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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.
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.
I may be bad with names, but I'll never forget your IP address
Will it be a smooth upgrade from 7.3? Or will I (once again) simply be reinstalling everything from scratch?
creation science book
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?
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.
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.
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.
Read this:
i st/2002 -August/000631.html
http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/
Noting the words like "proposed"
and this:
https://listman.redhat.com/pipermail/xdg-l
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.
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.
... 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.)
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
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
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
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
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...
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
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.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!