the UI and consistency for the look and feel of administration tools. So I should make the switch right?

Well, then I hear that the multimedia, plugins side of Redhat sucks hard. I started gathering some of the packages needed to make this better but my god there is a lot of missing things.

So I am at an impasse. Should I stay with a distro that is not aimed at my primary desktop or move to a distro that is but will take a lot more work to get functional?

Any ideas?

________________________________________________ _

Re:A dilemma

[love2hateMS]

Why not just download and install the multimedia components you want? I'm sure RPM's will be popping up all over the place.

Re:A dilemma

[cwells]

multimedia plugins...are you refering to netscape
plugins? thats a seperate issue that doesnt specifically concern redhat. as for the desktop..
gnome/kde those are also seperate from the distro.
so i'd stay with what youre currently using. why
switch?

good luck,
cw

http://www.biker-needs-a-harley.com

Why 386 instead of 586?

[PRR]

I'm familiar with both RH and Mandrake, and as far as I can tell, RH is still using 386 packages instead of 586 like Mandrake. Why is this? You would think that nearly everyone has a CPU appropriate for 586 stuff by now. What's up?

Any plans in the near future for RH to go to 586 packages?

Re:Why 386 instead of 586?

[ajs]

This has been asked and answered in various places, but basically, Red Hat compiles key packages (glibc, kernel, openssl) for particular processors, and uses options that allow backward compatibility for all of the rest. This way, they have a minimum of duplication on the CDs. They also take advantage of some flags that let you optimize for later processors while allowing older ones to run the code. I forget if it's -march, but they do something funky there.

Take a look at the /usr/lib/rpm/rpmrc

Now, you may ask why they would want to support ancient hardware? Well, the sad truth is that rich kids (that is to say, people who can afford a good machine) who buy computers to dual boot Linux for real work and Windows for games aren't the only people who use computers. There are many in the wealthy countries (US, Europe, Japan, etc) who need to be able to re-use old hardware and even more in the developing world. Red Hat is a great OS choice for many of these people, and as it becomes entrenched in places like South America, it becomes the choice of schools and small businesses too, which will eventually become Red Hat customers for support.

Re:Why 386 instead of 586?

[Sabalon]

Sadly I was trying to install RH on a 386 and a 486 notebook. None of them had the resources to let me install (no cd drive, not enough ram for a network install). Nice little conundrum.

Re:Why 386 instead of 586?

[Anonymous Coward]

that's an easy one. they still compile for 386,
because all the 586/athlon optimizations
gcc can do are so few that it's not worth the
trouble. if gcc was a better x86 compiler, then
perhaps it might be worth considering...

Re:Why 386 instead of 586?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since 586 compiled binaries are slower than 386 binaries on all cpus except the orignal Pentium I and Pentium MMX, it wouldn't make sense at all to ship 586 binaries....

Re:Why 386 instead of 586?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the RPM's are compiled using only i386
instructions and will thus work on an i386 (given enough resources)

Re:Why 386 instead of 586?

[ajs]

You should be able to do floppy bootstrap install, still. You will have to go looking at the "images" directory on the CD. Of course, you'll still need a) a system with both CD and floppy in order to write the floppies to boot from and b) an IDE-CD controler to get the OS from once the floppy has booted. In theory, you can still do an NFS install off of floppy, but I'm out of my depth there, since it's been 5 years since I did that, and it was Slackware.

Re:Why 386 instead of 586?

[Anonymous Coward]

with as little as 16MB or RAM you be OK.
as far as X goes, you can use fvwm for older computers it is fast, I used fvwm on a 386 a while back.

A better use for old computer is to use them as linux terminal check out www.ltsp.org

i386 Optimized

[Bios_Hakr]

I have a soft place in my heart for RH. Way back in the day (late 1996), I was struggling through yet another Debian install (broken kernel update), when my buddy gave me a RH cd. I was amazed with basicly everything on there. I went out and bought RH4.2 the next day. By tine a year had passed, I was in love with RH.

Then another buddy introduced me to Mandrake. Everything good about RH, but compiled for CPUs that were actually fabbed in the last 5 years. Ever since 1998, I have had a love/hate relationship with Mandrake. Not very stable (compared to RH), but at least I have the comfort of knowing that it is somewhat optimized for my system.

I still try RH releases. I love to see the work the guys have done. If I ever convert my office to Linux, I will reccomend RH. But why, oh why, can't the guys over there just update the compiler options. Would it really take that long to compile for i586? I know there are some people still running 80486 chips (esp in the embedded world), but why do they insist on keeping 80386 as a baseline?

Actually, I guess people like me are never really happy. I bitch at Mandrake for not moving to i686 as a base. In any event, my home box runs Gentoo now. Gcc 3.2, -O3, march=athlon, and whatever else I want to throw in there. I'm happy with my system, but I still look at RH 8.0 and their snazzy desktop/installer/awesome support, and wish they would take a few days to pump out an i686 ISO.

Re:i386 Optimized

[Anonymous Coward]

Most applications won't benefit from i686 vs i386 optimization. Since modern Pentium processors reorder instructions so efficiently, the whole notion of compiling for a specific platform would provide only a small performance improvement in the average case.

For the important libraries, like zlib, that _do_ benefit from Pentium-specific instructions, there are i686 packages provided in the default distribution.

-kris

Re:i386 Optimized

[moZer]

Red Hat compiles their packages with -mcpu=i686, which means that they are optimized for i686 but still runs on i386 (with -march=i686, the binary won't run on anything lower than i386). Important packages, such as kernel and glibc are compiled with the -march option, that is if you install it on a Pentium, you get the i586 rpm and so on.

If you want to, you can always rebuild the source rpms for packages like X or GTK or whatever, and use the "--target " switch to rpmbuild. That will optimize for your architecture. Look at /usr/lib/rpm/rpmrc for details on compiler flags.

"More Preferences"?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I refuse to take *any* design advice from anyone who thinks a "More Preferences" folder is a good idea.

Atrocious grammar...

[hungsolo]

Ugh! I couldn't even get through the first half of this article without giving up! Don't "journalists" usually have an editor to clean up spelling/grammar mistakes in articles? If this went through the editing process, those people ought to be fired. That was one of the most poorly written articles I've read in the past 6 months.

The content _was_ decent, even though the delivery was sub-par.

Missed Points in the review

[A-Tech]

While there is a lot of complaints in the review about the UI - I have 8.0 running and it is really quite an advance compared to many other distros I have tried.

RH 7.x users will love this distro.

Myths: KDE/Qt is broken. My favorite KDE /QT apps compiled perfectly with 3.2. The new Xft patches are already in Qt 3.1 beta. This is the fastest most bug free KDE I have ever seen RH ship.

The new scheduler is not mentioned, but this really improves the snappines of the desktop. Windows and dialogs move, open and close really quick.

KDE has a really good printer setup mechanism with CUPS. (IMHO should be the default for RH - LPrng is a PIA)

Bluecurve in the shipping version is really quite smooth and easy on the eyes. You can see a lot of work was put into making fonts readable everywhere.
Most importantly, this has a great many of the tools needed to slip Linux into the corporate enviroment. I would not suggest any Linux distro to Windows clients until seeing this.. This is the most important part of RH 8.0

Re:Missed Points in the review

[fitsnips]

>> RH 7.x users will love this distro.
Sorry but I do not like it. I have been a user since 4.2, and this is the worst one. Of course I am a computer geek, so I guess I am not the intended aud.

Resolution..

[Perdo]

Good point about desktop resolution. 2048 x 1536 should be a design goal. I have 22 inches of glass luv and the hot card to push it but I feel like I'm playing with an old 14 inch when I am in X. See what I mean?

Monitors supporting 2048 x 1536 are not uncommon since their prices have come down to consumer land (sub $400). The big three cardmakers support that resolution.

I shouldn't have to keep a post it on the monitor to remind me which ethernet card is where. eth0, eth1, eth2 is not infomative. If you can name something so that it's name is descriptive, you can work with it easier. Linux naming convention is crap, inherited from unix. "vi" is a text editor. Perhaps it could have been called -duh- "edit"... no, I don't need the history lesson, it's just an example.

More examples, objectively, which ones can you tell what they do by their names?: emacs, elvis, fte, kedit, latex, word, word perfect, notepad

"Konqueror"... what is that? Oh, navigate, explore, conquer... Inside joke with a cute k on the front to identify it with KDE.. But nothing in the name to tell a new user that it is the a browser. "rm" delete, del, trash, erase, oh!, "remove" got it!

Nice to see the begining of good fonts and a move toward unified desktops though.

Re:Resolution..

[jmu1]

Not to sound like a troll but if you don't like *n[iu]x, then stop using it. If you don't like the names, make a link or something. If you don't like a distrobution, make one, or hell go work for a company that makes a distro... be a consultant... just don't whine about it and expect things to change. It's sort of like the weather. It's going to do things you don't like, period. It can't be all things for all people. A good menuing system is just that, a good menuing system. I learned what the programs are... I'm not exactly a genius. You don't want the history lesson, fine. But guess what; it's where we came from, you can't change that. You can only change the future(but not by sitting on your duff complaining).
Cheers.

Re:Resolution..

[minkwe]

and by the same logic the names should change with local right? Have heard of aliases, otherwise what are you doing in a terminal? If you are unix-dumb, stay away from the terminal.

Re:Resolution..

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Linux naming convention is crap, inherited from unix. "vi" is a text editor. Perhaps it could have been called -duh- "edit"... no, I don't need the history lesson, it's just an example.

I don't give a damn if you don't need the history lesson. At the time vi was made, there was ALREADY an editor named -duh- "edit". So Bill Joy needed something else. Since it was a "Visual editor", he named it "vi". It's been kept at vi for obvious reasons.

Re:Resolution..

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to sound like a troll but if you don't like *n[iu]x, then stop using it.

I believe the standard response to this is: "gladly".

Re:Resolution..

[scrytch]

I don't give a damn

Full stop, that sums it up pretty well. If you really don't give a damn, don't whine when big corps and governments choose Windows.

Re:Resolution..

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Read the whole sentence. I didn't give a damn if he wanted the history lesson.

Re:Resolution..

[Bakaneko]

The logical conclusion to this is that everyone stops using NIX (since if it listens to NO criticism, then it does NOT improve in any tangible way).

Seriously, the ability to accept criticism is one of those socialization skills you're supposed to pick up by the 3rd-4th grade. It's a fairly telling remark if you say "Don't tell those developers what's wrong with their system, they won't like it."

The "go-do-it-yourself" arguement is also of only minor merit and breaks down in the absolutist sense in which many seem to want to appy it.. Don't like your car... BUILD ONE YOURSELF! Don't like your country's road infrastructure? MAKE SURE YOUR CAR THAT YOU'RE BUILDING IS ALL-TERRAIN AND CAN FLY!

In closing, here's a silly reactionary statement to provide counterbalance to the "don't like it? Do your own" arguements: "Don't like hearing/reading criticism regarding something you've done? Drive nails into your ears and eyes!" Yeah, THAT makes sense.

Re:Resolution..

[jmu1]

The argument isn't exactly all that valid mainly because of the longevity of the Unix platform. Think about it: it's been around for more than thirty years. Systems are being developed that are _based_ on that arcane knowledge. Is there room for improvement? Yes. Is there any way to please everyone? No. There are choices, alternatives available. If you don't like something, don't use it, or do something about it. The 'creative critisisms' that get bounced on the net are generally just moaning of end users or people who don't want to spend the five minutes to look at the documentation. I'm quite sorry if I seem callous. It is also a social skill you learn in about third or fourth grade to make do with the society you live in. I haven't forgotten that either. But, I digress.

The point of the matter is: do something. Anything. Don't expect someone else to do it for you. That's what is considered as lazy where I'm from. As for your arguments about the DIY sense... remember, Steve Wozniac built his computer because he didn't like what was out there.

Business desktop?

[iiioxx]

Here's the thing I wish the "desktop Linux" community would come to understand. It doesn't matter how nice the desktop environment is, how cool it looks, or how easy it is to use. It's all about the applications, or more specifically, the DOCUMENTS.

Linux would be making serious headway onto the desktops of corporate machines (and greater penetration into the consumer market) if the Wine project would mature to the point that you could run any Windows app flawlessly on your Linux machine.

Barring that, if there were even a collection of native Linux apps that could read and write perfectly to the MS Office document formats (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, ACCESS, VISIO, PUBLISHER, etc), Linux would see a major boom.

Some folks "get it". When Ximian developed Evolution, they realized that in order to make it to the corporate desktop, they would have to write a plugin for Exchange. Crossover is doing great work extending Wine, and may someday reach the point where Windows apps can "just work". The only problem (in some people's view) is that these products are closed source and proprietary.

There could have been Open Source alternatives to these products, but OSS developers have decided that having five or six desktop UI's is more important than having one good UI and applications that can open the file formats that 95% of the world uses.

Ready for the "business desktop"? I don't think so.

Re:Business desktop?

[Rick_T]

> Linux would be making serious headway onto the
> desktops of corporate machines (and greater
> penetration into the consumer market) if the Wine
> project would mature to the point that you could
> run any Windows app flawlessly on your Linux
> machine.

That won't happen - EVER. You can't even do that with different versions of *WINDOWS*, after all. Now it's true that most Windows apps (depending on what niche you use your machine for) will usually still run when you upgrade windows, not all will. And Microsoft has all the documentation and source code for ALL versions of Windows!

> Barring that, if there were even a collection of
> native Linux apps that could read and write
> perfectly to the MS Office document formats
> (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, ACCESS, VISIO,
> PUBLISHER, etc), Linux would see a major boom.

Again, that's another impossible task - for exactly the same reasons as above. Even different versions of Microsoft Office don't get everything right when opening documents created in an older version. How do you expect Star/Open Office (for example) to read and write "perfectly" to Microsoft Office format when Office itself can't. (Heck, we sometimes have trouble here sharing documents created by the same office version, but that's another story ... :) )

> Ready for the "business desktop"? I don't think
> so.

By your definition, only Microsoft has a chance to be "ready for the business desktop", and its chances aren't so good. :)

But back to Red Hat 8. If the screenshots are any indication, it looks like I'm putting this one on my laptop. The font stuff looks particularly nice. Has Open Office in RH 8 been linked with the system's font libraries (so antialiasing looks nice)?

Re:Business desktop?

[walterbyrd]

I remember Mandrake 7.2 bragging about having 11 different GUIs. I don't think the typical desktop user wants 11 different GUIs.

I think it would make more sense to improve Linux's ability to run MS-Windows applications, or access windows documents. Rather than forever tinkering with dozens of different GUIs.

Re:Business desktop?

[Rick_T]

> I remember Mandrake 7.2 bragging about having 11
> different GUIs. I don't think the typical desktop
> user wants 11 different GUIs.

Nor do I. Luckily, most of the desktop work is down to two majority desktops these days. As long as I can run stuff from both and have things like the clipboard work, I won't complain much. But neither desktop environment is perfect, and I'm glad that people still see the need to work on both.

> I think it would make more sense to improve
> Linux's ability to run MS-Windows applications,
> or access windows documents. Rather than
> forever tinkering with dozens of different
> GUIs.

While I agree to an extent (I'd like a Wine that runs Quicken a little better), I'd much rather deal with native Linux apps than bastardized Windows ones. The Linux apps - when they exist - just work better. I'd love a version of Quicken that ran on Linux with no futzing around with wine! (Hear that, Intuit? You want me to ever upgrade past Quicken 98, you port Quicken to Linux. Otherwise, no $oup for you. :) )

As far as accessing Office documents, Open Office at least has halfway decent filters. They aren't perfect, mind you, but they're better than some give them credit for. (Some of the errors in opening Word docs, for example, can be reproduced in Word simply by changing your printer driver. This caused me no end of grief with my thesis, which had to be done in Word.)

The other side of the coin is this - these KDE and Gnome developers probably like to work on what they're working on. If you want better filters, you might consider making it worth their while to write better filters. ;)

Download Redhat 8.0 ISO's here

[Squeezer]

here

Re:Download Redhat 8.0 ISO's here

[Squeezer]

err sorry I forgot to switch to HTML format, here: here

RedHat is 686 optimized Re:i386 Optimized

[Anonymous Coward]

Î would like people doing some research before posting. Build a package from SRPM or look under /usr/lib/rpm and you will see which flags have been used by RedHat. Redhat uses mcpu=i686. That means that the compiler will only use 386 instyructions (so it will run everywhere) but it will base its decisions on the PII/PIII/Celeron timetable not on the 386 timetable.

And anyone having run a few benchmarks knows

1) Compiling for Pentium sucks on anything who is not a true Pentium. On a PII/PIII and on the K6 (I don't have access to an Athlon or PIV) they are markedly slower than code optimized for the 386 and much slower than code compiled with -mcpu=i686

2) Using the -march=i686 allows gcc to use PII/PIII specific instructions but benefits are small (about 2%) respective to -mcpu=i686 so you throw away universality for little benefit. Mandrake uses -mcpu=i686 -march=i586 but gcc is not smart enough to use 586 instructions when optimizing for 686 so it silently reverts to plain -mcpu=i686.

3) For those packages where 386-only instructions don't make sense since they have perfoarmnce-critical parts written in assembler (kernel, glibc, sasl) RedHat ships packages specific to the PII/PIII family who are compiled with -march=i686 (full optimizations) and another set specific to the Athlon compiled with -march=athlon.

Well, ...

[Codifex Maximus]

I didn't get to read the whole article... seems now after page 2 it's slashdotted.

Anyway, I get the impression she is a graphical designer. She nitpicked the Gnome UI apart. Everything is visual for her. Form is more important than function - at least that is my impression of her opinion.

Most of the proposed changes she mentioned seem to make the interface look more like Windows and less like Gnome. While I agree some changes are warranted, does it have to look exactly like windows to please her? Puleez!

Also, a unified desktop where everything is the same old boring thing is just... well... boring. I get mental images of that tennis shoe commercial where everyone is exactly the same... then some offcenter person appears wearing tennis shoes of a different color and is immediately chastised. Oh well. A consistent way of doing things is great but to have everything EXACTLY the same EVERY TIME with no variation at all. Bleah.

After that I got too many users error... prolly for the better.

Re:Well, ...

[Dog and Pony]

I disagree. Seemed to me she wanted usability and consistency. DWIW and "least surprise", in other words.

And this is very important if Linux ever is going outside the geek block.

Since she seems to be a mainly Mac and BeOS user, it is also unlikely she wants stuff to work like windows, but OTOH, if you want to get into businesses, what are the odds that the machine you are replacing is a Windows machine? What would the *USERS* want, you think?

Consistency is great for productivity. I only need to look at the fact that I am switching back and forth between Emacs on Linux and TextPad on Windows to see that it costs time and productivity doing things differently. Even if it is measured in seconds, tops, it adds up. And that is just two text editors.

I really like both, and don't expect any of them to change, but on the same OS I want stuff to follow certain principles, so I can at least learn a few OS's instead of thousands of apps. It is fun when you are playing, but not when you try to get job done.

And no, no really good way ATM to do all editing in one of them. Emacs on Windows you say? Well, then it doesn't behave like the rest of the OS, which is worse.

Re:Well, ...

[Codifex Maximus]

>I disagree. Seemed to me she wanted usability and
>consistency. DWIW and "least surprise", in other
>words.
How does changing the shading on a non-selected tab on a tab control, while a nice cosmetic addition, add to the consistency or usability of the control?

>Since she seems to be a mainly Mac and BeOS user,
>it is also unlikely she wants stuff to work like
>windows, but OTOH, if you want to get into
>businesses, what are the odds that the machine
>you are replacing is a Windows machine?
The changes made to the default controls and apps seem to me to reflect a windowsish look

>What would the *USERS* want, you think?
I think the users want an easy to use computer that doesn't cost an arm and a leg and that doesn't crash on them all the time. One that they can get good software for and doesn't lock them into an expensive solution.

>Consistency is great for productivity. I only
>need to look at the fact that I am switching back
>and forth between Emacs on Linux and TextPad on
>Windows to see that it costs time and
>productivity doing things differently. Even if it
>is measured in seconds, tops, it adds up. And
>that is just two text editors.
How can you compare Emacs and TextPad???

Many Windows apps have a minimum of consistency in the naming of the menu selections and buttons... not a whole lot more than that. Anyway, take any killer app or tool and compare it with any other app or tool - Photoshop and Dreamweaver for instance - they don't have consistent interfaces do they? Didn't think so. I figure I save alot of those seconds, you say I lose with allegedly inconsistent interfaces, by not having to reboot multiple times a day and setup my whole development environment every freakin time.

>I really like both, and don't expect any of them
>to change, but on the same OS I want stuff to
>follow certain principles, so I can at least
>learn a few OS's instead of thousands of apps. It
>is fun when you are playing, but not when you try
>to get job done.
What you, and she, seem to really mean is that you want applications to look and act more alike - it's not the OS you have problems with. The windowmanagers could use more polish also - true. But to say they are inefficient at getting a job done because they need a more subtle shading and to round a few pixels on the edges... then I say you need to take off yer windows colored glasses and get an eye-exam as well as an electroencephalogram to check for brainwave activity.

>And no, no really good way ATM to do all editing
>in one of them. Emacs on Windows you say? Well,
>then it doesn't behave like the rest of the OS,
>which is worse.
Emacs is an OS.

Re:Well, ...

[Dog and Pony]

How does changing the shading on a non-selected tab on a tab control, while a nice cosmetic addition, add to the consistency or usability of the control?

Nice try. Read the review. That wasn't what it was about. At all.

I think the users want an easy to use computer that doesn't cost an arm and a leg and that doesn't crash on them all the time. One that they can get good software for and doesn't lock them into an expensive solution.

I think so too. But when faced with the choice between "easy to use and can get good software" or "doesn't crash or lock them into an expensive solution" they choose number two.

Just what the author of the review wants to cure. (And yes, some choose the "arm and leg" option too. I call them "Mac users").

Joe Sixpack, or my mom, or my boss, or pick anyone that isn't a geek aren't interetsed in how stable and secure it is way down below. They want usability and not have to learn all kinds of arcane commands - especially not new ones for each app. Why can't we both have what we want?

How can you compare Emacs and TextPad???

They are my editors of choice. What else would I compare? And I only use the editor part of emacs. Which means all the shortcuts are different, the menu is ordered differently and even the mouse works differently. That takes some getting used to. That is all.

Many Windows apps have a minimum of consistency in the naming of the menu selections and buttons... not a whole lot more than that. Anyway, take any killer app or tool and compare it with any other app or tool - Photoshop and Dreamweaver for instance - they don't have consistent interfaces do they? Didn't think so.

Yes they have. If you compare with Linux. All the standard shortcuts are there too. CTRL-V works the same in virtually every windows app. The File menu and the Edit menu contains about the same commands. That is going a long way, only that.

I figure I save alot of those seconds, you say I lose with allegedly inconsistent interfaces, by not having to reboot multiple times a day and setup my whole development environment every freakin time.

Blatant propaganda, or you are using 98. Anyone ever told you that isn't a server *or* a development machine? It is a home OS for people who can take a few reboots as long as they can blast away monsters in the last game. Still wouldn't set up a Windows server if I can avoid it, but that is plain FUD.

Just like with warning kids of the dangers with drugs, don't lie. They will find out and then they will never beleive the stuff that is actually bad either.

What you, and she, seem to really mean is that you want applications to look and act more alike - it's not the OS you have problems with. The windowmanagers could use more polish also - true. But to say they are inefficient at getting a job done because they need a more subtle shading and to round a few pixels on the edges... then I say you need to take off yer windows colored glasses and get an eye-exam as well as an electroencephalogram to check for brainwave activity.

Read again. Flaming stuff that was never said gets you nowhere.

Emacs is an OS.

Not the way I use it. I use it as an editor, because an editor is what I need.

Now go re-read.

Re:Well, ...

[Codifex Maximus]

>Now go re-read.
Ok, I reread.

Here is an outline of the article by page:
Page 1: Fonts, graphical sharpness, Antialiasing and Gnome's confusing menus and interface consistence. Note: Gnome is not an OS - it is a kind of launcher/feedback/windowmanager helper.
Page 2: Package managers, KDE has been made to look like Gnome (is this a good thing?), lack of installed Java and multimedia applications.
Page 3: Lack of mp3 player (or inability to find it), complaints about XMMS, some kudos on GCC and the kernel, complaints about mouse setup, XServer not getting high enough resolutions, and lack of drivers for video cards such as NVidia.
Page 4: More NVidia problems, Window focus wierdness, GTK+ 2 Combobox bug, and finally about 9 sentences about keyboard shortcuts.

That about sums it up.
Now, the *whole* article wasn't about graphical sharpness or keyboard shortcuts either.

I have to confess, I think I see where you are going now and where you are coming from. You want consistency in the keyboard shortcuts as well as the menuing interface. There are some consistencies but not quite enough, at this point, in the applications and windowmanagers (an app) used in the RedHat 8.0 distribution as well as most other Linux distributions. KDE shows alot more interface consistency than many windowmanagers I've used but more work still has to be done.

That granted, I must contend that the windowmanagers ARE very efficient. They are not Windows or Mac interfaces.

Our previous posts:
>>What you, and she, seem to really mean is that
>>you want applications to look and act more alike
>>- it's not the OS you have problems with. The
>>windowmanagers could use more polish also - true.
>>But to say they are inefficient at getting a job
>>done because they need a more subtle shading and
>>to round a few pixels on the edges... then I say
>>you need to take off yer windows colored glasses
>>and get an eye-exam as well as an
>>electroencephalogram to check for brainwave
>>activity.

>Read again. Flaming stuff that was never said
>gets you nowhere.

From earlier in your post:
>They are my editors of choice. What else would I
>compare? And I only use the editor part of emacs.
>Which means all the shortcuts are different, the
>menu is ordered differently and even the mouse
>works differently. That takes some getting used
>to. That is all.

and:
>Yes they have. If you compare with Linux. All the
>standard shortcuts are there too. CTRL-V works
>the same in virtually every windows app. The File
>menu and the Edit menu contains about the same
>commands. That is going a long way, only that.

Do we see a pattern developing here? You are concerned largely with SHORTCUTS and MENU ARRANGEMENT. Shortcuts and menus are part of applications which are under the control of the folks who write the apps.

My posts were mainly about my not agreeing with nitpicking graphical details.

Now, as for efficiency, it is an ever improving thing. We need to keep piling on the polish and make the apps ever better. It's happening and fast. At this point, I can get alot more done in Linux's windowmanagers and bash than I can in Windows' interface. YMMV

Anyway, I'll agree with you about the shortcuts and menus because I think you are right. They could be easier - the shortcuts are just so configurable that it may confuse the average user. But, are you an average user? I think not and neither am I. As for agreeing with her about dissing RH8.0 due to some graphical design issues - I can't. The graphical details can always be sharpened but they don't adversely effect productivity.

What was it that was once said?
You can please all the people some of the time; some of the people all the time; but you can't please all the people all the time. :|

Anyway, Peace.

Greenrd's Law

[wiredog]

Here

Evey post disparaging someone else's spelling or grammar, or lauding one's own spelling or grammar, will inevitably contain a spelling or grammatical error.

Btw, it's "grammar".

Important Lesson

[Anonymous Coward]

Never let Ed Boyce proofread for you.

It's Here!

[isNaN]

Hey now its released!!

RedHat Linux 6.2 and 7.2 support status

[guacamole]

I have read before somewhere on redhat.com that RedHat promisses to support all the minor revisions of the current major release and the last minor release of the previous major release of RedHat Linux. Up untit yesterday, it meant that RedHat 6.2 through 7.3 was supported. Will things now change after 8.0 release?

It will be a shame if RedHat 6.2 and 7.2 are desupported. Both are fine, stable dists. We have standardized on 7.2 (by the way, believing that 7.2 is the last minor release in 7.x series) only eight months ago and it would really suck having to upgrade all of our 7.2 machines ..

Re:RedHat Linux 6.2 and 7.2 support status

[Cro Magnon]

I'm sure RH 7.2 will still be supported. Don't know about 6.2.

Re:RedHat Linux 6.2 and 7.2 support status

[aksansai]

Since Red Hat Linux 6.2 - 7.3 are up2date Red Hat Linux releases, support will more than likely continue for security releases through the up2date conduit. Reason I think this will be the case is because subscribers to the Red Hat Network are paying for the support it provides to keep even their legacy machines "up2date".

Mr. Pedantic

[dmaxwell]

Actually those are the testing distros which in time became stables except for Sarge that is. unstable is ALWAY sid, the kid who breaks things.

enlightenment

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like Enlightenment is finally in the dead and buried in redhat 8.0...Anyone know a good alternative to Enlightenment besides the sawcrap?

Re:enlightenment

[Anonymous Coward]

if its not in redhat then the project is dead?

Re:enlightenment

[Anonymous Coward]

thats right..look at afterstep....Hey Raster is a bastard anyway for saying the desktop is dead

Re:enlightenment

[Woko]

Hey, some of us still run afterstep. There hasn't been a better or more configurable desktop pager.

Bad review

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, that review sucked. Full of personal, subjective opinions that don't belong in a review. The suggestions given to "improve" the desktop are also bad. Doesn't anybody else have a better review?

Too bad it's factually inaccurate in 100s of plac

[tomhudson]

Too bad it's factually inaccurate in 100s of places

Doesn't really matter, they're slashdotted. Their php script reports back a mysql error - too many connections - guess someone should tell them to set "FATALS_TO_BROWSER" to false.

Besides, people will d/l it and make their own decisions.

Regards, Tom

The best line from the entire review...

[knewman_1971]

"And please don't tell me to dive in to the code and fix it, I am not a device driver programmer, neither I want to be one. I am a user when it comes to Linux and I expect things to work as nicely as they do on Windows XP and MacOSX"

Mod me down as flamebait, call me a troll, do your worst. But...

I've been saying this for a long time. If you want to keep Linux small, and only accessible to the enlightened (read that as "Lucky enough to know how to code, or content to run no exotic new hardware) few, then ignore that statement.

Wanna play in the business world? Read this article, and understand why she's dead-on with her complaints.

XP, for all that it's produced by Microsoft and has security holes, DRM issues, and privacy problems, works out of the box. It has been rock solid in EVERY implementation I've done. I can give my Mom a copy of XP, and she can install it and run it. She won't have to worry about having java support, or plugins. I will not have a call from her in the middle of the day complaining that she can't install an application because she hasn't met her dependencies. This is the "Mom-Test (tm)", and XP passes.

Just because I don't run it, doesn't mean that I don't respect it.

Re:The best line from the entire review...

[Anonymous Coward]

..And if your mom never calls you for computer related problems, your mom is not the 'Average Joe' user.

Hell, I could get my parents running Linux without any problems. Does that mean that Linux is ready for the Average Joe? Nope.

Re:The best line from the entire review...

[Anonymous Coward]

XP has been awful in MANY MANY of my implemtations.

1. Load up Access97 (don't need any newer) and watch your VBA app perform 3X slower than it does on Win2000.

2. Ever notice how every once in a while if you change a users logon id and password that it doesn't work and that account gets hosed. Whats weird is that it works most of the time, in other words it is not a consistent bug, that really worries me.hmmmm.

3. I have had an occasion where i added memory to a laptop with XP and the machine would not boot. This has happened with W2K also(ARRRGGGG!!!).

4. Ever notice how XP make a 1 Ghz (or lower) come to a crawl ?? THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE !!!

5. Networking performace on XP is just not near as good as Linux. I know this is vague, but most of you should know what i am talking about.

As far as drivers, i have had good luck with all sorts of weird devices. If your device does not work in Linux it is most like because the manufacturer sux. SORRY , CALL ME A TROLL BUT XP DOES NOT JUST WORK, and is highly overrated just like OSX.

Re:The best line from the entire review...

[knewman_1971]

I can't answer all of these points since, as with all things, my mileage has varied. But a few come up that I want to address.

1. Load up Access97 (don't need any newer) and watch your VBA app perform 3X slower than it does on Win2000.

C'mon. You know how the game is played. Of course it runs slower. With every feature added to an app or OS, you lose some performance. Hopefully, you gain it back from advances on other things (ie: memory management, faster bus speeds, newer processes). In a perfect world, your gains outnumber your losses. You're running an app coded for an architecture from 1996, with tools from the same period, and you're running it on an OS in 2002. If you run apps designed for the first release of the 2.0 kernel, your app will not take advantage of any of the performance boosts of later kernel revisions. Arguably, it's not as profound on Linux, since not as many things are rolled into the kernel/core OS.

2. Ever notice how every once in a while if you change a users logon id and password that it doesn't work and that account gets hosed. Whats weird is that it works most of the time, in other words it is not a consistent bug, that really worries me.hmmmm.

On this, I'm not arguing, but possibly suggesting. Have you looked at the possibility that it could be related to the profile of the user? *shrugs* I dunno, but it looks similar to a problem I've had.

4. Ever notice how XP make a 1 Ghz (or lower) come to a crawl ?? THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE !!!

No kidding about it not being acceptable. OTOH, I have a celeron 500 Dell wks running XP. Not too shabby on the performance side, espcially if you turn off some of the eye candy and use it as a desktop OS. Again, YMMV, and apparently has.

As far as drivers, i have had good luck with all sorts of weird devices. If your device does not work in Linux it is most like because the manufacturer sux.

It's not always the drivers/hardware. I defy you to find me a single app that works as well as ChillCam. I can have a streaming webcam running in under 5 mintes, counting download. I've been trying to find an acceptable solution under Linux for 2 months. None of them work as well, as easily, or as reliably. Whihc goes back to the original quote.

SORRY , CALL ME A TROLL BUT XP DOES NOT JUST WORK, and is highly overrated just like OSX. I'd never call you a troll. This is what you've seen on various machines. No disputing that.

Bear in mind, I run Linux on all of my machines. I dig it. But this article is a good primer on the direction that RedHat, et al, should be taking if they want to get in the game with the average USER.

Re:The best line from the entire review...

[di0s]

Hi Bill!

Re:The best line from the entire review...

[fatboy]

I can give my Mom a copy of XP, and she can install it and run it.

That's BullShit (TM) and you know it. Yea, she might get it to boot, but she can forget about having a network connection and more than 256 colors.

Re:The best line from the entire review...

[knewman_1971]

Ah, but you are wrong Grasshopper.

I have, in fact, (to answer several questions in this thread) given my Mom a copy of XP. The install went flawlessly. Her monitor came up in 1024x768 out of the box (her preference), and her network connection was perfect. I know about the monitor because I just called her to confirm.

Caveats: 1. I installed her router/gateway. No DHCP, but she has her IP config written down.

2. I walked her through backing up her data. She wiped the hard drive on her own.

3. The only call I've gotten so far was to ask if she shoulduse Norton Antivirus or another brand.

Re:The best line from the entire review...

[FooBarWidget]

> I can give my Mom a copy of XP, and she can
> install it and run it

Look, I will believe that she can run XP. But she can install XP? Oh please, NO OS is easy enough for newbies to install, and that includes any version of Windows!

Re:The best line from the entire review...

[fatboy]

I have, in fact, (to answer several questions in this thread) given my Mom a copy of XP. The install went flawlessly. Her monitor came up in 1024x768 out of the box (her preference), and her network connection was perfect. I know about the monitor because I just called her to confirm.

Just because she has supported hardware, does not mean that every PC will do the same, and you damn well know it. I could send any modern distro to my Dnd and he could install it flawlessly as well, but only because I know all of his hardware is supported. If you REALLY think XP supports all PC hardware out of the box, your wrong. Dead wrong.

Re:The best line from the entire review...

[knewman_1971]

I never said it supported ALL hardware out of the box. Nor did I say that every installatio has gone smooth. I have pointed out that every install I've done has gone flawlessly.

This is not a debate on hardware support. Look, if you take a hard look at PC hardware, there is NO POSSIBLE WAY that you can tell me that Linux supports more modern hardware than Windows XP. If you think you can, you're fooling yourself, cause it just ain't so.

Red Hat is void of multimedia, but there is hope!

[GauteL]

Check out Freshrpms. There are already lots of packages available for Psyche (Red Hat 8.0), and most of them are for multimedia. They are even apt-getable through apt-rpm.

This should fix most if not all problems with Red Hat and multimedia.

RH's Quest for the *Integrated* Desktop

[gwappo]

Judging from the review : RH8 is still a geek-release of linux (not integrated GUI, and techy bits (X nVidia support drama) get in the way). For RH to get a slice from the business mainstream, the application support and integration has to be improved. This will inevitably involve masquerading more of the KDE and Gnome efforts into one coherent whole (no doubt to understandably great upset of contributors). And while they're at it, I think eventually conclude that the typical joe-desktop will only need one office suite, not multiple. Only one can win : - Either a desktop suite (KDE/Gnome) grows dominant and it's applications provide the needed integration & support. - Or RedHat does the integration for them, to great upset of the community. We'll see.

Re:RH's Quest for the *Integrated* Desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

X nVidia support drama

Newsflash: Microsoft doesn't provide 3d nVidia Drivers either. Just the 2D ones like Redhat 8 does.

What is so hard about going to nvidia.com and pulling down the drivers anyway?

Your post was just as FUDDY as the article.

does anyone what the releasecritical bug is?

[jiggel]

5 had a segfaulting perl, 6 crashed after a few weeks, 7 had the broken gcc. I wonder what it is this time :-)

install 8.0 for a new server installation?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm rolling out a new web and email server for our company... Apart from some snazzy changes in the way X windows works (my servers never even get gnome or kde installed on 'em) is there a compelling reason to install 8.0 instead of 7.3?

thoughts?

Re:install 8.0 for a new server installation?

[abdulwahid]

is there a compelling reason to install 8.0 instead of 7.3?

For a server install I wouldn't bother. Usually what happens when any new distro comes out there are a flurry of bugs/security issues noticed in the first few weeks and loads of patches released. This is a natural process due to suddenly having a much wider test base that the Redhat 8 beta had. Also, since this is a new major version the are likely to be even more problems. Redhat 7.3 is stable and as long as you have applied all the updates it is adequately secure. I can't see that there is anything in 8.0 that is desperately needed for a server install. I would wait for the storm to calm and then take a look at it. Just my two pence worth.

What about the other bits?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, no one using Red Hat is trying to use it for the KDE experience -- they'd be using Mandrake ("Red Hat plus KDE emphasis minus GNOME emphasis"). Someone get a non-slashdotted site that talks about GNOME in RH8, talks about what other software they have (apparently finally a well-packaged openoffice, from my guesses based on rawhide, woohoo!), and whether they still include both GNU emacs and xemacs!

Re:What about the other bits?

[rhavyn]

The OOo package is really nice, and both GNU and X emacs are included although they still default to installing only GNU emacs (see the text editors section of the package list to get Xemacs instead).

Never had mplayer, anyway

[0x0d0a]

Has RH ever shipped with a built in media player?

Anyway, point is that mplayer wins hands down as the best media player, and RH doesn't package it (and the mplayer guys strongly discourage binary packages, anyway)...so I always just download and install the thing. Not exactly that much pain.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE-Galeon

[Anonymous Coward]

With the argument that one should choose the browser that reads the most pages. Why didn't they go with Galeon? Gecko backend, and Gnome frontend.

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE-Galeon

[Telex4]

I'd assume because Galeon is developed more slowly than Mozilla... you have to wait for them to update things, after a new version of Mozilla is out. I'm sure there are other reasons as well, but they wouldn't shoot themselves in the foot.

request to 8.0 users

[Anonymous Coward]

--would someone knowledgeable who is already running 8.0 plz give an overview of what is right and what is wrong with default distro install when it comes to security issues? As a still new to CLI person, I have found making some sort of secure box a daunting task with linux. Obviously, have no desire to be owned within 15 minutes online, heh. And it's happened to me before too, had to format, reinstall, search for help, reformat, do it again, etc. Does this distro have adequate GUI security tools for a noob, or does it default into a lot of processes that need to be turned off, etc for just normal surfing but not serving? Issues like that. And also, if anyone has recommendations for security tools, especially GUI, that would be most helpful as well. Thankyou in advance!

Re:request to 8.0 users

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not AIM. Use 'plz' and 'heh' on Slashdot again and I'll hunt you down and slap you.

Re:request to 8.0 users

[abdulwahid]

The first thing you should do after install is go through your list of services and see what is really needed. Start with xinetd because that can start up some really unnecessary beasts. Doing a "netstat -a" is a good way to find out what ports are open or alternatively "lsof -i" will tell you the name of a program attached to a port. Just go through all the things open and shutdown everything you don't really need.

The next thing to do is to setup some sort of firewall script. How you do this really depends on how confident you are. If you think you know what you are doing then use iptables to setup a custom restrictive firewall. There are many example scripts here and an excellent tutorial here. If you want a GUI to do the work, I would recommend Smoothwall. I know of quite a few novices who successfully use it.

You should then be reasonably secure. BUT, keep an idea on the Redhat updates; there are usually loads released in the first few weeks of a new distro.

Re:request to 8.0 users

[Anonymous Coward]

--I had a legit request. I have never used any AOL product/service. As to your sarcastic threat, bring it on, heh. My tech expertise and vocation involves real world physical security and law "issues", not being a unix ubergeek. Your attempts to "slap me silly" would result in, well.....this not happening. Take it to the bank, it's been tried before. Also note in the state where I live, verbal or any electronically transmitted threats of any nature are a felony covered under the "terroristic threats" statutes on the books, with a plethora of court cases to define them, and your's fits. Only notice you or the moderators will receive.

Re:request to 8.0 users

[Anonymous Coward]

--thankyou very much, I appreciate the time it took for you to type this reply, it's exactly the sort of information I need. I am trying to switch to Linux and am in a position to help some other people(meatworld and also some other forums I frequent) who have the desire, and the data needs to be simple and to the point, and this fits the bill. I am saving this reply and any other good and similar replies to file for future reference and implementation when I receive the latest disks.

thankyou again

Re:request to 8.0 users

[Anonymous Coward]

You're fucking gay, aren't you?

'scuze me. i mnt 2 say 'ur a fag, huh?'

Too many connections

[mydigitalself]

Warning: Too many connections on /home/osnews/web/connect.php on line 2
Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Too many connections in /home/osnews/web/connect.php on line 2 Could not connect to the Database

fantastic advert for open source's scalability...

Re:Too many connections

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a configurable option you know, max number of connections.

Get a clue.

Re:Too many connections

[mydigitalself]

indeed, i've configured this on many a box. the thing is, if an OPEN SOURCE web site can't handle /.'ing and we harp on about PERFORMANCE and SCALABILITY - it doesn't send out a good message.

imagine some uberpower decision making manager thinking "hmmm... i wonder if we should move everything to apache+php" and then he goes and visits OSDN and boom he gets that message. what kind of pretence is he going to have against apache+php?

well done on the Get a clue comment by the way. you should get yourself a jump to conclusion matt you fsckwit.

Who modded this up?

[FudgePackinJesus]

Proof positive /. moderation points have been ransacked by Windows users who only have half a clue.

Re:Who modded this up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Much more of a clue than you have, though.

Good points. Here's a few more.

[0x0d0a]

Insightful.

I'd also like to point out that I've done a bit of benchmarking gcc, and optimizing for a particular processor makes almost no difference on the vast majority of software.

The biggest win comes from flipping on -O3. Then if you can get away with it, -fomit-frame-pointer, which helps the register-starved x86, but keeps you from looking at stack traces and debugging crashed programs (or sending in useful bug reports). -fexpensive-optimizations have also helped a bit too, and for certain packages, -ffast-math can be big. -march=pentium2 makes next to no difference on anything I've tried benchmarking. -DNDEBUG is potentially good...seems like most production software is compiled with assertions enabled, when they're really intended for debugging.

The Pentium 1 sucked at running code compiled for the 386/486. This is why you got compilers like pgcc, a Pentium-optimized Mandrake distro, and lots of talk about architecture optimizations. With the Pentium 2, Intel realized that all software was not going to be recompiled for each processor (at least in Windows land), and did a really solid job of running 386 code.

So, as far as architectures go, the Pentium 1 is the odd man out. If you have a Pentium 1, it sucks to run any code other than stuff compiled for your chip. If you have anything else, you'll generally get very minimal gains from compiling specifically for your processor instead of for the 386.

Finally, most people don't actually care about the maybe 10% speedup they can get by recompiling software using optimization flags other than just -O2. They care about interactive latency. Look at Mac OS X. OS X is *hideously* slow, but it *feels* pretty fast because it has good UI latency -- it jacks UI priority and puts a lot of emphasis on slapping something on the screen that's updated as soon as the user does anything.

On Linux, here are the big culprits.

Jack the nice value of X from 0 to -10, if your distro doesn't already do so (take a look in top and see what it's running at). The nice value doesn't make it much "faster", but it does significantly improve latency, so you can get crisp edge-flipping and updating.

Turn *on* DMA and umasked interrupts (insert usual warnings about potential problems with *really* old computers having these on). hdparm -u1 -d1 /dev/yourharddrivenamehere. Significantly reduces "jerkiness" in X when doing disk access, including paging. For a long time, a lot of distros left this off by default.

If you're doing something that doesn't need low latency in the background, *nice* it. I run all compiles niced to 20. I can be compiling six or seven packages with no user-perceptable slowdown at all. Software that's always sucking down a little CPU in the background but still should be interactive (like lopster or gtk-gnutella) should be niced to 5 or so.

Make all your cron jobs run at nice 20 (crontab -e, edit command line to contain nice -n20). They have no reason to demand interactive latency, and you *do* need said latency for your UI.

If you run any servers on your workstation, they should run around nice 10. They need to get back to the user, but they shouldn't make your UI get unpleasant when they get hit.

Renice esd/artsd to -15. If these don't get CPU *right away* when they need it, your sound will break up. Frankly, I dumped esd/artsd, and got a sound card with hardware mixing (ALSA .9 + Sound Blaster Live! with the emu10k1). It's not worth it. 99.99% of Linux users will never, ever need network transparency or any other features that you get with a sound server. They *do* want sound that doesn't break up, and having hardware mixing does that for them. Ye gods, it'd be nice to see Linux have some architecture that does "opportunistic" mixing (hardware mixing if any channels are left, software if not).

Use a decent window manager. Sawfish is incredible if you're an edge-flipping maniac like me and like zero edge resistance. Why? Sawfish is actually not that *fast*, but they've compensated for that fact, which makes them beat any other window manager I've seen at edge flipping latency. Sawfish doesn't block other app redraws when edge flipping until it's redrawn its titlebars, as other WMs do, so you get much faster redisplay of app windows. Beautifl design.

Finally, I've had good experiences with redefining HZ in the kernel. Unfortunately, one of the side effects of using the X11 architecture is that anything going to the screen has to wait for a context switch -- first, the app tells X to display something, then we wait until X is active and actually display it. This isn't a huge deal unless you have a bunch of processes that all want CPU time, and you have an app or X that's blocking on I/O (say you've paged out an app). Then your ten compiles, and the lowly default 100 HZ in the x86 kernel mean that it takes a full tenth of a second just to move from the user app to X. If the app is displaying a big pixmap that has to be paged it, it has to draw a little bit, start paging the thing back in, draw a little more...it's I/O bound and yet it isn't gettting a chance to keep the ATA bus saturated. Jack HZ to 1000 or 1024 and recompile your kernel, and you should notice slightly better UI latencies (NOTE: at one point, this caused oddities in some libc call lke usleep or something, and made a couple games run too fast...I don't think this is an issue any more).

Other wins: Use mozilla 1.1 (much faster redraw than 1.0), use an up-to-date version of gtk2 (wow, the version RH is packaging is much faster at rendering aa text than the old snapshot I had from Ximian), use the blisteringly fast rxvt instead of the slow gnome-terminal or konsole. Use gnuserv mode in emacs/emacs -- that way, you open a *single* copy of emacs and then just open new windows in it. Opening files is about 50 times faster.

After following all these tips, you can play with Linux the way it was meant to be seen.

Audio distributions

[Chazmati]

Have you seen Agnula, the GNU/Linux audio distribution that's in development?

Or Planet CCRMA?

Possible reason why KDE unhappy

[ChrisWong]

Here's a comment I made on another list:

I doubt if the changing of the themes and such was the problem. I would not lose any sleep over single vs double-click or a few icons and bitmaps. This would not justify Bero quitting and claiming that KDE was "crippled". Part of the real problem, ironically, is that the changes Red Hat made ARE merely skin-deep. This is exactly what the KDE project is not.

A perceptive Slashdotter earlier saw that the problem was not in the superficial reskinning, but in the integration. KDE is not about being yet another window manager, but was meant as a holistic answer to the desktop problem. A KDE desktop is meant to be a collection of integrated applications with predictable, uniform behavior. You will see the same file dialog (with URLs and bookmarks), print dialog, toolbar editor, font chooser, color picker, help infrastructure, address book, and predictable cut and paste. Sharing of components means familiar behavior throughout, such as the file manager embedded in the file open dialog or the image viewer embedded in the file manager. When you open a file, the dialog remembers the bookmarks and frequently used directories you used in other KDE apps. In other words, the KDE experience provides a uniformity, familiarity and predictability that goes well beyond mere theming or toolkits. This is good for beginners.

Red Hat has in effect substituted other apps for every major KDE app. The KDE apps are not gone, but they are less visible. This means that a typical Red Hat user will install "KDE" and never run a single significant KDE application. What you get is the usual jumble of X apps doing their own thing in their own way. Apps do not remember your favorite colors, your print settings, your favorite directories. It's the familiar X desktop: a Frankenstein collection of apps stitched together by superficial skinning, but not quite fitting together. "KDE" is reduced to being an oversized, slow window manager: nothing more. It is not really KDE. Why would anyone want to use that?

For pros, the best-of-breed approach is the status quo. IMHO, a beginner need not start this way. The default KDE apps may simply be good enough, with the common UI and infrastructure compensating for the individual weakness. Sure, a deliberate decision can be made to pick a better app, now or later. But this should be done with the concious knowledge that this goes "off the KDE ranch", that the various integration, uniformity and usability improvements of KDE will not apply. Starting off a beginner with a best-of-breed approach leaves him with the usual Frankenstein collection of disintegrated apps, all unalike. I.e., this is the status quo that KDE was supposed to fix. Trouble is, Red Hat will not let KDE be KDE.

Re:Possible reason why KDE unhappy

[JoeBuck]

But Red Hat has made the correct decision in picking and choosing the best apps, even if this harms integration. It says it is attacking the "business desktop" market. It can offer its customers Koffice, or the usual Gnome/Gtk apps Abiword and Gnumeric, or OpenOffice. OpenOffice is neither KDE nor Gnome, but it's the only free suite that does a reasonably reliable job of importing and exporting MS Office apps, meaning that it is the only suite suitable for the business user.

Similarly, while Konqueror does a great job of rendering documents that were correctly written according to the specs from W3C, it does a much poorer job than Mozilla of dealing with the real Web. Since business users frequently need to access web sites with broken HTML to get their work done, Konqueror does not yet cut it, and the inconsistencies in the Mozilla GUI vs the KDE desktop will only be a mild annoyance compared to the annoyance of not being able to work at all.

Using a pure KDE suite would work fine if it is mandated that everyone in your organization must use it and no one is allowed to send or receive a document from or to the outside world.

Re:Possible reason why KDE unhappy

[steveha]

A KDE desktop is meant to be a collection of integrated applications with predictable, uniform behavior.

That's cool. The problem is that KDE isn't done, and Red Hat needs something to ship right now.

The KOffice stuff doesn't work as well as OpenOffice yet. Mozilla views more web pages than Konqueror. Evolution is a lot better for a business user (especially one already used to Outlook) than anything else.

Maybe in two years KDE will have all the pieces in place, and a 100% KDE solution will work for business users. Meanwhile, Red Hat did what they had to do right now.

steveha

mod immediate parent up FUNNY

[Anonymous Coward]

mod immediate parent up FUNNY

XP easy to install?

[0x0d0a]

Your mother is comfortable *installing* XP, or is this just hyperbole?

Linux really isn't hard to install any more, at least to the point of getting it up and running. I'd call the installation process on at least RH simpler than the Windows procedure.

That being said, configuring stuff not-out-of-box is where things get ugly. It's damn easy for an end user to just get a new video card, download their InstallShield program, and use it. And to *uninstall*, simple as that may seem.

Software packaged by your distro "just works" and at least with RPM is really easy to install and uninstall. However, a lot of drivers are not packaged in said manner. Sometimes you can't get a driver to compile, or instructions are written for another distro. Got a laptop with a wireless card, or an Nvidia card, or a weird USB device? If it works in Linux, the install procedure is not necessarily trivial.

A few other things that are nasty include:

* Networking. i swear to God that there's either a bug in the Linux kernel or in RH's networking scripts since time immemorable, since *every* system I've ever used will sometimes, despite the fact that the routing tables are correct, refuse to properly route information. I can pretty consistently get this on a wide variety of RH's distros by running /etc/rc.d/init.d/network restart and changing settings periodically. Of course, everything works beautifully after a cold boot...just not after restarting the network. I've seen this since at least the early 6.0 days, and up through 7.3.

* Windows has ZoneAlarm. Linux has the amazingly powerful iptables, with *no* really good, really solid front ends (though lots of half-finished freshmeat projects). If you want a personal firewall, Linux can give you an incredible amount of power...*if* you're willing to fight with iptables for a few days.

* Linux has *no* fully working, reliable ICQ program. This is an embarrassment. It isn't really Linux authors' fault -- trying to reverse engineer ICQ is not trivial -- but if I try to send a Windows user a file and can't, the only thing they learn is "Linux can't do IM properly". Yes, I know about Jabber -- which no one uses.

* Linux has, AFAIK, *no* finished, fully featured 3d modelling programs. Someone who likes to dabble with 3d work can run out grab lots of low end 3d modelers on Windows. There are *tons* of Pov front ends, none of which begin to compare to fully blown Windows modelling programs. Oh, and I'm not talking about multi-thousand dollar movie studio packages -- I mean stuff that a home user could use.

* Linux has *no* finished, fully featured vector graphics programs. Yes, lots of projects underway like sodipodi, sketch, kontour...and none of them are remotely usable for a real life production artist.

Re:XP easy to install?

[snake_dad]

but if I try to send a Windows user a file and can't, the only thing they learn is "Linux can't do IM properly".

Just making sure: you do know that to send files with ICQ you need an open port for incoming connections? (Or am I confusing things with irc again?)

Re:XP easy to install?

[0x0d0a]

I should clarify: I see this with users on an Ethernet a few feet away. It's not a firewall issue. :-)

Re:XP easy to install?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want a personal firewall, Linux can give you an incredible amount of power...*if* you're willing to fight with iptables for a few days.

A few days??? I got my firewall working within 10 minutes! Look at this simple but complete ruleset for a server:

iptables -F
iptables -A INPUT -p icmp -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p udp -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -i lo -j ACCEPT

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp ! --syn -j ACCEPT

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 25 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 6667 -j ACCEPT

iptables -P INPUT DROP

Re:XP easy to install?

[Thoughts In Chaos]

but if I try to send a Windows user a file and can't, the only thing they learn is "Linux can't do IM properly".

Your file transfer problem isn't an licq problem, it is a problem on the Windows side. The latest Windows version of ICQ (2001 and 2002), by default, ignores any direct connections coming from any client using an older ICQ protocol (licq is using an older protocol for obvious reasons). To do file transfers with any user using the Windows ICQ, you have to tell them to go into their security settings via the Main button, then click "Security & Privacy Permissions." Click "Peer to peer connection" then uncheck the option that says "Do not allow Peer to Peer connection with previous ICQ software versions (ICQ98a version and below)." Now, file transfers, chats, and any other direct communications will instantly work with them.

Re:XP easy to install?

[0x0d0a]

I've done that already.

Licq can message fairly reliably...just not transfer files.

Aside from that, trying to get everyone to flip a setting in their preferences so that they can "talk to Linux computers" still doesn't look that great.

Re:XP easy to install?

[Thoughts In Chaos]

What version are you using to transfer files?

In licq version 1.2.0a and in the licq that came with redhat 7.2 and 7.3, I have no problems transferring files to Windows users if they have that setting unchecked on their program. Also, it isn't licq's fault that people have to switch preferences to get files from people in Linux. It is AOL or Mirabilis's fault for making it the default. And why is it that they don't even make a linux client for ICQ and a group of people had to make their own client for Linux? That really shows their support for Linux. In an older version (ICQ 2000, I think), they didn't have that option checked, by default, and file transfers with linux users worked just fine over the Internet without having to tell users to uncheck anything.

Also, ICQ isn't the only one with a problem. Look at AIM for Linux, for example. Even AOL themself didn't make it possible to transfer files to other AIM users in their own client, despite the windows version of the program having FULL support for file transfers.

Re:XP easy to install?

[0x0d0a]

I've tried with 1.2.0a and CVS over a period of time. It seems to work with older clients, just not new ones.

I'm not saying that it's the fault of the licq coders, or that Mirabilis is innocent. I'm just saying that when I have to resort to workarounds (like FTP) to get files to a Windows user, it gives them a pretty negative impression of Linux.

And AIM doing it doesn't help either...

The _big_ wins are optimized.

[Crutcher]

Okay, many people in this thread are talking about the problems with optimizing for non-true pentiums, which are real problems. I'm not.

Red Hat DOES optimize several packages for specific cpus, namely the kernel and glibc. The real wins to be gained with code optimizations are in memcopy and the place where most of this actually happens are in the c library and the kernel. So if you look, there are i686 and athalon versions of the kernel, and i686 versions of glibc (not sure about athalon glibc).

Re:gen-noclu

[noshellswill]

Can't stop drooling, can ya while ya got both thumbs up the ol' azz-hole, eh byteboyz? So shut up and go away. Back in the closet, dweezle ta grope yer fav electromechanic blo-up dolly.

Why Red Hat won't beat windows on the desktop

[DJ_Goldfingerz]

I'm kind of surprise no one has mentionned this before, especially with the number of sys admins reading this site.

For awhile now, I've seen lots of people saying they think this distro will make it to the desktop seen, and now RedHat 8.0 is aiming the "Business Desktop". I find it hard to believe that RedHat will accomplish that anytime soon.

I work as the systems administrator for my company, and let me tell you one thing about real companies, "THEY DON'T JUST USE MS OFFICE". Almost all major companies have some sort of ERP solution (Enterprise Resource Planning). Over at my company we use Lotus Notes, but some other companies use SAP, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards... Now you know what all these ERPs have in common? The user applcations are ALL BUILT FOR WINDOWS. Some of these companies, like mine, might run Linux (RH) on their servers, but I would never switch my users to linux just because RH 8.0 has a new cool UI with OpenOffice.

For linux to make it to the desktop seen, companies like Oracle, SAP, Lotus, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards will have to start supporting linux in a serious way. If they can provide apps that run on Linux and that can connect and properly function with the accounting system, the accounts receivable system, the inventory system, the CRM systems and so on, then Linux will be able and probably even beat windows in the desktop market.

But I don't see how that's going to happen. I've done lots of research on my part to try and find an ERP solution for my company that can run on linux. But I haven't found anything. Whether it be an OSS or proprietary solution, client-base or web base soltuion, I wasn't able to find anything with the power of SAP or any of these ERPs to run my company's Information System.

If you do know of an application, let me know!

Re:Why Red Hat won't beat windows on the desktop

[Dunkirk]

Just remember that "business desktop" does not equate to "BIG business desktop." I once read that 60% of businesses in the US are smaller than 100 people. Those comprise an absolute gold mine of "business desktops" that don't have to be tied to Lotus Notes or Microsoft Exchange, once a little effort is undertaken. And most certainly aren't running behemoth ERP apps like SAP, JDE, or Oracle, nor HR apps like PeopleSoft. There's a lot of low-hanging fruit for RedHat to go after here; it's just about marketing to those users and buyers.

Re:Why Red Hat won't beat windows on the desktop

[tjwhaynes]

I work as the systems administrator for my company, and let me tell you one thing about real companies, "THEY DON'T JUST USE MS OFFICE". Almost all major companies have some sort of ERP solution (Enterprise Resource Planning). Over at my company we use Lotus Notes, but some other companies use SAP, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards... Now you know what all these ERPs have in common? The user applcations are ALL BUILT FOR WINDOWS. Some of these companies, like mine, might run Linux (RH) on their servers, but I would never switch my users to linux just because RH 8.0 has a new cool UI with OpenOffice.

For linux to make it to the desktop seen, companies like Oracle, SAP, Lotus, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards will have to start supporting linux in a serious way. If they can provide apps that run on Linux and that can connect and properly function with the accounting system, the accounts receivable system, the inventory system, the CRM systems and so on, then Linux will be able and probably even beat windows in the desktop market.

I'm inclined to agree with you - in order for the linux desktop to really make it in the business workplace, there need to be Linux clients for the major ERP applications. Now if you have total control over your own workplace machine and Lotus Notes is your only sticking point against moving to Linux, then format that harddrive now. Lotus Notes runs really very well on Wine these days, and while the performance isn't quite as snappy as I would like, it's certainly good enough even on an old cranky PII400.

I live in hope that we might see a Lotus Notes client make it out into the wild in some shape or form. I think Lotus might be surprised at how many development shops would welcome the flexibility to run Lotus Notes on a Unix-like platform rather than being limited to Windows platforms only.

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

Re:Why Red Hat won't beat windows on the desktop

[MrLinuxHead]

Redhat 8 will kick a large number of MS Windows boxes to the curb. Maybe not today, but soon, and for good. This is what a lot of IT managers have been waiting for. Something to show to Suzie in AP, and watch her jump in and get to work. As far as application compatibility: Two Words. WINE and RDesktop.

I set up null on a dual boot (win98) box and after getting it up and running, I installed the latest build of Wine. It came with WINESETUP, which detected my win98 partition (I had it mounted in fstab) and imported my registry, set up all my apps, and I was running things on Linux like NTE2001 (my transistor cross-ref database), Gnucleus, and MS Office 97 apps like MS word, Excel, and Publisher, as well as several more.

The other neat trick is RDesktop. Great little app if you have a Win2000 server set up as a Windows Terminal Server. Let them rdesktop to it and run those Windows apps on the server. You still need a Windows TS licence, but if that's what you need, it sure beats having two boxes on every desk.

As far as JDEdwards is concerned, it's a blinking 5250 green screen, untill you get to OneWorld, and that wants a Windows TS anyways!

BTW, Anyone out there ever use (or try) Tarentella? How was it? Good? Cheap? Garbage? Inquirering minds need to know

Re:Why Red Hat won't beat windows on the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Lotus is now part of IBM, who spent a billion dollars last year on Linux. Kind of makes you wonder.

Re:Why Red Hat won't beat windows on the desktop

[Micah]

Have you seen GNU Enterprise? It is aiming to fill that market segment. Granted, it's probably a couple years away from being a serious competitor, but it IS being used in some businesses TODAY.

I also believe the big ERP/CRM people will put out Linux clients at some point. A lot of businesses are dying to dump Microsoft. Oracle would certainly like to help them do that. SAP also has some Linux support on the server, so they're probably open to the idea. We'll just have to wait and see.

Ugh..

[Anonymous Coward]

I really wish people wouldn't be so easily lured in by a "pretty" desktop, and ignore some of the REAL issues:

1) RedHat, in abandoning most multimedia tools and particularly MP3's, are also abandoning the community of users that have legitimate uses for these tools. Overturning legislation like the DMCA will -NOT- happen if big companies like RedHat don't stand up for the rights of their users.

2) Much in the style of Microsoft, RedHat is pushing its users (particularly business users) towards subscription services, in this case for updates. Yes, that also includes SECURITY updates. You may make the argument that they still are available for free, but up2date will claim that the server on which the free updates are located is too "busy" to process your request -- and of course, it offers the option of subscribing for a -faster- server. Anyone else guessing this free server is limited to, say, five users at most? Added to that, up2date collects information on your hardware, what packages you have installed, and sends it all off in a profile that identifies your account to your identity, your machine's identity, and the configuration of your machine. Windows XP anyone?

3) RedHat is a business. They provide what the users -think- that they want to lure them in, and they can only be EXPECTED to take these liberties away if it becomes unprofitable for them to be maintained. Notice the amount of hype that's been put into the desktop? No mention of up2date, no mention of its casual shrugging off of software outside the GNOME 2 arena (yes, you can still get the software, I know that it's just a matter of shortcuts -- then again, you could argue that Microsoft shouldn't need to remove their shortcuts for IE and Outlook Express that are scattered all over the desktop, if you don't mind RedHat deciding what's best for you).

Overall I'm extremely disappointed in the lack of attention the Linux community has been giving to RedHat's first true attempt at establishing an extend-embrace-extinguish policy toward Linux software and distributions. I would -like- to think that the nature of the GPL creates some immunity to this, in that other, pure distributions will still exist, but I fear that many of them will be quashed as RedHat closes its grip on the desktop-user's world.

Re:Ugh..

[Anonymous Coward]

1) RedHat removed just MP3 support, but you can still play Ogg Vorbis. You know Ogg, right? It's the DRM-free royalty-free patent-free format compatible with free-software ideals.

2) rpmfind.net has *never* been too busy to process a request for me. And they have two great mirrors if you want something closer to you.

Re:Ugh..

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for your reply.

1) I am familiar with Ogg Vorbis..however, my entire MP3 collection and my hardware MP3 player are not. As much as I'd love to have 1000 .ogg files on my hard drive, I've got 1000 mp3's -- re-encoding them would take an enormous amount of time, unless I were to sacrifice quality and re-encode the MP3's. MP3 support is -extremely- important to my usage of a distribution, and I'd imagine that I'm not alone.

2) I'm happy to hear that your experience has been good; however, yours is not the typical case. At one point I had not been able to update using up2date for several -weeks- before I looked for the packages myself. And who's to say that the option to use a free server will always be available? If they don't get their desired level of subscriptions, who's to say they won't make them mandatory? Of course, a third party could produce a similar updating system that allows for free updates, but I sincerely doubt that it'd be supported by RedHat directly -- definitely a point of contention with business adoption. And besides all of that, the issue of privacy still isn't addressed -- a simple list of packages installed on your machine -should- be enough for up2date to carry out its work, but instead it collects as much information about you, your location and your machine as you provide -- and associates all of that into a consolidated ID used to identify both you and your system. This is no different from Microsoft's Passport system and the Windows XP key licensing scheme, save for that it's now being done in a Linux distribution.

Re:Ugh..

[GauteL]

2) Much in the style of Microsoft, RedHat is pushing its users (particularly business users) towards subscription services, in this case for updates. Yes, that also includes SECURITY updates. You may make the argument that they still are available for free, but up2date will claim that the server on which the free updates are located is too "busy" to process your request

Please do not state this without informing that the updates are also freely available on ANY Red Hat mirror-ftp. You do not have to use up2date at all. The software is also pure GPL and people can create their own update software, which have been done (apt-get for rpm: http://apt-rpm-tuxfamily.org)

Added to that, up2date collects information on your hardware, what packages you have installed, and sends it all off in a profile that identifies your account to your identity, your machine's identity, and the configuration of your machine. Windows XP anyone?

It makes no secret about what it is doing, you have to agree to do this. You do not have to do this at all. It is easy to skip, unlike the passport-registration bugging in XP that will bug you until you turn it off by finding it in an obscure menu place.

Attention Lamers

[Anonymous Coward]

Attention Lamers. You seem to forget that Red Hat is working on a multimedia distro to be released 3rd quarter 2003 right? Who cares about multimedia support right now? Don't you all see the process in order? I am glad I am a Red Hat shareholder, everything is falling into place and I will retire in style. See you on the Yaht when Red Hat HURD is released in 2012. Myan cosmogenesis!

My God

[DJPenguin]

I was going to post something sensible, but right in the middle of my screen I ended up staring at a ruddy great OSDN advert for MS Visual Studio .NET !

What idiot at MSFT thinks that people reading /. will be interested in purchasing such a thing? :)

Can't say I've ever seen a MS advert on /. before... what's next - fluffy TUX pengies for sale on www.microsoft.com ??

Re:My God

[Anonymous Coward]

the idea that you need one and only one os is naive. Say I run BSD at home and work on windows programming as a hobby on a second machine, the ad suits me perfectly. slashdot's audience are primarily COMPUTER users, not just linux users.
every OS has one task it is better suited to than others. Mac for graphics, Windows for office, Linux for dev and network work.

Re:bi*chslapping to *nix developers

[noshellswill]

Weenie-land behavior, pad're ... who wants to manually dikk with obscure files? If I pay for the OS then I set the usability rules, eh pad're? Not some 6-finger webtoed dweezle! Where is the "close useless ports" solution proggie? Where is the art-deccoized, sound enhanced ports-wizzard to handle this crappola?

no wrong try again

[Anonymous Coward]

Get your facts straight. RedHat is i686 optimized with i386 compatibility enabled.

BZZT

Re:A users take on Red Hat 8 and KDE-Galeon

[n3bulous]

How scary is that, something developed more slowly than Mozilla.

Why icons on the desktop?

[Davoid]

I have never figured out UI designers put icons on the desktop AND have panels/docks/whatever for launching apps. It seems redundant and confusing and they just get hidden or add to the clutter.

All versions of Mac OS and Windows do this AND they have menus. I have never liked it.

On my current desktop I have the terminals and applications I am running and a panel. If i need something that isn't running or a folder or whatever I don't have to go digging around under my currently running stuff. It is always in the same place in my panel.

-DU-...etc...

Re:Why icons on the desktop?

[aksansai]

It is a matter of personal preference. Like you, I prefer to use the panel to launch my frequently used applications - but still use the desktop for convenient launching of help applications (dragging "shortcuts" to the help application's icon). However, panels did not always exist, and the traditional setup of desktop icons was used to launch applications. Microsoft clued in on this handy feature with their Quick Launch bar (with Active Desktop). Other operating systems have been offering it already as a handy-dandy feature. For most people it makes the transition from one operating system to another easier - consistency is often a desirable trait.

A fair review

[bogie]

First off let me say 1) don't usually like Eugina or her opinions and 2) I'm a big RedHat backer.

That said the review seemed pretty fair to me. She's write in saying multiple menus or counterproductive. I mean either include an app under the main area or don't include it. There should NOT be duplicate subcategories on the menu. Can you imagine if Windows XP shipped with the Acessories menu listed twice?

Second, regarding multimedia. If its multimedia abilities are as castrated as she's says, that's a big negative against RedHat 8.0. I still can't believe and MP3 player isn't included. As if that lets them off the hook for years of including an MP3 in every RedHat release?! Now Out of the Box multimedia is broken, which won't stop me, but will stop the average user who has never used linux before. There should dam well be a single button you click that restores MP3 ability. Making a user try to figure out how to get MP3 back into XMMS is NOT user friendly.

Lastly while obvisouly most people are not running at the resolutions mentioned in the article, having something as basic as being able to change your refresh rate ala Corel linux should be standard by now. It actually quite pathetic that its not.

Anyway, I'm downloading it now so we'll see how it goes. The one thing I am looking forward to is decent fonts for once. If they get that right I can probably forgive the other things.

Re:A fair review

[bogie]

Holy crap my spell checker sucks. Meaning my brain. Every time I spit out a post here and later read it back I'm agast at the basic spelling errors and words that get left out. It's like in my mind I've already sounded it all out, but the fingers do their own thing and skip entire words.

That's all, just thought I'd remark in case someone else is as shocked as I am about the poor grammer and spelling on my posts.

Re:Red Hat is void of multimedia, but there is hop

[Jagasian]

I am new to Red Hat and apt-rpm. I used to run Debian, and "dist-upgrade"ing always worked with Debian. Can I assume the same thing with apt-rpm? I am running RH7.3 and want to dist-upgrade to RH8.0. Anything I should know before I try to do so?

Linux for DOOM 3

[Wetwork]

Here's a question : would any of today's Linux distribution be acceptable to intall D3 when it comes out or will we have to wait? And guys, i'm asking for Maximum performance. Not just anything I can play on but a Linux sys. that I can optimise for D3. I know it's still a year away but i'm planning now. Also, can I run games on a dual CPU motherboard? ( including D3?) after reding the review for RH8 i'm asssuming that it would not be a good platform for high - graphics stuff?

Re:Good points. Here's a few more.

[Anonymous Coward]

-O3 is somewhat of a mixed blessing. It is short notation for "-O2 -finline-functions". Since inlined functions don't have the calling overhead they are faster but since they make the code bigger they also increase the number of cache/TLB/page misses so in some cases -O3 sould slow things. Alos never use -O3 on programs where the progarmmmer has laready inlined functions (eg the kernel) since the programmer knows if a function is a dead one (ie very rarely called or not) so if gcc inlines it you will get no benefit but still get the penalties associated with bigger program.

For omit-frame-pointer it could give a big improvement on the P1 but according to my tests it gives quite little on CPUs who do register renaming (PPro and above, K6 and above).

In other news... you eat dicks

[Anonymous Coward]

by the bowlfull!!!

The xmms-mp3 RPM for RHL8.0

[Anonymous Coward]

MP3 Support for XMMS

This RPM, created at Guru Labs, provides the two files:

* /usr/lib/xmms/Input/libmpg123.la
* /usr/lib/xmms/Input/libmpg123.so

Also provided is the SRPM from which the binary RPM was built. The SRPM is identical to the XMMS SRPM shipped with Red Hat Linux 8.0 except that it uses the pristine XMMS source (ie, has MP3 support), and the SPEC file was modified to create the xmms-mp3 sub package.

RH 8.0 is out! Mirror List

[HawaiiLinux]

http://freshrpms.net/mirrors/psyche.html
This mirror list should be more useful than the official Red Hat mirror list.

http://redhat.dsi.internet2.edu/8.0
And don't forget about Internet2 if you are at an I2 connected institution.

Re:RH 8.0 is out! Mirror List

[Billly Gates]

Every single one is slashdotted. I can't find any mirror in existance that still works.

Great fonts!

[abischof]

I'm pleased that the fonts have been tweaked:

Fixes to QT to improve font rendering and have apparently already been included in the upcoming QT 3.1

They look so nice that I may be tempted to switch to Red Hat for that reason alone. Or, do any other (upcoming) distributions support such font improvements?

Re:Great fonts!

[Anonymous Coward]

> They look so nice that I may be tempted to switch to Red Hat for that reason alone. Or, do any other (upcoming) distributions support such font improvements?

Or you could just install qt-copy from KDE's cvs or wait for qt 3.1 and install it in the distro that you use right now. Qt 3.1 is supposed to come out soon (perhaps mid October).

Re:bi*chslapping to *nix developers

[Anonymous Coward]

--I am the original asker of the question. I'm not at all interested in blinkenlights, just something easier to figure out for novice command line interface users. As more and more folks attempt the switch, getting owned with a short time actually online is not what I would call a great advertisement or inducement to use it or actually enter into a paid for an official distro CD release and a service contract. It should be at least marginally secure on a default install selecting "no servers" without having to wade through 189 obscure unix acronyms and man pages. I tried 7.1 and 7.2 and they aren't secure, even selecting "high security" on install. I liked using them, but not being secure and having difficulty doing it(this is just me, I admit), they weren't acceptable, I stopped using them. Not even close actually. I was moderately dissapointed but as this was just my first ventures into command line I really didn't even think or assume I could do what a trained and experienced security sysadmin could do, or an advanced enthusiast. I was wondering how 8.0 was from the folks who have gotten it already. One poster has replied already with helpful info, this is a *good* thing, and much appreciated.

As an aside, I could care less about thesems and skins, have never bothered using them besides default in both windows and mac usage, they are unimportant and unnecessary for my purposes, but I also don't care if they are other folks "important" issues. It's irrelevant, to me security more important, and GUI is here to stay, so GUI tools should get better, IMO. Myself and millions more people would be willing to pop retail for the disks at local computermart if they are A-1/2 price of the mainstream big two, and B-work out of the box and C- are at least intitially and reasonably secure, whatever that really means.

two points

[MSG]

I sent Eugenia a letter that contained (among a few less significant others) these two points, which are probably worth pointing out here, too:

For me, that is one more reason why X just doesn't cut it

This is a problem in A driver for A video card. It is not an issue with
X, or really even XFree86. NVidia's own drivers were also unable to
probe the correct DAC from the card. NVidia is responsible for
addressing this issue.

After running a bit happy with them at the resolution and refresh rate
I wanted, X would crash.

Again, this is NVidia's responsibility to fix. They distribute a driver
which is, in part, binary-only. The binary portion of this driver was
compiled with an earlier compiler, and is not compatible with the kernel
compiled by gcc 3.2. NVidia was informed of this situation by Red Hat,
and their response was to release a driver that had the information
identifying the compiler stripped out, so that the Red Hat tools could
not warn users that the binary wasn't compatible.

This behavior is extremely irresponsible, and NVidia needs to address it
properly.

Re:two points

[GuildPort]

Not with a bang, to be sure.

Re:two points

[The Bungi]

This behavior is extremely irresponsible, and NVidia needs to address it properly.

And your attitude is precisely the reason they're not about to be bothered to "address" the problem.

Re:two points

[Anonymous Coward]

I, fortunately, have had no problems with the binary Nvidia drivers and null, so I hope I find no problems with 8.0 when I buy the boxed set. What I want to knwo is why Red Hat's configuration tool will not allwo me to select the binary driver if I need to reconfigure the card. Is the driver name alone too much "contamination"? 8)

Red Hat BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any truth to the rumor that Red Hat is disgusted with the instability and kludginess of the linux kernel and is switching to making a distribution with the FreeBSD kernel?

well...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about Red Hat hurd, or even a Red Hat Open BeOS? That's what's great about Red Hat is that they are an open source company, they can support whatever they want!

Linux GUI's not par

[ChrisFedak]

Sounds to me like the GUI world for linux is steadily improving. Unfortunately, it still isn't up to the standards set by XP and OSX. This review really highlights that.

I don't know if the criticism of the RedHat GUI that the reviewer made are exaustive. I suspect that they are not. There seems to be an excess of sloppiness in the organization and implementation of the desktop environment.

There was an item on the main menu that lacked an icon that still had not been fixed in the new distribution. A standard interface element (the combo box) did not work properly. Can you imagine the lambasting a Mac or Windows GUI would get if they shipped with blatantly buggy interface elements?

I have to agree with the opinion that Linux and OSS are not ready from prime time. I have confidence that they will be ready eventually, just not now. Interface developers with new ideas, and a will to implement them are starting to trickle in. The RadialContext menu for Mozilla is a good example of that trickle down.

MP3 support... why?

[FooBarWidget]

I don't know why she's complaining about lack of MP3 support. Do corporate desktop users actually use MP3 for other reasons than download illegal music from P2P networks? Is there any reason why they can't use Ogg Vorbis instead?

Re:MP3 support... why?

[Anonymous Coward]

no, but it's a pain in the ass if your entire library is already encoded in mp3 format. and please don't suggest conversion...that's homocide on a guy's files. even reripping them...that takes forever.

the the issue is of what's already been established - mp3.

i'm starting to use ogg now, but still, i have over 10000 legit mp3s. what is to become of those?

Why Free Software UI tends to suck

[Ilan Volow]

Matthew Thomas (who does a lot of UI stuff for Mozilla) has written two really good articles that largely answer your question)

Why free software usability tends to suck
Why free software usability tends to suck even more

To address a few things mentioned in your post:

Wouldn't it be nice if developers in the free software community read things like this and took the criticisms to heart as seriously as if someone had knocked them for not using a free license? That is, the community has some peer pressure for acceptable software: using a free software license

Because Free Software is currently Freedom As A Programmer Envisions It. As the Free Software concept was nutured by Richard M. Stallman, a programmer, this is not surprising. Freedom As An End User Envisions In (also known as The Freedom To Get Stuff Done) has never really been considered by the Free Software community to be a Valid Freedom.

Funny you should mention, I'm currently drawing up a public license that enforces usability and goes after the people who've kept linux so very unusable.

The openness of the community and this system of taboos have arguable produced better software and certainly gotten us closer to a free software world.

I commonly hear this phrase "We've gotten so far on the server, it's only a matter of time before get to the desktop." Unfortunately, this statement makes the assumption that the same abilities, values, and methodologies that lead to success on the server do the same for the desktop. Linux has been doing so well on the server because people in the linux community were really good at doing server stuff. Unfortunately these people were the most absolute worst people you could have ever sent to do desktop stuff. 30 years of anti-newbie RTFM baggage, command-line junkihood, and having a userbase that entirely consists of programmers and sysadmins does not behoove the creation of high quality user interfaces. In contrast, the mac developer community has for 17 years put very strong values on consistancy and non-geeks being able to use the software. That's why they've been able to succeed on the unix desktop in 3 years where linux has failed for the last 7-8.

Could the same pressure potentially lead free software application developers to enforce good GUI design habits as well as good programming habits?

It's already been tried, and has been tried by people with very strong usability/HCI backgrounds. The response they generally get from programmers is "stop whining. If you want to fix something, you should learn how to code". Or sometimes you'll hear "Don't complain about what you get for free". Or "That's what you want, that's not what I want. That's just your opinion."

Or if a usability person criticizes a UI in front of a kernel hacker, the kernel hacker might say "I can't believe that people actually get paid to criticize the work of others" (true story).

When users give feedback like the above that says "hey, your program may be cool, but you aren't following good UI design principles" and this criticism carrys weight similar to telling someone that they should use a free software license

First of all, you have to be pro-active about creating good user interfaces. Users generally do not actively complain about specific application interfaces unless the interfaces are truly, truly, horrible. They will usually passively complain, trying to find execuses to use the program less, or unconsciously creating some workaround, or saying "I hate computers" around the watercooler. You won't get active feedback very often from users, so you need to actively watch them using your UI. So often what makes a UI unbearable is a bunch of little, annoying things that add up to one cumulative bad user experience. To catch those little things, you really have to watch the person using the interfaces. You should also do research ahead of time to learn (before you design the UI) to learn what the most common annoyances are. Unfortunately, most Free Software UI's are cranked out and *then* people try to do active damage control. Much like the world of commercial software, actually.

Another problem with your suggestion is that most of the current userbase for Free Software/OSS are the geeks who've been so clueless about good UI (and some of whom who think that HCI is a load of bull). These people adapt very, very well to badly designed UI's, often priding themselves on doing just that. They often don't take notice of the little, annoying things and are often not confused by ambiguous widget layouts or jargon-laden wording. When you consider these facts, it's not surpising why StarOffice gets such glowing reviews from the geek community. Assuming you manage to find a geek who gives you feedback about the UI, chances are he's not going to a suggestion that jives with all of what we've learned about HCI in the last 20 years. Just because you get feedback doesn't necessarily mean its usable feedback.

Hope I've answered a few of your questions.

Re:good lord

[Anonymous Coward]

Until *YOU* start posting with your real ( and almost certainly hyphenated ) name, i suggest you shut your mouth, fuckwit.

Re:two points-OSS drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

>After running a bit happy with them at the resolution and refresh rate
>I wanted, X would crash.

"Again, this is NVidia's responsibility to fix. They distribute a driver which is, in part, binary-only. The binary portion of this driver was compiled with an earlier compiler, and is not compatible with the kernel compiled by gcc 3.2. NVidia was informed of this situation by Red Hat,
and their response was to release a driver that had the information identifying the compiler stripped out, so that the Red Hat tools could
not warn users that the binary wasn't compatible.

This behavior is extremely irresponsible, and NVidia needs to address it properly."

Should I file this under "reason not to use binary drivers?", or "why drivers should be open source?"?

Linux just gets better - just as Windows had to

[aksansai]

The Linux-based distributions have been under constant development ever since Linux became a popular operating system to actually run and support (hardware and software). To completely discredit the offerings of Linux as an everyday operating system is only fair if you exclude the fact that all other operating systems have all been in a state of flux to develop an easy to install and use approach for the common user.

Windows has had many years to garner the market share and see trends in development to adequately support their users. With this comes innovations such as the driver management system, streamlined interface, overall stability, self-maintaining (semi), and a united Win32 SDK. Through these innovations comes revenue - with revenue comes research and development.

These features are taken for granted considering they are relatively "recent" or modern innovations, even in the Windows world. The rock solid reputation Windows has is as a result of many releases - much feedback (largely from the corporate space). The driver model used in the NT-based Windows releases was pretty good in Windows 2000, but is considered even better in Windows XP because it comes with so many drivers pre-installed. No one would have ventured to make the claim with regards to stability and flexibility with Windows NT 4 and, God forbid, Windows 3.1 and Windows NT 3.x. Apple touted its MacOS as a vastly superior model to Windows - Microsoft simply learned to put the "good stuff" ("lessons learned" from other operating system offerings) in with its own product and, voila!, we have stable (for the most part), easy to install and use, and widely support Windows releases. Microsoft may not be saintly in its operations - but in a business sense, it is extremely smart to give people something to suckle on - easy to take and get used to. Believe it or not, it is what the majority of bipeds want.

Software innovations come about from much trial and error. Linux is breaking out of the stages of its infancy - catering only to those willing to take the dare and challenge of migrating from a Windows world to a UNIX world. But times are changing, and Linux is changing with it. People who can describe the average Linux distribution in 1995 will tell you that hardware support was hit or miss - and if it was a hit, it often only was a partial (never a bulls-eye).

Personally, I feel that Linux has made HUGE strides towards that perfect operating system for any niche. If you consider how long it took Microsoft's Windows line to fully mature - Linux is ahead of the game. Businesses will just need more time to listen to feedback and implement those features that people can suckle on - and using Microsoft and Apple as references with regards to their own products is a great start - they obviously figured something out to appease the masses.

Members of the open source community (users, developers, and companies) need to pay close attention to the desires of the community as a whole. Many of the projects that make up Linux (and other open source operating system offerings) have the ability to receive feedback to make the project better. Griping is one thing - channelling the gripe to the write email address is better for the whole. The applications that make up Linux thrive on contributions (ideas, source code, and comments [good/bad]). The more feedback - the better the product.

The capabilities in Linux are there - the opportunities for Linux just need to be taken advantage of - users, developers, and companies alike.

Re:Linux just gets better - just as Windows had to

[knewman_1971]

Holy crap. Mod this up!!!!! It's fantastic!

One from the Boston Globe

[hondo77]

Hiawatha Bray, writing for The Boston Globe, has posted his review. It starts off as a comparison to OS X and touches a bit on Linux's problems in the desktop market.

SIR

[Gendou]

Are you Trollaxor??

Re:SIR

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's Trollaxor I'm wondering why Kansas State Prison is allowing him internet access while being a god damned ass-bitch for half of the prison.

Re:SIR

[Gendou]

He's not really in prison. YHBT. He's currently in Ohio being a fuckslave to a certain closet-dominatrix knows as Esther Sassaman.

Re:Red Hat is void of multimedia, but there is hop

[GauteL]

I have upgraded from Red Hat 7.2 to 7.3 with apt-rpm. This worked flawlessly. I have no idea wether or not RH7.3 to RH 8.0 will work as flawlessly.

Besides, dist-upgrading hasn't always worked that fine with Debian if you count unstable ;-).

How about speeding up KDE?

[Rob Y.]

Just loaded up MDK9.0, and beyond the problem-free install, it looks not much different than my 8.2 system (with KDE3.0 loaded).

That's a problem, because KDE3 loads VERY slowly. Much worse than KDE2. Takes minutes on my PII-233 (192MB) to put up the splash screen. So much for the "Linux works great on old hardware" argument.

I tried the GNOME setup in MDK9.0 and it's actually pretty fast - even Nautilus. While I like KDE better than GNOME, I'm considering using GNOME for the time being because of the startup time.

So what happened to preload patches, etc? Is this being addressed, or will KDE continue to be slow until the linker gets a major overhaul?

Re:How about speeding up KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Object prelinking has been disabled by the QT toolkit because they are not stable.
The linux developers should solve the problem in its root, not by hacks. And the real problem for the slow KDE is that C++ is slow loading on Linux, because the "ld" loader sucks goats. Instead of hacking Qt, they should fix the loader.

Re:How about speeding up KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

I tested MDK 9.0 yesterday on my system Celeron 633 256MB Ram. Intel 810 Graphics on board. Gnome runs dog slow. KDE runs great. Both Gnome and KDE are very stable. I have found that KDE 3 really needs the 256 MB Ram for decent performance. One major issue that is stopping me from using MDK is that it is missing Abiword. Where is it? I installed using all options, but do not find abiword. I am in the process of d/l redhat 8. I hope that it is as stable as MDK seems to be and also has the programs that I want to run.

Re:How about speeding up KDE?

[fault0]

I don't think KDE3 is very good for slow hardware personally, although I did run it on my Apple-clone 200mhz PPC-603e for years, and that's much slower than your pII-133 (604~=pII). You might just want to use GNOME or KDE2 on it. It's weird because KDE3 runs much faster on my Athlon 2200+. Go figure.

You might have better luck with KDE3 if you just put the following in your .xinitrc:

kdesktop&
kicker&
exec kwin

That should load up in about twenty seconds.

Proofreading...

[Bakaneko]

There is one line in this review that bothered me: The last one.

"Thanks to Ed Boyce for going through the pain of proof reading this article."

Because the article really didn't feel proof-read to me.

Examples like "So, there are two questions remain:" and such made the article sound a good deal more stilted than it really was. I thought it was a pretty good "practical" review of RedHat 8, even if it delved into the specific details of problems (the back and forth of all the things tried to get a working mode line) a bit much at times (we're all bound to have our own unique "experiences" with it as we try to deploy it).

Re:Proofreading...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, Ed Boyce must be a pseudonymn for Alan Smithee.

On Par with XP NE Ready for Desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Was Windows 3.0 ready for the desktop?

Is Linux + X11 + Gnome/KDE better or worse than Windows 3.1? 95?

Believe me, if Windows 3.1 was ready for the desktop, then Linux has been ready for a LONG time.

Now remember how long it took for Windows 3.1 to reach XP levels... How long did it take Linux? So, how much longer will it take for Linux to surpass windows?....

Are Mandrake, Suse, RH, releases all better than their respective earlier releases?

Let's put things in perspetive here. We do NOT need to be on Par with Windows XP to be ready for the desktop.

Linux simply needs consistency within each respective interface (GUI) and it will be 100% ready.

Remember that Windoze users don't have a choice, so they have the benefit of enforced UI consistency. While Linux has much choice at the cost of consistency. This has delayed Linux's acceptance on the desktop.

Personally, I value choice and flexibility, i.e. the ability to look under the hood, over a strict unchangeable closed environment.

So all you people complaining about inconsistencies?... I challenge you to go and install DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1 as a refresher in how much better ANY Linux distro is over DOS & Win3.1...

Touch�

[Anonymous Coward]

Touché, FooBarWidget.

.Xdefaults no longer recognized

[brettw]

I just installed RH 8.0 and things are going well except for some reason my .Xdefaults file is being ignored.

Anyone know what might be going on? I'm sure I'm missing something really obvious...

Re:.Xdefaults no longer recognized

[msaavedra]

I had this problem when upgrading to XFree86 4.2. I don't know if .Xdefaults has been deprecated, or what. However, you can run the following command upon starting X:

xrdb ~/.Xdefaults

I put this in my .Xclients file, though this may not start on your system either, depending on how it is configured. You may need to experiment a little to find where you need to add the command. You might try /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession as well.

Re:.Xdefaults no longer recognized

[brettw]

Thanks for the help. If I was smarter, I would have done that and never figured out the real problem. Luckily I didn't think of that so I found the real problem.

I found out that as of XFree86 4.2, it is expecting to see .Xdefaults-hostname instead. So I made a link.

Also Ctrl-Alt-Backspace restarts the Xserver, but not the Xsession (didn't know that!), so it took me a while to realize that the above had fixed it. I had to telinit 3 before all the apps would pick up the configuration. Seems a little weird but everything is working now.

I don't understand - openssl 0.9.6b not upgraded?

[gsherman]

Was openssl not upgraded beyond version 0.9.6b from 7.3 to 8.0?

Fast upgrade for 7.3 and NULL Users on DSL

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I've been running NULL for a couple of weeks. Remembered this morning the 8.0 release was today, and did a quick peek online, before deciding that trying to FTP new .iso images would be a time-wasting exercise in frustration - especially in the midst of studies.

I made a jump over to rpmfind.net, to look for an apt-get package, and try my luck this way.

BINGO!

The first hit is a new package, dated yesterday, from FreshRPMs.net.

apt-0.5.4cnc7-fr1

RPM for i386 This includes an /etc/apt/sources.list file for RedHat 8.0.

I ran:
su -c 'rpm -ivh apt-0.5.4cnc7-fr1.rpm'
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

I'm about 40% done now. I guess I'll run apt-get dist_upgrade after this, but I'm not sure if this does anything special with "held-back" packages, as it does on Debian.

Here's an output listing:

Get :107 http://apt.freshrpms.net redhat/8.0/en/i386/os libgnomeui-devel 2.0.3-3 [399kB]
Get:108 http://apt.freshrpms.net redhat/8.0/en/i386/os eel2-devel 2.0.6-1 [45.2kB]
Get:109 http://apt.freshrpms.net redhat/8.0/en/i386/os eel2 2.0.6-1 [335kB]
Get:110 http://apt.freshrpms.net redhat/8.0/en/i386/os emacs 21.2-18 [11.4MB]
Get:111 http://apt.freshrpms.net redhat/8.0/en/i386/os scrollkeeper 0.3.10-7 [220kB]
Get:112 http://apt.freshrpms.net redhat/8.0/en/i386/os mozilla-nspr 35:1.0.1-24 [114kB]
Get:113 http://apt.freshrpms.net redhat/8.0/en/i386/os mozilla 35:1.0.1-24 [10.7MB]
Get:114 http://apt.freshrpms.net redhat/8.0/en/i386/os mozilla-mail 35:1.0.1-24 [2118kB]
Get:115 http://apt.freshrpms.net redhat/8.0/en/i386/os mozilla-chat 35:1.0.1-24 [108kB]
Get:116 http://apt.freshrpms.net redhat/8.0/en/i386/os mozilla-nss 35:1.0.1-24 [725kB]
Get:117 http://apt.freshrpms.net redhat/8.0/en/i386/os mozilla-psm 35:1.0.1-24 [369kB]
Get:118 http://apt.freshrpms.net redhat/8.0/en/i386/os openoffice 1.0.1-8 [30.1MB] 39% [118 openoffice 29424534/30.1MB 97%]

Re:Fast upgrade for 7.3 and NULL Users on DSL

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Oh, yeah....

Make sure you have enough space on your /var partition!

:-)This'll need to be about 700 MB free, typically. You'll want even more there, if your still spooling print, mail, etc...

You can reclaim this space if you don't want to keep your packages around with

apt-get clean

Re:Fast upgrade for 7.3 and NULL Users on DSL

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

O.K.....

Posting from the upgraded system! A minor caveat, the glibc RPM needs to be replaced, which means a dependancy in apt-get upgrade barfs.

I took my chances, and ran (as root) apt-get -o apt::force-loopbreak=true dist-upgrade.

This will run rpm -e on glibc, before installing the new rpms with -Uvh. Not for the squeamish, or those who don't no how to repair their distro from alternate boot media! Worked for me...;-)

Alternatively, you could run rpm -Uvh /var/cache/apt/packages/ packagename first. This should allow a less-risky upgrade for the rest,via regular ol' apt.

Re:Fast upgrade for 7.3 and NULL Users on DSL

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

...And don't forget to run lilo, before you reboot!

Re:I don't understand - openssl 0.9.6b not upgrade

[Hitokage_Nishino]

Redhat patched their version of 0.9.6b to cover that exploit months ago. It's not the same thing as stock 0.9.6b.

RedHat Sucks!!

[quanto]

Mandrake Rulez!!
Try 9.0 Now!!
RedHat 8.0 multimedia capabilities are way behind mandrake...

Quanto.

Re:RedHat Sucks!!

[FooBarWidget]

cat you_message | sed 's/RedHat/Windows/'

Now that looks much better.

Re:RedHat Sucks!!

[SouthOfHeaven]

I have been a red hat follower for a long time now, but this release has got to be my turning point. There is such thing as being too much like windows. I mean ya its nice and shiny but its just garbage, clicking on things doesnt do anything and its a hundred times less customizable then 7.3 . I dono what screwed it up so badly, be it red hats customized gnome or what, its just ugly. Is there a way to get rid of this bluetooth sh*t ?? i wouldnt mind it so bad if it resembled old gnome ?

Re:Good points. Here's a few more.

[0x0d0a]

Yes, but there's another good reason to use -O3. Trying to optimize C across function boundaries is extremely limiting. If you can inline a function, you can do far better optimization.

Re:two points-OSS drivers

[MSG]

Should I file this under "reason not to use binary drivers?", or "why drivers should be open source?"?

Consider filing it under reasons not to buy NVidia cards.

Re:RH8 for business - question then...dismissive.

[Anonymous Coward]

"# Professional 3-D graphics modeller and renderer (Maya, Lightwave clone)"

http://www.aliaswavefront.com/en/products/maya/u nl imited.shtml

So eager to dismiss, that they can't see what's in front of them.

http://www.softimage.com/corporate/press/pressre le ases/010914_ibc_xsi_linux.htm

Doesn't run on his *favorite* OS so Linux must not be ready.

Final Cut Pro is from Apple. Port over to a competing Unix clone. You must be daft.

What, all of two days behind?

[cduffy]

Seriously -- the time delay between when a release of Mozilla comes out and when Galeon supports it is practically nonexistant, particularly when the Mozilla API embedding API has stabilized (which was what the 1.0 release was all about, remember?). I've been using Galeon for quite some time, and I haven't seen more than a two day lag between when an updated Mozilla package becomes available for Debian and the release and packaging of an appropriately built Galeon. Usually, though, since the Galeon CVS tree tracks the Mozilla CVS, there's no delay at all.

Admittedly it was different back when the Mozilla embedding API was in flux -- but today, waiting for Galeon's development to "catch up" sounds like FUD to me.

Re:What, all of two days behind?

[Telex4]

Hm, maybe not then, my mistake :-)

Re:No multimedia??-Do the "KDE" stomp.

[Anonymous Coward]

All the yelling by KDE will backfire on them.

The QT issue first gave people a bad impression of the group.

This latest round will put even more people off.
People will be leary of touching KDE code now for fear of "offending" the KDE crowd, despite the license.

I'm simply waiting for the upcoming outcry when the other distro's start emulating what RH has already started.

Re:Why Free Software UI tends to suck-XUL

[Anonymous Coward]

" Assuming you manage to find a geek who gives you feedback about the UI, chances are he's not going to a suggestion that jives with all of what we've learned about HCI in the last 20 years. Just because you get feedback doesn't necessarily mean its usable feedback. "

Actually that maxim applies to any user, not just geeks. To borrow a phrase "Gui suggestions are like a**holes, everyone has one". Read the litature and you'll here a more polite version of what I said.

Now I've read the links you provided, and one thing that could help (not solve,just help), the situation, is lower the cost of changing the interface around. Clean seperation of the interface from the code that fulfills the purpose of the app. For the GNOME desktop. Gladifying(for lack of a better word), the interface. Anyone can change the interface to suit their preferences, with a fallback to defaults if one screws up. Even HCI people can more easily contribute without the complaint that they can't code.
Mozilla and XUL goes way toward that goal.
Tools like InterfaceBuilder could help.

Windows killer?

[wsanders]

You have to remember the review was form the point of view of a potential windows-killer. I think 7.3 is actually 80% of the way there. I wimped out and actually paid for a 7.3 distribution, and I was impressed how close it comes to being a reasonable windows-killer. (It comes with StarOffice 5.2 (5.3? I forget) I am a sysadmin professionally, and the last thing I want to do at home is mess with computers. So I put the "complete" RH7.3 plus SO, chkconfiged most everything off, added a couple rules to ipfilters, upgraded to Mozilla 1.2 and an hour later I had a $750, complete, 3000 Bogomip Intel and Microsoft-free windows killer. I am very happy and will probably wipe the windows laptop clean and do the same thing to it in a few weeks once I'm sure everything is migrated.

Now I have to resist the temptation to endlessly tweak the thing. I'll probably migrate to OpenOffice and gradually delete he dumptrucks full code that get instaleld with the compete dist (just how many versions of libssl get installed all over the system?!)

The Preceeding Comment . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

was brought to you by Ed Boyce.

Valid URL?

[Anonymous Coward]

(apt-get for rpm: http://apt-rpm-tuxfamily.org)

How about a valid URL? This one won't resolve. Thanks.

Re:Valid URL?

[GauteL]

I missed a dot. It should be apt-rpm.tuxfamily.org instead of apt-rpm-tuxfamily.org.

Nevermind

[Billly Gates]

I found a link and sorry but I will keep this secret until I am done. :-)

Which should be in about 12 hours according to my download speed.

I would be a fulltime Linux user

[The Analog Kid]

But I'm a gamer, and well as you can see Linux doesn't offer much for gaming yet. Sure there is WineX but if I were to subscribe I would wait for it to develop more.

How to Win the Game

[Anonymous Coward]

I am one of those who does have an appreciation for computers and technology, and have been struggling to find an alternative. I despise Microsoft's tactics, which have become the symbol of greed and distrust in their own customer base. Their recent licensing enforcement implementations and future plans have me disgusted. Granted, they have improved the stability of their products, but their policy for paying customers is in question. I have been seriously considering Open Source and related projects as an alternative.

Further, I am in full agreement that someone needs to "put them in their place". And, the Linux platform, as far as installation, maintenance, etc. has come a long way. But, there are a few things missing.

Most Linux distributions can make the server market easily. Compared to Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server, with IIS...Linux is definitely a worthy choice for a cost effective web server platform.

The weakness has been in the workstation capability. To be more specific, it is what it takes to install software. I gave it the "college try", over the last few weeks. And, this is where the alternatives will fail:

Under the Windows environment, a user--95+% of the time--only has to run the Install Shield wizard, with little input, to install an application. It takes a home user about 5 minutes.

Under Linux, and related platforms, things are different. I can deal with typing rpm -Uvh package_name.rpm...But it doesn't stop there. The hidden surprise is the shared libraries that are not included in the installation.

For those that like to tinker in their computers, it may be no problem. But, if those representing an alternative platform wish to further the cause, they need to consider the "home" user and the user who wishes to be productive.

My experience? I spent several hours trying to install an application; while pursuing library dependencies 5-6 levels deep. This, as opposed to the five minutes it takes to install a similar Windows application. After a whole day of trying--on one application--I will still unsuccessful, and managed to break the OS.

Being a developer, I was willing to give it a shot...but was disappointed when the libraries that it wanted were in conflict with what the existing applications required. It would have been far too much work to literally create my own personal revision of the operating system to run one program.

One can see the need for supporting multiple versions of the same shared library...or--better--including the libraries with the software installation package.

I had read in the book "More Tricks of the Game Programming Guru's" that "first impressions" are important. And, this "first impression" happens to be the installation procedure. For most packages I tried to install, this would be inaccessible to the ordinary user.

If these installation procedures stay as they are, Bill Gates has little reason to worry about his future. If we really want to present a viable alternative, we need to meet the home user on his or her grounds.

With this done, for those that wish to dethrone Microsoft, we have accomplished a lot.

Re:Good points. Here's a few more.

[Anonymous Coward]

jesus, you actually know what you are talking about. actually this could be a finely crafter troll, its so far over my head

Unrelated

[autechre]

The ability of your Mom to install XP and not call you about dependency problems is not related to Linux's ability to "play in the business world." This is because your mom is not (as things currently stand) going to be hired as a network administrator.

Businesses don't want it to be easy for their employees to install software or operating systems. Employees should not be doing these things; it will only make the job of the admin more difficult.

Linux may not be ready for the "typical" home user, but it has proven a success in business and educational settings, and can be made easier to use than Windows in those cases. I use it at the college newspaper and radio station.

Just to cite one example, the radio station has a playlist computer running Debian Woody. Most DJs do not even care that it is running Debian woody, because it starts up X and mozilla and keeps them running (using daemontools), and they basically use it as a Web kiosk to a custom PHP/SQL playlist application. If this machine were running Windows, I would have to worry about viruses and people installing all sorts of crap on it. I would also have to worry about it crashing, and couldn't use it for the lo-fi MP3 stream or the webcam.

Just installed it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can finally use Linux on my desktop as a Windows replacment. This is everything I always wanted from a Linux distro. Until now, Linux desktops were cluttered and junky. With Bluetooth, Linux is now sleek like Mac OS X or Windows XP. I could install this on my grandparent's PC and they wouldnt be totally lost. Yet it still has a highly functional Linux core for geeks like me.

Troll away.

hmmm..... nice!

[balbord]

typing this from my brand new rh8! smooth as silk! only problem is the damn mouse's wheel! stupid generic brand rodents!!!

Her comment on MP3s shows a lack of understanding

[hayden]

Red Hat decided to not include mp3 libraries on their OS.

Be paid that $50-60,000 USD needed to include mp3s on its BeOS back in year 2000,

These two comments shows she has no idea what she is talking about when it comes to the mp3 issue. The company that licences the mp3 patent (which I have no hope of even a reasonable spelling of) have recently changed the wording of the licence. They may claim that the intent of the licence hasn't changed but that is completely irrelevant. It's the wording that matters and as it stands RedHat is in a very murky area of the licence which the totally free as in beer distros don't have to worry about. One of these days the open source community is going to realise that good intentions aren't worth shit (as has been proven again and again). If it's not explicitly written down then you may as well start wearing your pants around your ankles and practice bending over.

The second point about Be doesn't apply to RedHat either. The licencing on BeOS was such that if you paid for it then you couldn't redistribute it but if you didn't pay for it then you could. This is allowed by the mp3 licence in that they are only interested if money changes hands and at that point they want some. This allowed Be to buy the unlimited mp3 licence and be done with it.

RedHat can't do this because they can't restrict the redistribution of the software without being in violation of licence and so can't distribute it at all. Also they can't buy the unlimited licence because that is not transferable and only applies to them (so others can't redistribute their distribution, back to square one).

The author seems to think RedHat is in a pretty good financial position and if they are to stay that way then they can't trust the good intentions of PR people and walk into legal minefields and get their arses sued off when it turns out the PR people are full of shit (a rarity but it does happen).

Defending The UNIX Way

[jmorris42]

UNIX is not just an Operating System, it is a culture. If I (in the US) went to France I wouldn't be stupid enough to bitch and moan about not being able to understand all of that "confusing French crap." I know enough to realize a) it isn't confusing to THEM, b) it won't be confusing to ME once I pick up some of their language and way of doing things and c) they probably think my most of my ways are just as odd.

Expecting the citizens of UNIXland to toss out thirty YEARS of tradition, lore, culture and undisputed success (why else are all these philistines wanting in?) to satisfy some ignorant savages who can't be bothered to pick up a fscking "Dummies" book isn't a very realistic expectation.

Re:Defending The UNIX Way

[Master of Transhuman]

Which is why UNIX will eventually go away as Linux improves enough to take over, and eventually Linux too will go away when someone with money finally decides to do an OS correctly...

It's fucking software, not a culture... Do it right, or get put out of business at some point...

(Still waiting for someone to do it to Windows... Clearly the UNIX people aren't up to it...)

Partitioning to make upgrades easy

[knorthern knight]

> excuse me? you are obviousally some kind of wacked newbie...
> a clean fdisk/format/install is ALWAYS better than any upgrade.
> anyone saying differently is an idiot.

hda1 (primary) / (4 gigs)
hda5 (logical) swap (256 megs)
hda6 (logical) /var (256 megs)
hda7 (logical) /misc (the rest of the bleeping harddrive)

Virgin install
==============
Immediately after install
- log on as root
- mv /home /misc/home
- ln -s /misc/home /home
- mv /usr/local /misc/local
- ln -s /misc/local /usr/local

Upgrade
=======
- cp -R /etc /misc/etc
- blow away hda5
- install new version

Immediately after install
- log on as root
- rm /home
- ln -s /misc/home /home
- rm /usr/local
- ln -s /misc/local /usr/local

And you're back to your old user setup. Look at /misc/etc for config settings. There; isn't it easy ?

Logout shortcut

[Sam the Nemesis]

The reviewer lady is cribbing about having no shortcut to logout from WM. I don't know about KDE/Gnome shipped with RH 8, but on my RH 7.2 with KDE 2.2, you can popup the start menu using Alt+F1, and from there select "Logout". I'm sure there must be a shortcut in Gnome too.

The Lady should do her homework well before putting in her comments.

Loadlin bangs

[r6144]

I have always used LOADLIN (start linux from dos), so that my mom won't be confused by some new bootloaders.

Upgraded to kernel-2.4.18-14 (from 2.4.18-10 of RH7.3).

Loadlin crashed. Booting from a floppy directly failed too. Looks as if the kernel is too big for these things to handle it properly.

GRUB works --- but then I'll have to setup GRUB just for a kernel that is only 4 builds newer --- at the cost of confusing everyone else.

SECURITY ALERT! AVOID THIS MIRROR

[Billly Gates]

This ftp site has been compromised. If you attempt to log on, the server will record your ip and try to crack into your system by scanning for weak ports! MY system was probably cracked since its sending all sorts of data to 213.168.33.38 after doing a whois I found out it is the standard IP of this ftp server! My guess is that it logs whoever comes in and then try's to crack the ports from the recorded IP address. Thank god I have a firewall. People reading this just beware and check your firewall logs if you used this ftp site and make sure you block out the ip adress I mentioned above. I already emailed the admin on this server about the compromise. Has anyone else who tried to download from this mirror have similiar problems?

PLUS 10 this guy!!!!

[cheekyboy]

I agree 100%

You dont see engineers that make nuclear power plants designing the brochures do you.

Re:Red Hat is void of multimedia, but there is hop

[Odinson]

It's good. It's actually very good. Dist-upgrades are effective with little more tweaking than Debian.

Fear the apt. Love the apt. Thank the Debian.

;)

Don't use mirrors.hiwaay.net mirror! Bad copy!

[shutton]

Probably too late, but for those grazing this story later...

The ISO image for disc1 on Hiwaay's mirror is corrupt. It has a large "nulled" section. Don't know if this affects other mirror sites.

ERP on linux

[crucini]

SAP client and server both run on Linux. The supported client is the Java one. See google.

Is their Linux support lacking? Or is your SAP reseller slow to recommend and support Linux?

Source for Linux games

[AnotherScratchMonkey]

Check out Tux Games. Lots of native games. I'm sure others can list lots more, some free.

Last Post!

[alpg]

* dpkg hands stu a huge glass of vbeer
* Joey takes the beer from stu, you're too young ;)
* Cylord takes the beer from Joey, you're too drunk.
* Cylord gives the beer to muggles.
-- #Debian, celebrating the 5th anniversary

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...