Slashdot Mirror
Red Hat 8.0 Released
I_am_Rambi writes "RedHat has released their latest OS, 8.0. Here is Red Hat's ftp site for download and some mirrors. If you need help there's a Howto." Jeet81 adds: "Red Hat is out with a new release, Red Hat 8.0. Looks like Red Hat is moving towards the windows XP style using its new Bluecurve graphical interface (the new default email client 'Ximian Evolution' looks a lot like MS Outlook)." So what's the verdict on Null or Bluecurve or whatever it's called? Good idea, bad idea?
Let them have what ever interface they want. This is Linux. You are free to change it.
Here is a list of mirrors known to have RH 8.0 ready:
http://freshrpms.net/mirrors/psyche.html
If it gets more people using Linux....who cares if it looks like a pink elephant.
It's about time you guy (Slashdot) got around to this!
Null was the beta, bluecurve is the new theme
Yeah... it's a good idea. Very slick, although I don't like that it ships with apache 2
It seems to me that looking like windows, while not sharing the ease of use of windows isn't exactly what's going to win customers over. That's only half (or less) of the battle. Maybe if this post read...looks and functions like windows xp (which it couldn't have said in good faith), that would be something.
Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor
Everyone applauded KDE/Gnome for developing UI guidelines, etc to unify the user interface. Yet it seems as though everyone is jumping on Red Hat's back for its effort with KDE AND Gnome. Is Red Hat becoming the Microsoft of the Linux world to slashdot readers?
... I hope this is more "quality" than standard "OMG!! FIRSTIES!"
BTW, my browser tells me this is the FIRST POST
Realistically though, they didn't hack both Gnome and KDE together, they just sorta made them "LOOK" similar. This is essential, as some people use both KDE and Gnome programs regardless of which interface they use.
It's worth a try for you redhat and mandrake users. Debian and Slackware users will probably dislike what they've done.
The mirrors have been either jammed or not updated since Monday. Now Slashdot posts links on the frontpage. I'll never be able to get the ISOs.
Any improvement on the interface whether it looks like Windows or OS X (we could only wish) is a move in the right direction.
One thing I've noticed is that it doesn't take a minute to open Nautilus anymore. Much appreciated change. Overall, it looks more polished than previous releases. (much easier for mom to use)
"So what's the verdict on Null or Bluecurve or whatever it's called? Good idea, bad idea? "
Yes... one of those 2. Or maybe something in between.
I cannot even believe this is Slashdot anymore!
- The release is called Psyche.
- The final beta was called (null), with parens, not "null."
- The default theme, authored by Red Hat, is called Blue Curve. Blue Curve is offered in both Red Hat stock KDE 3 or Gnome 2.
- The release date was 9-30. Is this is a news site or what?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I Think RedHat is doing a great job in releasing a distribution that is useful as a desktop & server. Combining the look & feel on both KDE & Gnome has been the topic of discussion for awhile now. The new Interface looks slick, I am looking forward to installing it.
Great Work RedHat!
If I wanted to activate my OS I would have gone with Windows XP. Not only do they plagiarise XP user interface, now they also copy Microsoft style practices! Way to go redhat...
The first question is: is unifying desktops via theming a good idea. The answer is an emphatic yes, but with the proviso that it's a damn hard thing to do well, and you have to deal with the egos of everyone involved (including your own).
The second question is: did Red Hat pull it off well. I think we will have to wait a few months to guage how successful it has been. Ximian's Gnome2-based system will almost certianly be out soon, and I think a good measure of how usable Red Hat's desktop is will be how many people plunk Ximian down over it.
You know, I run a mirror for redhat, and it's been available for 2 days. Why are we just now discussing this?
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
I only have a problem with fancy design updates when they take precedence over fixing problems that are more important to me. Of course, my problems (like the lack of robustness in mounting smb shares), aren't everyone else's, so maybe they made the right decision.
Personally, look-and-feel is pretty low on my priorities list, but it is really nice to have someone say "what is that you're using? It looks really cool".
Some men spend their entire lives trying to kill themselves for having been born. --Ross MacDonald
Anyone know if the nvidia chipsets are supported out of the box, or is it still a post install patch with the laptop version?
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
This could be a lot easier if P2P had it's act together.
BitTorrent
People who disagree with you are not automatically evil, greedy, or stupid.
The beta was a nice distro. I am glad that they admitted that ACL support was broken and removed it from the final release. Quality over features. Not something the computing world is accustomed to. Read the release notes. Nice touches, such as mkbootdisk supporting writing to bootable iso format. They are also looking out for our rights by not including mp3 support. A political statement, but an important one. Again, quality and values over features.
And it's still not done downloading the first CD.
I tried out Null when it was released, and it does feel XP-ish, only without the horrid default color scheme of XP ;)
Ximian Evolution has been out for quite a while, and it's included in most major distros, not just RH. I use Evolution (came with Slack 8.1) for my daily email.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Introducing Red Hat Linux 8.0, a user-friendly Linux operating system.
OK but does it pass the Grandma test? I can just hear myself now, "OK Grandma, type vee-eye "frontslash" etc/hosts... no wait, frontslash... no, not the one above the RETURN key... wait, yours is called the ENTER key?" Still, the "dumbing down" of the interface all in all is a great step in the right direction to capturing new mindshare.
The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. -- Calvin & Hobbes
"Real men use Debian"
That's right... All 3 of 'em do !
Those mirrors will be useless for at least a week. RH has the worst set of mirrors I've ever encountered. Months after a major release it is still difficult to find a mirror that is working, has the latest files, and not stuffed to the gills with downloaders. Even when you get on a mirror it is dog slow and times out frequently. Generally you are better off poking around university FTP sites (especially the CS department) looking for someone hosting a local mirror than you are trying to fight for the 100 aggregate download slots available on the official mirrors.
I read the internet for the articles.
The new Red Hat will be 8.0? New desktop theme? Wow, thanks for letting us know! ;-)
Seriously, though, is there something new with Evolution or is it the same UI that's always been an Outlook clone?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I had a stock RH7.3 install, which I'd then changed a bit visually (new KDE themes, etc). I upgraded to RH8 yesterday. The 'bluecurve' didn't come up, although it was an available theme in the KDE theme area. Overall, after the 'upgrade', everything seemed exactly as it was before. Couple things seemed faster, but nothing significant had changed (didn't check Apache, and apparently it's gone to 2.0, so that probably wouldn't have worked).
.kde directory, then restarting brought up everything 'new', and it looks nice. Not earth shattering, but nice. We've played around with it here, going between KDE and Gnome, and they do look very similar. Menus are the same, colors, etc. Fonts seemed a bit different between the two (Gnome fonts appeared a bit smaller) but otherwise it was fine. Not impossible to tell which you're using, but it's not a jarring experience going between the two.
Anyway, I had to completely remove my
The menu now has just one option for many things - 'project manager', 'web browser', 'email', etc. and I do think some things are grouped more logically than others. It also seems that you still get WAY too much *in the menus* which isn't useful for most people - it just overwhelms you when you're trying to find stuff. I'd suggest making a 'default' menu with fewer things, with the option of clicking a 'sysadmin menu' checkbox somewhere to add sysadmin stuff if/when it's needed.
Finally, many things seem faster - I'm assuming this is because of the new GCC and some kernel scheduling stuff. Whatever it is, it's made a big difference on this box. I'm testing at home tonight as well and expect similar performance increases.
All in all, a good upgrade.
creation science book
I personally love that you can customize Linux to look and work the way you want it to, but setting that aside, I feel the only way you can actually convince the novice computer user a shot st using Linux the UI needs to consistant across the distos. I know plenty of people I work with that took a long time to learn Windows and might be willing to give Linux a shot, but not if they are going to be lost when they use a different GUI on a different Linux machine. If it came down to a somewhat standardized look, I think there would be a lot more converts. Yea that means making it more like Windows but that seems be what 95% of the population wants...
I was struggling with ftp transfers for the last two days. They are miserably clogged, as we all expect. I was surprised to find a perfectly legitimate use for P2P file sharing networks in this - gtk-gnutella has found all five isos for me with download speeds about 40 times greater than I was getting on ftp.
Just check the MD5 and enjoy.
I have been using Mandrake for some time and decided to give Evolution a try (after years of using mutt). I liked it, but it was buggy. I don't like Microsoft much, but if they make a good product I'll use it. I used Outlook Express at work and then recently decided to try Mozilla. Man, what a difference!! Mozilla email is way ahead of Evolution and even better than Outlook Express.
So the question is, why are these folks making Evolution the default when (in my experience) Mozilla is far superior as an emailer?
"Looks like Red Hat is moving towards the windows XP style using its new Bluecurve graphical interface."
Excuse me... might you mean the OS X style Bluecurve graphical interface? Lets be honest here.. if it wasn't for Aqua.. The Luna derivative would probably never have been...and consequent derivatives.
Urgh. What a nasty ad on /. to get when
checking out the latest, greatest
Linux distro.
At least it's not a pop up ad.
is it me, or is redhat and many other linux companies scared of apple? Apple has done something for which redhat/gnome/kde/enlightenment had 10 years to try to do. That is put a face to the desktop. Apple has gone and pushed to the limits to the desktop and more. What has Redhat done? switch wms...it seems that they have tried to hard and come up with not....
I can't prove it but I think whoever designed the new Redhat UI appears to have copied much of the work I have done on the OBOS GUI (hopefully to be used in the R2 release), the only real differences being the tabbed titlebar and repositioning of some of the widgets. Not only did they appear to have copied my work, they didn't do a very good job of it. As with many other *nix GUIs, Redhat overdid the look without truly innovating in the functionality department. Paint a turd and it's still a turd, it's just a different color.
Reviewed a few days ago
enjoy
Mandrake or redhat?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Looks like Red Hat is moving towards the windows XP style using its new Bluecurve graphical interface
Maybe it's just becuase I'm a techie, but I hate the garish, large, gaudy UI's like XP's, OSX's....
Fisher-price just doesn't cut it for me.
I like Mac OS 8/9, Windows 2000, BeOS, SGI's desktop....
I could have sworn that my mirror had 5 iso's the other day, but there's only 3 there now... What's missing ?
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Those rushing out to download the ISO's may wish to note that Psyche does not include out-of-the-box support for playing MP3's or any form of decent video player (no xine, etc). You may want to check out a review:
here
But they aren`t worth this official screenshot
Ooooh I installed Red Hat! It's so fun! Also, I'm a giggling schoolgirl!
Karma: Could be worse (could be raining)
I'd really like to see the open source community do something to make using linux not just a valuable tool, but a real computing joy. I stopping use windows because I hated windows, why would I want to use a desktop that reminds me of something i hate? I'd like to see some true innovation in ease of use on the desktop with linux. Pretty icons and colors are nice, but if they don't work in a very strategic and coherant way, you break your metaphore. I have limted experience with using any linux desktops, but why when you have the freedom to do any interface you want, would you borrow so much from the company that you can view as the enemy in microsoft. Give linux a face, maybe do somehting different, let a user sit down and know he/she is on linux.
For the years I have jumped from OS to OS, I can always remember the way my gui's worked.
The start menu is ok, but I don't think thats always where the action is....lets be creative and smart!
From the LBC-announce mailing list:
"I've been getting a number of enquiries about when we'll have a cheap
version of Red Hat Linux 8.0.
Unfortunately, Red Hat have moved the goal posts again. In a surprising
move they've completely broken with their previous policy of 100% open
source. The new distribution contains a few components which are (C)
Red Hat and are *not* freely re-distributable. This has produced
surprisingly little comment but the effect is that it's no longer
possible to re-distribute copies of the standard download version of Red
Hat Linux. For the company that has up to now been the champion of Open
Source, it's a major direction change.
It's not all bad news though. The problem components are in identified
packages and Red Hat have said it's fine to re-distribute as long as
they are first removed. I therefore hope that we will be able to do a
Threads Linux 8.0. It will no longer be exactly the same as Red Hat,
although it will be functionally identical.
Cheers,
John"
-- The Linux Emporium - the source for Linux in the UK
See http://www.linuxemporium.co.uk/
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
Us Linux users tried XP. Why do you think we use Linux. From your post, you just admitted you don't have a clue.
GNU/Linux=OpenSource=Freedom
Most I've heard that tried to upgrade Red Hat 7.3 computers to 8.0, have failed. My own only runs windowmaker, but KDE and Gnome fail to launch. Some people say I should be happy :-)
The kernel only changed from 2.4.18-10 to 2.4.18-14, but my uhci usb wasn't detected automatically, so it removed my mouse, "rpm --rebuild" didn't work on the source rpms I downloaded from Nvidia (--rebuild is no longer an rpm option), Xconfigurator is gone, but the kernel seems to detect other hardware on my motherboard better because everything runs much faster now.
The discussion we had lately about bluecurve is much better understood when you try Red Hat 8.0. KDE and Gnome look so much the same that most people would probably want to choose the default (Gnome), and then they don't find all the neat stuff built into KDE (like the KDE file system with sftp support, KDE printing etc.).
Bluecurve is not good for experienced users, but seems to be a gift to new Linux users. They will feel welcome. Since only a small percentage of desktop users use Linux now, I think this is a good step on the road to make GNU/Linux the dominant desktop operating system.
Dybdahl.
I've always wanted to know what a gnome sheet looks like. Apparently you've seen too many while I have yet to come across my first. Tell me, what sort of thickness can you get these gnomes down to? How well do they hold together? Would one be suitable for a dust cover for my computer?
Running it as we speak. RedHat's buggiest release to date. Think twice before making that "upgrade". KDE is crippled. I'm going over to fluxbox after being about a year in kdeland. GNOME? No clue, looks like crap. This bluecurve thing may be a good thing to inviting "ordinary" people to linuxworld. Inviting more people means business and business is good for the defeat of Microsoft. Hang on to your hat! =)
Girls are strange. They don't come with a man page.
-- Michael Mattsson
So what's the verdict on Null or Bluecurve or whatever it's called? Good idea, bad idea?
You just like waving a red flag in front of a bull, don't you?
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
the UI of linux is it's biggest problem. if anything feels disjointed about the operating system it's the GUI above all other issues. it's just years behind in development. sit down at a macosx box and sit back down at your linux box to put it all into persepective. the other thing i don't like is all the extra crap no one will ever use that comes with redhat distros. the cd's should just copy to the hard drive and all the packages should be there to be used and installed at your convenence, but off the bat, in the original install they should just install the A+ software only per function you want. I would also be cool if the installer could prob your hardware, ask you a few questions about funcionality and then compile a custom kernel to your system. that's what I want. Less bloted distros. And as far as the gui goes, dumb it up as much as you can to get people to come over to linux, but it better be slick as shit.
-makoffee
gftp keeps retrying the download every 30 seconds until I get into the ftp site I use. That's why I'm almost done w/ downloading disc 5 as we speak. Also, look on the gnutella network. The isos are out there.
I downloaded the 3 ISOs on monday and installed Redhat 8 on my laptop and home server server yesterday. FWIW, I installed Mandrake 9 on my laptop and home workstation on monday to see how it will compare to RH8.
The Good...
Very polished... no really... VERY POLISHED! Way impressed. The new theme is nice. Yes some stuff is moved around... so what. No technical hitches at all. Everything was detected great.
The Bad...
2.4.18... what's up with that. I guess it's been in testing too long. Actually, for a X.0 release things look pretty good.
The Ugly...
Apache 2.0+PHP.... none of my PHP stuff seems to work. This was mounted straight from my 7.3 install. Some real ugly errors.
The verdict....
Apache 2.0+PHP problem is a show stopper for me. Wiped the machine and installed Mandrake 9.0. Sad since 8 is very slick. Hats off (pun intended) to Redhat for a great release. I may come back to it if I can get the PHP stuff resolved.
Mandrake 9 comments: I've had issues with stability in previous Mandrake releases. So far I haven't had one with 9. I like the autologin and tv card setup. It almost setup my dual monitor... jsut a little tweaking. Mandrake SEEMS faster and more responsive than Redhat. Haven't benchmarked though so it's just an impression. This could be the release which makes me a Mandrake Convert... and I've been using Redhat since 3.0.3! Only extra package I needed was mtx for my tape library (Redhat includes it).
Jeff
Just upgraded.
Everything Just Works. No surprises here; it's noticeably faster, probably due to the improved compiler. (I'm still running my own kernel, so that's not the cause.) I haven't seen bluecurve yet, I'm still starting up in my old GNOME config.
Han-Wen Nienhuys -- LilyPond
Most people have heard a lot on this topic, but mostly from people who haven't actually used 8.0 or Null. In fact, a good deal of the information that has been touted about the web is provably false. Some of the changes have had negative side effects that are in bugzilla, but, in my opinion as a KDE user, overall they've increased the usability of Linux desktops.
I've written a fairly comprehensive summary of what exactly Red Hat have modified about their KDE setup, and what I believe to be the rationale behind those changes. If you've read it before, it might eb worth a visit as I've made a few correctiosn and additiosn since then.
Cheers,
Mike
Alright, I am tired of these donkey posts...what exactly is so special has RedHat done that any Gimp with GIMP and too much free time can do?
"Simon Says, Fuck You" - George Carlin
That's right, just what we need a war between distro's. someone doesn't get the point... moron...
Better for what? Given that I'm a Unix developer, it certainly isn't better as a development system, I prefer a command line interface and mutt for reading email, and I can (and do) run sendmail and have email send directly to my machine under Linux. XP isn't better for me for any of those things.
Is it better for for few games I play? Don't know. I doubt it -- Win98 works just fine for everything I do under windows -- music and games, mostly, and it would be an additional $300 cost to upgrade my Win98 machines to XP. (Yes, I have three Win98 only machines in addition to my Linux/Unix boxes.) What does that $300 buy me? Well, the one thing I *know* it buys me is an invasive and intrusive anti-piracy system.
I know what I need to do with my systems, I've been forced on occasion to use various Windows systems, and I'm more productive using Unix. It's that simple. I could give you specific examples, but that's more off-topic than I want to go. The real point is that "better" is more a matter of opinion than anything else, and I can guarentee that XP is *not* better for at least 95% of the real work I do.
Sean.
If you don't like it, use another one. And nobody dictates you what to use. Unlike some other companies..
;-)
.. and that is all that matters! Damnit!
:-p
For my part, I stick with it. It is neither childish or enoying. It's plain, cool, feels right to the eye.
I still can connect with xterm to our Debian and Solaris servers. I just can do whatever I want.
Hell, I compiled mplayer which not complained about gcc being bad.
If RedHat can do their jobs better and spend less money for support with this default theme in Gnome and KDE.. well, it's a very good thing. They still support the community..
Geert
Btw, I still got some errors when installing the stuff
In order to use these links for the ISOs you'll need to boot up your MS box and get Shareaza, which is a gnucleus client (ad/spyware free). Then you can go to http://freshrpms.net/mirrors/psyche.html and add the http mirrors as a source for the magnet downloads. This is allowing me to download the ISOs from multiple sources as I speak, and it is constantly searching for new sources off of gnutella.
P CP 6V&dn=psyche-i386-disc1.iso&xs=http%3A//24.163.88. 250%3A7474/uri-res/N2R%3Furn%3Asha1%3AZW35DUEMSJU3 QNYM2LDRVEW5ZEZPCP6V
6 Q6 CX&dn=psyche-i386-disc2.iso&xs=http%3A//24.163.88. 250%3A7474/uri-res/N2R%3Furn%3Asha1%3AKJ5E7NT7W6ON H26IKEWZZR7VQDM6Q6CX
A TM ZV&dn=psyche-i386-disc3.iso&xs=http%3A//24.163.88. 250%3A7474/uri-res/N2R%3Furn%3Asha1%3AAYG67PKL7CRJ H423PLL4H4XM6V6ATMZV
6 VO HU&dn=psyche-i386-disc4.iso&xs=http%3A//24.163.88. 250%3A7474/uri-res/N2R%3Furn%3Asha1%3AL2OQQSSY363S DUY56LVV2ENDTOM6VOHU
4 DI 2H&dn=psyche-i386-disc5.iso&xs=http%3A//24.163.88. 250%3A7474/uri-res/N2R%3Furn%3Asha1%3ATZ4NG5HTP7PH 3TXEVMO4NY4VZM64DI2H
Disc 1:
magnet:?xt=urn:sha1:ZW35DUEMSJU3QNYM2LDRVEW5ZEZ
Disc 2:
magnet:?xt=urn:sha1:KJ5E7NT7W6ONH26IKEWZZR7VQDM
Disc 3:
magnet:?xt=urn:sha1:AYG67PKL7CRJH423PLL4H4XM6V6
Disc 4:
magnet:?xt=urn:sha1:L2OQQSSY363SDUY56LVV2ENDTOM
Disc 5:
magnet:?xt=urn:sha1:TZ4NG5HTP7PH3TXEVMO4NY4VZM6
Don't get me wrong I use KDE all day everyday, and Mozilla is my browser of choice (actually Phoenix is right now), and I do belive in a distributions right to package things as they see fit.
BUT to make Mozilla the default browser over Konqueror is quite a slap in the face the KDE developers.
Most of the other changes RedHat made to the KD interface I can sort of overlook, it's mostly icons and themes and whatnot. But some things should be off limits out of respect for the people doing all the work.
Just my 2 cents.
However, aside from the new Blue Curve theme RH 8.0 also contains new major relases of Gnome and Apache. Apache is also probably the most used "userland" application in the system.... So imo Apache 2 and Gnome 2 _alone_ mandates a new major release number for RedHat Linux.
Btw, I thought the short informal mail RH sent to RHN customers is probaly the the best "in a nuthshell" description of RH8:s new features:
Blue Curve is really nice for those that come from the Microsoft world. Personally I am aching for the first icon-set RPMs that give me back the default Gnome look and I don't like the menus either. The latter bit is just bad for everyone, the menus are really confusing and inconsistent.
-- Spelling and grammar errors tend to be a sign of erroneous thinking.
It could always be worse. Imagine if Red Hat followed Apple's laughable ads by getting as many gullible people as possible, many of which have a difficult time forming cognitive thoughts of their own and let alone able to speak without the use of the word um, and wonderfully showing just what they want for a user base. These are the kind of people that make up a community on a BSD based OS? Honestly...they would have to dumb down BSD to the point of your typical manager. Poor BSD, you are the greatest there is and now tainted by Apple's black plague of idiocy.
Is there a list of what's on each of the ISO images available for download? I looked and saw 8 of them. I figure the first two are probably for the install and the rest are apps/docs/tools... but which is which and what exactly is on each one?
Microsoft has delayed the wide usage of a GUI by half a decade (GUIs were already common on everything but PCs in the late 80's) and delayed the wide usage of the Internet by a similar time (Microsoft tried to push their own proprietary MSN in the early 90's).
Yet everytime I hear how Microsoft has brought computers to the masses and similar complete and utter nonsense.
Now let's look at RedHat:
Everywhere in the world, especially in Europe, Linux has already made inroads on the desktop.
Only in the USA, where a GNOME-centric distribution is dominant, Linux is pretty nonexistant on the desktop.
(Look at Usenet statistics, dammit! On non-technical usegroups the Linux-share is typically 3-4 times higher in European usegroups.)
I'm no big fan of RedHat's new interface, but I have not doubt that sooner or later they will be able to put out some usable default interface. (Yes, I do know that RedHat shipped KDE, but it was not the default and the newbie will always use the default which is why defaults are important)
What really bothers me is that RedHat will get credit for bringing Linux to the masses while in reality they have done everything to delay mass adoption.
I found Nautaulis to be too slow with RedHat 7.3 I installed gmc (Gnome Midnight Commander) and rename the nautilus executable and it booted to use GMC - yeah! Does the same trick work with 8.0?
I don't know why all you guys seem think Kazaalite and BearShare are for MP3s... They're for downloading RedHat ISO's, silly!
-David
We're on the road to Tycho.
Not that she couldn't before, per se, but she didn't really want to unlearn her Windows ways to do it! She's much more a casual user than I, and when i installed Mandrake 8 on her machine (with KDE as Desktop, using Galeon as browser) and when she went to "set image as wallpaper" and it blew up her desktop!
Galeon tried to use the Gnome Desktop and she was using KDE, BLAH BLAH BLAH. Point being, the more casual user doesn't give a damn (when they are first using an OS) about the differences and inequities between WM's and desktops. To quote my wife "How is this better than Windows?".
Now, I don't know if this push by Redhat to obsfucate the desktops from the user would fix the issue i stated, but frankly, the community NEEDS this...
thelocust[dot]org
I beleive we had a discussion on this very topic two days ago (Monday Sept. 30 2002) here on good ol /. Remember? No? Ok here is a link for you
So with that out of the way I belive the general opinion is that the FTP mirrors are all overwhelmed for the last two days. This has been my experience as most mirrors are full of anonymous users and the one I did get on has been dog-slow. I am currently on CD2 and it's oonly 50 % done. I am clocking about 5 KBs so I don't expect to burn a full set for a day or so.
What that tells me is this is a wildly popular Redhat release, and may be the breakout disto that Linux advocates need to show off Linux. This may propel Linux into Mom+Pop's home/office PC front and center quicker than anyone could imagine.
Using ((null)) for the last few weeks gave me a look at the UI, and I like it. A lot. I think Bluecurve Kicks Ass, and I have installed on one clients laptop allready, as a dual boot Win98 installation. As I delivered to my client I booted it up in Win98. Ho-hum was the general feeling from the customer. When I re-booted to (null) the sound of jaws hitting the floor was heard in the next room. Everyone to a person had to say how nice the fonts, icons, and EVERYTHING looked. They don't know much about PC's and I am guessing I will get a few phone calls about simple stuff, so let's see how it goes, eh?
I may be bad with names, but I'll never forget your IP address
There's a cardinal rule most people here seem to be forgetting. Never use a RedHat .0 release on anything but a test machine. I usually wait for the .2 release. (Posting from my RedHat 7.3 laptop - so it's not as if I have anything against RedHat in general.)
Sleep is just a poor substitute for caffeine, anyway. -Bob Lehmann
Is it just me, or is Bluecurve the ugliest theme ever? Heck, I prefer the KDE2 default theme...
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
I just upgraded to Mandrake 9.0. Yes you heard me : 9.0. I don't understand why so many of you want to go for an old 8.0 version!
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
I upgraded on a mouseless server without a GUI. The prior version was Red Hat 7.3 with a highly customized Apache config.
/usr/share/doc/httpd-2.0.40/migration.html.) It may have been visible during the system startup, but since Apache starts relatively late you would have had to have been paying close attention. I didn't notice. I'd also liked to have seen options to install 2.0 to a different directory while leaving the 1.3 version in a working state, or to revert to 1.3. Also, it's fortunate that my sites don't make use of any modules that aren't available in 2.0.
I got a gpm oops during package install that caused a minor formatting problem with the progress bar, but it didn't obscure the information or break the install.
Needless to say, managing the Apache migration to 2.0 was the biggest headache, but I'd say Red Hat did a reasonably good job of easing the pain. When you try to start Apache from the rc script, it fails with an error directing you to an html file for information on migration. That file was fairly helpful as a starting point.
It explained that my old config files had not been changed but would not work with the new Apache version, and it explained that new stock config files had been installed and where I could find them. Working with the two files was awkward without the GUI, having to Alt-F2 and Alt-F1 between terminals, but I managed to get the config file updated for my sites in about an hour. I had already been off line for quite a while during the OS install, so I didn't mind much. If down time is an issue, consider bringing in a temporary box.
Interestingly, I did choose to customize the packages that I upgraded, but I didn't see Apache there. It apparently forced me to upgrade. Can anyone confirm this? Perhaps I overlooked it.
I would have liked to see some warning or information during the installation. I'm not sure everyone will stumble onto that migration message as serendipitously as I did. (It's here:
I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. BB
Mandrake 9 is still better than redhat 8...
LOTS ofs appz,multimedia stuff,etc...
BTW,the unification of the look & feel is a great idea..for beginners..
Quanto.
I did install 8.0 last night. I was running "null" for the last week or so, and it looks like most of my problems with null were fixed. One hassle is that my laptop doesn't have APM support; like most new laptops it is ACPI only. The kernel RedHat ships isn't ACPI enabled, unforch. Easy enough to fix, of course, but annoying none the less.
My only real outstanding issues are suspend (which swsusp should cover if I can't get Toshiba's ACPI BIOS to cooperate) and scanner support.
Unforch, the latter was a problem in 7.3 as well, and I never did get it working. Worked fine in 7.2, IIRC. Epson Perfection 1200U Photo is the scanner model. I haven't really done any looking into the issue, though, just tried SANE and it couldn't find the scanner.
All in all 8.0 looks pretty nice. The root menu (or the "start menu" that has replaced it $#@%!) is still a fsking mess, with many config tools not there. I do virtually all my config using my favorite config tool though (vi), so that is mostly an issue for interfaces they've changed. Some of the new GUI prefs tools are pretty nice, though, so I may well start using them.
The AI fonts looke nice, though the only fonts available for gnome-terminal (using the std prefs dialog anyway, haven't checked to see if good ole "fixed" is available) look like shite when made small enough to fit two terms side-by-side on my XGA display. Quick install of either the old fonts or rxvt should fix that, though, and the tradeoff is well worth it for most users (nice clear text in slightly larger sizes).
In short, I approve of 8.0. The new compiler tool chain, Python 2.2.1, Mozilla 1.0.1, GTK+/GNOME 2.0, etc. made upgrading an eazy decision for me.
Debian is for weenies. Real men install Linux from scratch, using nothing but .tar.gz's!
:()
(I'm not a real man
I can understand the desire to create a Linux desktop that has the same look & feel of Windows for the user just switching to/trying Linux. But can someone show me some innovations from the Linux camp in the area of user interfaces? It seems like KDE and Gnome are directly copying Windows:
- Same launch menu
- Same quick launch buttons
- Same tray icons
- Same file manager
Many Linux users state how Microsoft isn't an innovator, yet Linux is constantly trying to imitate them! What's that trite saying about the sincerest form of flattery?
I don't know if RH is the best entry point for first-time Linux users, especially those not familiar with UNIX. However, I've started my family down the road of getting used to the Windows NT/2000/XP UI (having to login, etc) so I think they will be ready for RH in the near future.
Version 8 is a good move, and a nice upgrade (even from 7.3).
--
please cast your vote here for one or the other, and I will install the winner and let you know how it went
At last! An xmms skin that is actually legible!
You all remember that you should never download .0 RedHat releases, right?
So, what is it that makes their fonts look so nice? Seriously, I'm considering switching to Red Hat if for no other reason than the fonts alone ;).
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Not a good dustcover, but a suitable overcoat for the rainy days.
Roar Bulldogs
Listen, I love this look for the Window Manager and widgets.
However, I feel that the icons with their plastic 3-D look is too KDE-like. (I know KDE folks say just the opposite but its my OPINION).
My big problem is the fact that they ripped out all the mp3 stuff and do not include most plugins for multimedia use needed for Mozilla. SuSE has no problem shipping Acrobat, RealPlayer etc...etc...
What does this mean? A lot of noisome downloading and such to get a distro I can live with.
Also, what is up with going with Gnome 2.0 by default and not including the Gnumeric gtk 2.0 version? I know that the Gimp port is supposed to be unstable but I love the thing it works great for me. Include some of those cutting edge ports!
On the good side I like the way they integrated the system tools in a very smooth Gnome-like fashion. I hate it when system tools are not integrated well into the desktop environment.
ACK
nope, ain't just you...:-)
that thing is soooo bland makes
you fall asleep in 10 seconds just
by looking at it....
that theme's gonna be the first thing
to go, after the install...
Sorry, but I doubt seriously that a "Real" weenie could muster the courage to download RH.
--
....Windows XP's Luna interface. :-/
If you didn't look carefully you'd be wondering if you were running Windows XP and not Red Hat Linux 8.0.
How about some of you who have gotten the downloads post them on your P2P clients for the rest of us
I've been hunting around FTP servers, trying to find one with Redhat 8.0 that's not bogged down. I've noticed that the ISO's are timestamped Sept 10th? Why so old? Anybody know if that is the date that RH freezed changes on pysche?
Check out my podcast: DreamStation.cc Video Game Show
im a long time RH user, but this release made me change to mandrake 9.0 . One of the main reasons I switched from windows to linux was for the concepts of freedom and community responcibility, both of these things in my mind are starting to disapear in red hat,
/* declare all variables */
I downloaded Mandrake 9.0 last night, and I must say, Redhat would have to do something pretty spectacular to top it. I installed it on my laptop, and not only did it install with room to spare on a 400MB Partition, it comes with many lightweight WMs which are great for a machine with a mere 32 MB of RAM. After seeing the installer(which actually took into consideration that I might not have all three CDs -- something I've been burned by RedHat with several times), and seeing Mandrake resize my Windows partition automatically, I'd be hard-pressed to find a reason to move back -- on my desktop and laptop machines, that is. The server would definitely be RedHat -- It's just something that RedHat is better for.
Sorry for ranting about Mandrake in a thread about RedHat.
It's been a long time.
I was lucky enough to snag the first 4 cd's over the weekend, so I've been playing with 8.0 for a few days now.
I had the beta release null installed on a box last week that I had tried too.
Anyway, as for 8.0,
likes:
- the interface. switching between KDE and GNOME doesn't cause others looking at the desktop to be totally mystified. they both look similar, and it's been a long time coming that Redhat should've done this.
- mozilla. it's come a long way, and its turning into quite a browser.
- it installed nicely on all but one box - it didn't recognize the soundcard on a dell optiplex gx1p. running sndconfig manually after the install fixed that right up.
dislikes:
- no direct way to mount a win32 share from the desktop. Yes, I can start Konq and smb://somemachine, but can I right-click and mount it? Nope.
- no 'run' interface like win32. sorry, but I can window-key-R and type \\machine\sharename
and I'm there. Can't do that with RH.
- xmms has mp3 play-ability removed. Fine, goto http://psyche.freshrpms.net/ and grab the rpm so it can play mp3's.
- dvd playback (mpg, avi, etc) - again, gotta go get more rpm's from freshrpms because default redhat8 doesn't have the capability.
Now, I realize that before the latest Win32 OS's came out, you had to go get an mp3 player. And most people, even though Windows XP can play them out of the box now, they probably go get winamp. (I do). So can I really bitch about redhat not playing mp3's out of the box?
Sure I can. In my opinion, Redhat could atleast buy the license to include this stuff, so that if I purchase the boxed set, and install it, that would have the capability built in. I can understand they don't want to pay for the people who are downloading the iso's for free.
I also came to the realization that even though all the apps have the same look and feel, running KDE apps under GNOME, or vise versa, doesn't always play nicely. Example: I like Kmail (specifically because of the filters, and it acts like Eudora). Anyway, I ran it under GNOME. It tried to view a jpg attachment someone sent by clicking on it, and it didn't happen. Switched to KDE (which I normally use 99% of the time) went to kmail, clicked on the attachment... bingo, it came right up.
Yes, there's probably a fix for this. But I'm sorry, I'm getting tired of having to tinker to get each linux box to act uniformally all the time. Between the two here at work, the 2 at home, and the dual boot laptop, it can take a lot of time tinkering with things to get them to work. Hopefully, w/ each release of redhat this will become less and less of an issue.
Anyway, just my $.02....
tf23
http://slashdot.org/~tf23/journal
I'll just wait until the rush is over and the critical patches are out. :)
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
At least I assume it is the redhat-logos that he means. If you sell a Red Hat 8.0 based distribution you need to replace the logos with your own logos so that people know it isnt the genuine Red Hat article.
So you swap the logo package for 'emporium linux' or whatever. Logo rules are there for the obvious trademark reasons, and helping to ensure people know if they are getting Red Hat or not.
In terms of non free packages - netscape is gone and the flash type stuff is on the extra app cds or available from the vendor rather than lurking in with the free stuff.
I'm not sure quite how the logos fit in with each persons individual definition of free. What we do is basically the same as for example Debian
(http://www.debian.org/logos/)
Alan
Well, at least that's what I think is causing my problems. I'm trying to install Redhat 8 on my laptop which has an old school celeron 466 (non-mobile), and every time after install it locks up after freeing unused kernel memory. 7.3 worked great, and I had the same error with Mandrake 9. Any ideas or similar experiences? I got absolutely no response on the forums.
What?
I think the whole Internet just slowed down to a crawl.
And I'm not kidding either. Once this was posted I couldn't get to anything (including Slashdot) without waiting for ages. It's still that way... scary.
Really the price of the distro is gravy for all the work they put into the new stuff. If you can afford it, buy the package from RH, after all that's money that ain't gonna be going into MS's pocket.
I'm a SuSE man myself, and have paid for the last three versions of their stuff. It's worth it, just to have the convenience of all the disks and the books.
The boys at /. have probably been suffering from sleep depravation after too many all-nighter UT2K3 CTF tournaments.
Real men make their own kernel with nothing but a ball of string, a hammer and the instruction manual from a Norelco shaver.
But you can't tell young people that today. They are too spoiled. Why I remember hacking a copy of OS 390 onto my TRS-80 Model 1 using a 4 baud modem running Morse Code emulation. I used the RPG compiler to build a damn refrigerator. You try and do that with a sissified Make linker today and you'll be drinking warm milk that's for sure.
Nurse, I need a thumper.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
What I wonder about is the name -- *Blue* *Curve* -- looks more like greenish-grey rectangle to me..
My OpenOffice font is barely legible in comparison to this.
Random is the New Order.
We all know michael is - ehm - intellectually challanged. He's very enthusiastic about these things, just not all that knowledgeable or strong at research. We'll just have to live with that.
Stop the brainwash
Yeah, I would say this is a major step backwards. I mean even Windows 95 looks cleaner. To most people who consider a "modern" look to be a jelly-bean interface, this is a total joke.
Argh, can't SOMEONE please configure your webserver so that .iso's are not sent as text/plain.
There's nothing worse than downloading a whole CD only to find it corrupted by the damn browser because it thought it was a text file... man, that pisses me off.
It looks like every single mirror sends iso's as text/plain. Only some browsers can download file that have bad mime types like that. And I don't think Mozilla is one of them.
No MP3 support! AUGHHH! I read the release notes while installing last night.. I will re-install Mandrake over it tonight. I just dont like it. Now I realize to each his own and stuff, but if I want XP I'll install XP.. and RedHat has been getting goofier and goofier with each new release.
(Yes.. Im a candy code junkie.. but this one is just silly!)
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
Given it takes about 3 hours of trying to get on the FTP site. P2P at 10% sounds good compared to 0% because the mirrors are full and I'm tired of watching ncftp attempt connections.
Does anyone know if we need all 5 ISO images? Seems pretty bloated. What do I need to install a running system? I want to upgrade (or reinstall) from RH 6.0.
At 5 CD's, I don't think many people will download and burn the sucker. RH 7.3 actually wanted to see all 3 CD's on install. I'm really hoping RH 8 doesn't really require all 5 on install though it may depend on which items you install. But *5* CD's is a bit much, dontcha think?
-- DuckWing
Yeah, like there aren't a ton of different file managers? They give you a 'explorer' type interface because people are familiar with it. If you want innovation, use a different file manager. But some of us just aren't ready for managing files in a 3d relational database structure. Besides which, since when is Linux = KDE/Gnome? It's only KDE/Gnome that you're talking about. If you don't like the enviornment, then use a different desktop system!
For years, I've been compiling the software on my system and tweaking everything by hand. Lately, I've been spending way too long doing this [my computer is slooow], so I decided to nuke my linux install and put on Psyche.
;)
...
And I love it. It looks great, and RedHat has done a terrific job. Hurray.
EXCEPT
Imagine my surprise when, on my fresh Psyche box, I tried to install xmms MP3 plugins and found that RPM was hanging. No matter what I tried (deleting stale __db locks, rebuilding the rpm database, etc.), I continually had to 'kill -9' to remove the rpm zombie process. I can't upgrade or install new packages without rpm dying.
It turns out that there is very likely a race condition in the signal handling code in rpm 4.1, which ships with Psyche. You may or may not experience this problem, but you can follow the status of the bug at the following URLs:
bug 74726
bug 73097
bug 73134
cheers
I get very tired of hearing that RH is a wannabe M$oft, whereas the fact is that RedHat has put a lot of resources (both man-hours and financial) into producing something that anybody can (and many do) download at no cost, and as such I don't believe that RedHat deserves some of the flames they have received in /. over the last few weeks.
If RedHat succeeds in making Linux accessible, then great. Not everybody wants (or needs) to take gloves off and get to grips with Slackware/Gentoo/whatever.
I think that Redhat's idea of making desktop more like XP is fine. If we want to migrate more people into the Linux world, they have to be given an interface that they recognize. Those of us that already know Linux can change what we want. That is one of the beauties of Linux, the infintessimal possibilities the OS has for each person that uses it.
Cool, I'm one of the 3 ;-)
Let's see. Yeah, BlueCurve uses a similar antialiased bolded sans-serif font family as BeOS ..and MacOS X ..and WinXP. And they gave a much cleaner look to the icons-and-labels elements of GNOME, which shares the interface convention with BeOS ..and OS X ..and WinXP.
..and OS X and WinXP?
Or are you referring to the swoopy blue desktop wallpaper that's similar to BeOS
Let us know if RedHat stole any of your bitmaps. That would be bad--and it would be proof that they really do pay attention to the Open BeOS project. I'm sure it's right up there on RedHat's agenda with AmigaDOS.
Simnply using nice antialiased fonts in that family and designing a set of eye-pleasing color icons only shows that RedHat has a better graphic artist working for them than Ximian and TheKompany do. Which should surprise nobody.
If you use Red Hat, you need FreshRPMS.
OK, I want to know what you all would recommend that I start out with for a linux desktop machine. I know my way around windows reasonably well, I have worked in IT support for a windows only shop, but I want to get into linux. Which distro is the easiest to pick up and get started with? I have played briefly with Red Hat (7.1 ish I think) Mandrake (8.1, I am downloading 9 now) but I am open to suggestions! Come on guys, where do I start?
I'm using it now, and I have to say, this is the nicest distrto I have ever used. The default themes are good and clean, the fonts look *far* better than anything before it (with the exception of the MS fonts) and the default apps work well. OpenOffice is a tad slow to launch, but past that, the speed overall is far, far faster.
The configuration tools are pretty nice, I haven't spent much time with the server daemon config tools (those kinds of things scare me), but the user environment config tools are nice. I had no problems getting netowrk connections set up and all of my hardware detected fine. I had none of the mouse issues that Eugenia described in her earlier article.
The two things that really stand out to me are (1) the speed. Nautilus fles, it's actually usable now, even on slower(!) 450's like the one I'me on now. (2) The look, it's just plain beautiful, but of course that's a personal opinion kind of thing.
This release is definately a worthy upgrade, and finally something I wouldn't feel somewhat guilty about recommending to my non-geek friends. Oh, and did I mention that it's faster?
Thank god at least one Linux company is actually acting like a company and trying to make a profit in a realistic way.
The important thing about Open Source and Linux isn't that Red Hat has to give away their product, nor that they be "nice" to the community by keeping KDE and Gnome separate. The important thing is that no matter what, you know that you can get the source to every (important) piece of the Red Hat operating system. You can replace the kernel, the GUI, the web server. You can examine the code and recompile it yourself.
Red Hat is a company. If you want completely free, volunteer-based stuff, go to Debian. If you want a corporate-style OS, with actual help, support, integration, and consistency, then for christ's sake YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO PAY FOR IT.
Red Hat could really care less if Slashdot readers think that BlueCurve sucks, or that the new licensing scheme sucks, or that the mirrors suck, or whatever. They're in the business of selling copies and support of their Operating System, which is the Red Hat Operating System based on the Linux Kernel and the GNU tools and the X Windows GUI and the Gnome and KDE toolkits / environments.
Personally I think Red Hat should abandon the idea of giving away copies entirely. Sell the damn things. That's what companies DO. The support idea is hogwash. Support is good cash but it won't replace copies sold. Red Hat needed to win acceptance and dominance, and so it gave away binary copies of their OS.
The GPL, thank god, means that Red Hat DOES have to give away their SRPMS, at least to any code in their OS that is GPL'd. Their installer doesn't have to be GPL'd. Their makefiles and build scripts don't have to be GPL'd. They could legally give away nothing but the actual source code they used to build the finished product. That satisifes the GPL, both in letter and spirit.
Personally I think the Open Source community should applaud Red Hat for acting like a company and proving that Open Source doesn't mean amateur, or broke.
Anyone have a HOWTO link or a quick tip to get all my fonts to be AA under RedHat 8? Mozilla still looks like hammered dogshit.
Thanks!
"If there's hope, it lies in the proles..."
Let me guess.
Binary men use Microsoft.
Integer men use RedHat/SuSE.
Real men use Debian.
Complex men use Gentoo.
Quaternion men use LFS.
Gentoo, LOL... a newbies distro.
Talk about wasting time (ie. lets compile XFree from scratch, yay, I'm l33t liek Jeff K).
Actually, if you've actually tried Redhat 8.0, you'll see that neither GNOME nor KDE are default. You get to pick one (or both) during the install process. GNOME is listed first, but that's probably because of alphabetical order. The descriptions of both the desktops are nearly identical. Both desktops work equally well.
My original post is asking for help from someone to show me a different and innovative UI. Can you give me some pointers?
I am!
I didn't say that nor did I imply that.
Again, I was looking for some help here. Please show me a different and innovative UI environment that doesn't just copy Microsoft. Thanks.
I tried rh4, it was unsatisfactory, i went back to windows. I tried again at rh 6, unsatisfactory, back to windows. I am willing to try again now that 8 is out. But since it Just came out, I assume there'll be a new slew of bugs, the most important of which'll now be worked out and patches will be released, and updates. I ask all of you, how long should I wait to try to get a stable, less buggy version of the new rh8?
Get a source distro! Nothing beats a compile-yourself distribution optimized for your system in every ELF:
lunar linux
Gentoo
Rock linux
Sorcerer linux
SourceMage
In the end... binary distro's are just like windoze
Big deal... If you don't like the freakin Bluecurve theme just change it... Let's not stoop to the level of judging our distros by their cover! c'mon!
It would be really cool if debian could use a P2P network for apt. Take some load off the poor (VA?) sites hosting debian.org, and have a distributed backup if they ever go away...
Would be slower, but still fast enough for most stuff, and the whole P2P-space seems more debiany to me.
It reminds me of Microsoft's .net stylings (in Office.NET, and VS.NET), with even less borders.
On the other hand, I like the font rendering by Xft2, although it still looks blurry compared to WindowsXP. They should turn AA off for most regular point sizes.
It's xft2. Don't worry, most distros should have it soon.
I dunno about you guys but I really dont like KDE or GNOME that much. I've been using Enlightenment for years, I find it to be very stable, and IMO it looks much better too.
Hm, a nicer UI, eh? Looking at http://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib /texstar/screenshots/redhat80/snapshot03.jpg, we have
/Center/ if all the knobs and tweaks are already available elsewhere?
- preferences, *and*
- server settings, *and*
- system tools, *and*
- system settings, *and*
- control center, *and*
- configure panel.
And you think it should be immediately obvious from these items, that appear in a completely unsorted and ungrouped menu, what they mean and what the distinction is? I must admit the theme looks surprisingly friendly (if not soft), but seriously, this is painful, if not patently absurd.
Is it really necessary to make a difference between Preferences, System Settings, and a Control Center? Between System Settings and Server Settings? And is there any reason why all these should live outside the Control Center? Is there any reason at all to have a Control
Make up your mind I'd say. If you *desparately* want to supply more than one configuration item, reduce it to 'Personal Preferences' and 'System Settings', a distinction which at least has some meaning for people who already know that different people can use the computer each in their own way, but that some people may control the computer's overall behaviour as well.
The mixing of verbs and nouns in the same list is also horribly confusing. The submenus should get their own group and the rest should be *verbs*, if you want to give the user any feel of predictability at all (*Launch* Control Center. *Get* Help. *Open* Home folder). Or go the other way, with an implicit Start, Launch or Open everywhere, but then please be consistent and call 'Find Files' the 'Search Tool'.
Come on guys, I'm also a C programmer instead of a UI designer, but is it really so hard to avoid making a mess? No wonder even geeks are switching to Macs these days.
All generalizations are false, including this one. (Mark Twain)
It's because you don't know enough about using P2P to use it well. Try Kazaa-Lite. Whereas I find getting a decent transfer rate from any FTP site (or getting in at all) can be a monster pain, I get instant results and max out my bandwidth every time using P2P for this.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Red Hat 8 was released on Monday, as covered in Red Hat 8.0 Reviewed.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
You only need the first 3 cds. I only needed disc one and two, actually, for a standard desktop install. 1.5 gigs on the harddisk once installed.
The "compile yourself so everything is optimized just so; for your system only" is a fsck'ing myth. Compile two different binaries on different systems then diff them, you'll see what I mean. There is practically no difference in any way.
The compile from source idea is kinda neat if you want to learn about Linux, compiling, and such, but for real world use nothing beats the efficiency of a binary distro. Wasting time compiling stuff is just that.
Overheard on another board:
"Ya dude, I got Gentoo --- it's teh best! I compiled XFr33 myself, from scratch. man thta wsa so hrd but I got it done and now my sys is 5 times faster in Qu4ke I used to get 33 FSP and now I get 13 FPS. its rawkin dude -- get gentoo it took me 3 weeks to compile everything bt my comp is so fast now i can play 2 mp3z at teh same time!"
What the big fucking deal, redhat decided to make themes for GTK/KDE. Like a MILLION OTHER PEOPLE HAVE.
He's probably using some shitty gnu-clone... "hey this sucks it's too slow." Get a clue, dude. Use a real client.
Maybe it's because I spent so many hours of my youth at a VT52.
Maybe it's because I was happy with my Apple ][ and C64 (and as recently as Sunday was playing Seven Cities of Gold on Vice64 and enjoying it.)
Maybe it's because I always kept at least one CLI open on my Amiga desktop.
Maybe it's because I've spent so many years writing applications with simple user interfaces for rapid data access and update.
Maybe it's just me and I've become a curmudgeon and should just move off to the side and keep to myself, aside from the occasional utterance about 'youts dese days.'
Every time I get a new PC or new version of Microsoft I spend hours figuing out how to get it to stop doing annoying default behavior and trying to figure out where sh!t is, and frequently pissed off becuase there's only one way to get at something and it's buried (i.e. you have to know where to look.)
I've never considered Microsoft's implementations of anything to be best in class. More often myself and coworkers have simply given up on shaping applications and interfaces to work to our advantage, because someone who knows better than us, has taken that decision power.
If RH is mimicking Microsoft, I sure as heck hope they don't mimic them all the way, two cruddy interfaces for two different products isn't any kind of improvement in my book.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Does anyone know if we need all 5 ISO images? Seems pretty bloated. What do I need to install a running system? I want to upgrade (or reinstall) from RH 6.0.
:-)
Why don't you just do an FTP install? Last time I checked that only needed one 1.44 meg floppy disk (at least with Mandrake it does). Then you're only downloading what you need instead of 3 gigs worth of packages you won't ever install. As for the loaded FTP sites just wait a week. Nobody is going to shoot any kittens if you don't upgrade to Redshat 8.0 today. Besides, it's a dot-oh release and probably has tons of major bugs which is typical of major Red Hat dot-oh releases. (5.0, 6.0, and 7.0 were all very buggy IMHO and weren't stable until 5.2, 6.2 and 7.2). Anyway, not a flame, just another perspective. It's a waste to download ISO images to just install it on one machine if you have broadband anyway. If you DON'T have broadband or a high speed internet connection then you're on crack for downloading 5 ISO images over 56k dialup or ISDN.
I downloaded Debian (Woody was it?) the other night since I keep hearing how great it's supposed to be. I've also tried SuSE but tend to stay with RH (I guess I just know it better after all these years).
Anyway, it was like a trip through the way-back machine - a 2.2 kernel?! Clunky install and nothing I saw would convince me to change. I guess I could have worked out how to upgrade every single package on there over the next 3 or 4 weeks, but why bother? Maybe Debian will kick some ass if they ever put out another distro, but it's hardly something I'd recomend to anyone.
RH8.0 is really sweet though - the new GUI config tools actually have me using them instead of heading straight for vi, although I think I stick with the text editor on the headless machines...
Three thumbs up for RH8.0, 2 down for Deb.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Why try the rest when you can run the best?
Sorry, pizza induced fever dreams. We now return you to your regularly scheduled Linux Lovefest.
I am all for a standardized look, but it seems that RedHat has not quite gotten a look or feel down right.
Look, I love KDE. I use it at home. I love gnome, I use it at work. But I think RedHat should choose just one to focus the corporate desktop on. If they take Gnome, great, if they take KDE, great too. If they take Blackbox, fine.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
ftp://mirrors.kernel.org/redhat.readme We have disabled redhat mirror access to prevent denial of service on kernel archive updates. When excitement over rh8 dies down or a fix is in place, we will reopen access.
Other than Red Hat 8, obviously, are there any other distros that currently or will include it by default?
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
But those screenshots are meaningless.
.jpegs, which means they have a loss of image quality, which blurs the fonts, making them look nicer than they would actually in reality.
.pngs, and then you can say the fonts look nice. And then show what happens when you use something other than the default GUI, i.e. if you fire up some GTK or QT or Xforms, or some of the other myriad of toolkits, each rendering fonts in their own special way.
They're
Show me some
And by the way, the fonts in those screenshots are rendered badly. They are uneven and blurred. Even Windows 98 managed to get nice looking fonts, so why does Linux have so many problems with it?
I'm still running 7.3 cause I don't have the bandwidth or the cash at the moment so I'm wondering ...
While I understand that gnome and kde apps are available on each others menus with generic names such as 'webbrowser' and 'email client' I've only actually heard of gnome apps in place of kde ones so I'm wondering what kde apps have 'privleged' status on gnome's menus?
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
This is the price we pay for commericalization. We cannot expect a commercial company to not Nullify KDE and Gnome. They have to make a uniform interface so that their corporate (and home) users get used to their interface. Its definitely a step in the right direction as far as increasing linux's acceptibility and penetration in the corporate market.
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute chat with the average voter."
--Winston Churchill
"hey this sucks it's too slow." Get a clue, dude. Use a real client.
Changing from basic Gnutella clients to better Gnutella clients, to KazaaLite, or to eDonkey won't improve speed if your ISP uses a packet-shaper to throttle all ports but the well-known ports used for ssh, http, mail, news, and the like.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'm sure others are wondering as well.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Mandrake should have it by Mandrake 8.1, Suse (who employs Keith Packard, author of xft) should default to it in UnitedLinux 1.0.
If you can't wait, you can always install gtk-cvs or a patched Qt 3.0 (3.1, which is coming out soon, should have it). Visit Keith Packard's page at http://fontconfig.org/
Redhat has really put some depth into this one:
. The Add/Remove packages is very powerful and would make sense to my Grandmother.
. Being able to change display settings in GUI are a huge step forward.
. Typefaces all look sharp, sharp.
. Nautilus rocks! Very speedy.
. Upgrade worked well with 1 exception:
. System performance overall seems faster, but I didn't do an empiric test.
The bad:
. You have to install OpenOffice from the distro CD. A previous install before upgrading won't work. However, Add/Remove packages works VERY well.
. Menus are moved all around again and not that intuitive. Lots of redundancies. Have to re-find everything. They need to stick with a specific layout in the future.
. Cut/paste to and fro the shipped Mozilla doesn't work well. Works great if you download and use 1.2Alpha.
Two very big thumbs up!!
-- IV
http://www.LinuxMedNews.com Revolutionizing Medical Education and Practice.
Do you mean Mandrake 9.1?
Yes, sorry
I've been running Bluecurve since Monday and the best part of it is that I don't even know whether I'm running KDE or GNOME and I do not care! I think that is what RH tried to accomplish. It looks good and I just love it.
I think a unified interface is a good idea for RedHat to create a standard look for a business desktop.
On the other hand for my personal use it's a bad idea. I like how KDE looks and so I will continue to use Mandrake.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Has anyone figured out how to change the default browser that the htmlview program uses? I tried changing the deafult browser with the control panel (set it to galeon), but all of the icons that launch browsers launch htmlview, which in turn launches mozilla. Of course I could chnage the launchers themselves, but this htmlview program seems like it's suposed to launch the default browser. Any ideas?
It has been said before, sorry for being redundant, but if Redhat is to be the most prominent Linux in North America, then they should start making their default setup the most usable and efficient for new users. I have sat behind many a potential Linux user and watched them battle with the simple task of simply adding a desktop shortcut or taskbar change in GNOME. On ther hand, I have seen people floored by the beauty and elegance of KDE time and time again. Furthermore, it is obvious that the best office suite available for Linux is OpenOffice.org, and the best email client is Evolution. Today's computer user doesn't want to use 5 or 6 small and modular programs just to work with a calender and download email from their Yahoo POP account.
spending a lot of time just to make Red Hat look like SuSE?
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
I would like to see P2P more integrated. You would have a "sharing" or public folder, or can easily designate one. The search function would be integrated into the same search function you use for looking locally. The "throttle controls" if you will, are integrated into the regular networking (you might want to packet shape other protocols).
Same with the monitoring function. Right now all the P2P apps out there are not "transparent". You have to worry about what "network" your accessing, and use the appropriate program.
It doesn't need to be because all of them have a similiar function, but different ways of implimentation.
Does that mean I can only choose between (1) not upgrading redhat kernels anymore (2) compile myself (3) install GRUB and confusing everyone else? Or could someone kindly fix LOADLIN?
Im running 7.3 with VMWare 3.2.
As GCC shipping with RH 8.0 has abi
changes I was wondering whether
anyone has successfully upgraded to 8.0
and tried VMWare 3,2.
Thanks.
Fred
I'll warez it just like everything else.
http://www.filemirrors.com/
h e- i386-disc1.iso&size=675315712r ors.com/search.src?file=psyche- i386-disc2.iso&size=666271744r ors.com/search.src?file=psyche- i386-disc3.iso&size=677609472r ors.com/search.src?file=psyche- i386-disc5.iso&size=679542784r ors.com/search.src?file=psyche- i386-disc4.iso&size=626262016
http://www.filemirrors.com/search.src?file=psyc
http://www.filemir
http://www.filemir
http://www.filemir
http://www.filemir
Insert sig here (slashdot) Insert cig here (Lewinsky)
What ever happened to the option of installing via ftp or nfs? I would like to do that as I don't have a cd burner.
In the old days it was no problem to make a boot floppy and do this. Anyone know if this is possible with 8.0?
If like me you took your RHCE exam on version 6.x, then this is the last version on which your certification remains valid, according to the RHCE FAQ.
Ah well. It's got a better shelf-life than some other certs, and only one of my many employers has ever bothered to check it.
Who cares, except employees and stock holders, whether Redhat is making a profit or not.
What is a corporate-style OS, and how is Debian not that style?
What is "actual help support"? And is the help that I get with Debian not support?
"Integration" and "consistency" are two more buzzwords that I do not want to pay for!
I am sure that Redhat actually does care about what the opensource community thinks of their activities. Redhat wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the OSS community.
Not giving away copies of Redhat is a bad idea right now. Redhat has to gain more mindshare and marketshare before they can stop giving away free copies as say Libranet does. But again, not giving away free copies may further alienate the OSS community. That is bad.
The OSS community should not applaud Redhat for acting like a company. I mean, Enron acts like a company, as does Microsoft. The OSS community should and does applaud Redhat for contributing to the further development, improvement, and spreading of opensource software.
Finally, Debian has been proving for years now that Open Source doesn't mean "amateur or broke". Companies are a means to an end. They are not the end itself.
Aqua is much better looking than Luna, IMHO.
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
It an attempt to look even more like Windows, the next RedHat release will incorporate the new "Bluescreen" theme...
Not to start a flame war, but rather some pragmatic advice from people who've used RH8.0 & MDK9.0 - what do you prefer, and what might work best for me?
I've been using Linux for 6 years and know it very well, so in the end I know I can tweak anything to work the way I want it to. But between RH8 and MDK9, which will make my life easier?
I currently run RH7.3 and KDE. It works very well, but I had to spend way too much time getting OpenOffice to launch when I click a MS Office file, installing Mosfet's liquid, trying to get a decent DVD player that works great (found none, sometimes xine works better, other times mplayer).
In any case, for a desktop system that:
1. Looks good or has decent themes
2. Plays mp3s
3. Plays DivX & DVD movies well
4. Connect to the Internet via modem
5. Can do DHCP & SMB serving
Which way to go?
It's actually done pretty well, for what it is.
* Clicking the double-arrow on the extreme of a menu (toolbar, drop down menu, start menu) will expand it, with the rarely used items "lowered" so you can tell what will be there normally.
* Items don't re-arrange their order, they stay where you put them, just hiding . (For the most part--file folders in the start menu being the obvious exception)
* Holding a menu open for 10-20 seconds will cause it to expand, just as if you had cliked the double-arrow.
* You can turn the feature off if you really don't like it.
The abilty to "pin" an item chiefly used for graphical feedback (like toolbars) would be nice; maybe that's part of their (un)planned obselecense.
Now, that doesn't mean that redhat == linux. I am a bit disappointed to see that now that RH takes the step to the desktop (which IMHO they should have taken long ago, when they are actually preaching against Linux adoption in the desktop marker) everybody seem to be discovering that Linux can run on desktops. Hello, have you tried mandrake ?. Mandrake also has dektop integration, my menues look the same in GNOME and KDE. The task oriented menues pick the best apps wherever they come from. It really feels integrated. But it looks like RH invented the concept. And this is simply not true.
I tried myself Mandrake a week ago with 9.0. It blew mi mind. Really really much more useable than anything else I tried. I switched my Laptop from RH 7.3 to ML 9.0. Then my home desktop. Now I'll switch my office workstation. I am configuring in 15 seconds with "point'n click" things that took me several minutes (if not hours) of HOWTOs and RTFM's and what not. Almost everything gets autodetected. SMB mounts, NFS mounts, hardware, it is really amazing.
In general, the improvement in usability I feel in the transition RH 7.3 -> ML 9.0 is similar to the one I experienced back in the day when I switched Slackware -> RH 6.0
I am not flaming RH, they do a damn fine distro. I am just saying, if you are looking for usability, may be you'll find rewarding to give Mandrake 9.0 a shot. The install will take no effort and little time. If you are looking for mission-critical stability, I cannot tell because I haven't used ML long enough to compare.
Here is the interresting thing.
most Pro Microsoft people feel the same way about linux distros.
its not that eiher OS is better, or easier to use, it is that we have spent our time learning one over the other, becuase that is the OS we are inclinded to understand.
I am not saying linux is bad, indeed it is a powerful OS. So is microsoft and it is time we set aside our differences and admit the truth.
The OSes are equal for most parts, we just dont allways have a firm grasp on how to use the other.
I can't see what's so ugly about the bluecurve theme. Of course it looks a bit like teletubby-land, but it's not as bad as XP. And then the blue corners of the window frames are a good idea - it looks as though they might be sort of interactive ;-)
The xmms theme is ugly _but_ it's one of the very few themes with clearly visible buttons for playlist/equalizer/shuffle/repeat. What bothers me most is them calling the thing "media player" making users believe it might do a lot of things it probably doesn't (like playing avis, dvds or calling home).
Dear friend, how on earth am I supposed to see what's so great about that font in OpenOffice.org? Couldn't you have scaled it up a little? Oh, and if you want to demonstrate the nice antialiased look of fonts, you shouldn't use a lossy image format like jpeg...
One last thing: psyche has both KDE's kontrol center and nautilus system settings. What I'd like to know is how well those two cooperate as far as system-wide settings (i.e. settings that are not specific for either KDE or gnome) are concerned.
*commence pro-Linux rant*
You can change whatever you want about the appearance and operation of it. Who cares if Red Hat wants to make their GUI look like windows XP. It might get more people using Linux which is a good thing no matter how you look at it. And as for the rest of us, Linux is customizable we can make it look like whatever we want, again that's just part of the beauty of Linux and open source in general: 'if you don't like it, change it!'
*end pro-linux rant*
Our greatest enemy is neither a single man, nor is it a nation, it is, as it has always been, our own greed.
It seems Apache2 is a default http browser, though, it works correctly...?
They are so courageous...
Many Linux users state how Microsoft isn't an innovator, yet Linux is constantly trying to imitate them! What's that trite saying about the sincerest form of flattery?
This release is simply the latest RedHat release (and note that RedHat is NOT the same as linux or GNU/linux), and it seems pretty certain they wanted the interface to be a combination of Aqua and XP for fairly obvious reasons - new users will feel comfortable. But there are LOTS of other options. The default is just a "lowest common denominator", someplace you are unlikely to find much of anything mind-blowingly innovative.
There are MANY innovative projects in linux, or free/open software. Like ghostscript, for example. Or apache. Or BIND. Or sendmail/qmail/postfix (prolly 95% of all the MTAs are free/open software). Like Slashcode. Like bash. Like the kazillion windowmanagers. But the default user interface from RedHat looks and feels a lot like XP which looks and feels a lot like Aqua which looks and feels a lot like MacOS which looks and feels a lot like Windows95.
there seems to be problems with perl in the rh 8: when using a non blocking pipe of a shell command, you only get the first line back instead of all the lines (this was noticed when using dvd::rip ;) )
:) Beware
:)
also a friend who has a perl script for his dxr card , on the open devfile perl segfaults
when he puts debug mode: it works
There are some problems
But many limbo/null bugs were finally fixed
So i would recommend to upgrade if you use the older beta, but if you have a stable working 7.x system, maybe wait for rh 8.1
I've installed it and it's great. Wonderful dialog and ease of use. It's a good desktop distrib.
:-)
My only gripe is the gnome-terminal is now so slow, probably due to anti-aliased fonts. Our product build takes 36 mins when run via gnome-terminal and system shows X takes up much of the CPU power, whereas running it through xterm takes 15 mins.
It seems lots of scrolling output in gnome-terminal slows the machine down a lot, to the point where mouse cursor jumps around and machine is unusable while doing compiling.
In Mandrake 9 gnome-terminal could turn off AA fonts and doesn't then show a slow down.
But it sure looks luverly
I was running Ximian Gnome, and upgraded last night to RH 8.0. When I try to login with Gnome, it says that Gnome is not installed. I can eventually get in, but the menus aren't populated, except for the "KDE Menus" -- so it seems that it's just a broken Gnome install now.
..Suggestions?
Rather than waste hours figuring this out, I'm thinking of either "rpm -e --force [ximian gnome packages]", or just starting over with a fresh install
(thanks!)
effing-a
go for blood red hat...
There is no better way to get windows users than to visually duplicate their current environment...
l8,
AC
Even Windows 98 managed to get nice looking fonts, so why does Linux have so many problems with it?
Because in addition to having trademarked names, Helvetica and Times Roman are copyrighted. In the USA, you can copyright a program that generates a typeface (i.e. a TTF file), but you can't copyright the look and feel of the typeface itself, as that's considered a "useful object" more suited to a design patent than to a copyright. (Most patents last 20 years.) In the EU, you can copyright both, giving one foundry[1] a monopoly on Helvetica for life plus 70. Most Linux distributors don't have the money to license the official versions of popular fonts, even for use in the "non-free" section.
[1] foundry n. a publisher of typefaces.
Will I retire or break 10K?
<quote>
Counter-intuitive - unless you're a woman - they seem to like trying to start cars that are already running (cue sound of gears grinding). .
If you stopped stalking all the women you're too scared to talk to, they wouldn't want to get away from you so badly.
</quote>
Maybe I'm stupider than usual today, or did you forget something between the quote and your .sig?
Ok i looked at the screen shots. It looks no different than red hat 6.2 . I mean obviously there's difference but as far as the desktop is concerned. Some think it looks like XP? Yeah if XP had a really bad hair day. Here's what linux needs. It aint' a snazzier looking desktop and it's not webcam usb support. First thing linux needs is a perfect browser like IE. You use this and I use that but we all use a browser. Mozilla, sorry, sucks, netscape, not bad, but sucks, opera, sweet, sorry still isn't IE. Konqueror, excellent, but sucks. I shouldn't have to use netscape for flash pages, then switch to opera for speed, and go back to netscape because konqueror won't do the forms on the page correctly, and then switch back to opera because netscape, galeon, and mozilla won't show the fonts correctly on a postnuke webpage even though postnuke is OPENSOURCE!!!!!!! So in conclusion, want to help linux? Sun? IBM? RedHat? Mandrake? Independent developers? THEN BUILD A ONE STOP, PERFECT, WEB BROWSER and scrap the rest of this crap until you got the flaship of what we all use most.
5 cds? FIVE? Jesus, wtf do you really need 5 cd's for? At least windows comes on one cd (at least I think it use to....2k did; I don't know about XP)
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
I it kind of makes me mad that they went though the trouble of addressing the "interface issue" and ended up using ugly icons for everthing, Why did they not contact somebody from here
That's what I said in my first post: "I can understand the desire to create a Linux desktop that has the same look & feel of Windows for the user just switching to/trying Linux."
OK, then show me please!
I'm not arguing about those innovations. I'm asking for someone to show me a UI environment that doesn't look like Windows! And I'm not talking about a skinned window manager. I'm talking about something really innovative unlike all the other desktops out there.
I'm wondering if people actually try to understand my comments before responding...
Must be you -- I looked the screenshots over and like them a lot.
There are a lot of people out there who want to skin everything, love transparent windows and LSD-inspired color combinations, and teeny screen characters only 4-pixels high (XMMS). Well, I'm not one of them.
I USE my computer.
--Richard
Get Freetype2 from CVS and use Postscript fonts. They've made a bunch of improvements to the PShinter to make things purdy.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
At last! An xmms skin that is actually legible!
I, too, thought it would never happen.
--Richard
...until service pack 3.
Heh.
guac-foo
Lots of petrified grits
">If YOU don't know how to do them then that >doesn't make linux less intuitive or less useful.
I'd argue that, if the average user finds something hard to use, then it is by definition less intuitive than something the find easy to use.
Your attitude is something the Linux community needs to get past if they want to woo the masses. Sure, the tech-savvy folks can do everything they want in Linux, but until an average person can as well, Linux won't be a good choice for the average consumer."
The interesting problem with this argument is that it can be show to be flawed by simply looking at platforms, OTHER than Windows.
Defining intuitive as being the same as Windows is a bad habit to get into, even if it dominates the market. Kind of like seeing nothing but pines, means you'll never realize palms exist.
"Intuitive:
2. Knowing, or perceiving, by intuition; capable of knowing without deduction or reasoning."
A Intuitive interface is in part based on experiences before, but also based on natural human properties. Muscle memory, how the visual system works, memory, etc. The Mac for example is said to be both, different from Windows, as well as intuitive. The Amiga was suppose to have a nice interface, or the Acorn. Now if a Mac user crossed over to Windows for example bringing both their experiences, and natural properties, and had trouble doing a task? By your definition Windows would be non-intuitive. What about the reverse? Now do you see the problem with defining intutive soley as "hard" or "easy"? One has to have a holistic approach to GUI design, otherwise all you'll ever see is trees.
As far as the latter comment you made. Linux is slowly encroaching onto the business desktop. A fertile training ground for Linux's "intuitive", just as it was for Windows all those years ago. Or did you think people were just born knowing Windows idea of "intuitive"?
personally I like the old school installer. :P
I don't know what's wrong with you youngins!
Don't you know the landing zone area on your hard drives?
Seriously though, it doesn't matter what the install Looks like as much as how many times you have to press return and enter information. Windows is almost automated, you still have to press return (and enter the damn key). But debian 3.0 was like 30-40 steps. If they get it down to 1 min, then it will be easy to install.
Just make a disc that is autoinstall, no questions, just install the thing. All you have to do is restart the thing when it is done.
Where can I download the Blue Curve theme from?
To further the UI gripes from a newbie perspective...
Where the heck do I install programs? Why? Why are there 10 different methods of installing programs?
Linux is still young. Why can't "they" address everything that is wrong with Windows and become A Better Product instead of one-up'ing the bad things? Certainly Linux has its place on the server, but I would really love to see it become a desktop OS. For that to happen, we need to address the one big financial entity that Linux has going for it right now - AOL.
In order for Linux to become hugely successful on the desktop, you will need to win AOL users.
Suggestions:
1) Instead of having oodles of different tools for configuring every small aspect of the OS, why not have a centralized place to do it? MS has the Control Panel, but I think that even this could be one-upped.
2) STANDARD INTERFACE - Bluecurve is not it. Put an interface "button" in an unmoveable location. If someone sits down to a Linux station, anyone could switch to an interface that they are familiar with. Some good ones might be: BEGINNER, NOVICE, INTERMEDIATE, EXPERT, WINDOWS plus the ability to add individual customizations. This would blow even MS out of the water in terms of ease of use.
3) File management - Tie this into the interface described above. For all but experts, most files/folder DO NOT EVEN NEED TO BE VIEWED - EVER! Hide these items from the users that don't need to see them. Instead of having programs that have to be copied/extracted to just any location on the drive, create a "package" that the OS can readily identify. The user could then be queried about what they would like to do with it (i.e. - download/save only, install to local PC, install to other PC, etc). It would be really great if a newbie (or anyone, for that matter) could click on an HTTP link to a program "module" and then be prompted to either install it or store it in the "uninstalled program modules repository". All handled by the OS. Certainly the l33t folks don't need this, but Linux would be HUGE if it were this easy to use. Again - much better than anything from MS.
4) Useable AUTORUN CD/DVD - Before Windows was announced, MS made it sound as if the AUTORUN feature would make installing programs/playing games or media like clockwork. It sucks. Currently, Linux is much worse. First, you have to fool around on the file system and look for a CDROM. Then you have to find the HOWTO on mounting it. Then you have to... Bah... While MS's implentation is much better, Linux has the capability to completely blow it out of the water. As described above, CD-based installable program modules could prompt the user with minimal confusion. None of this "choose a path for installation" - it simply isn't needed. Do you want to install this program? IF(INTERFACE == BEGINNER) THEN INSTALL RECCOMMENDED DEFAULTS WITHOUT PROMPTING. Create console-like gaming ability - this sucks on Windows (which is why MS needed the Xbox to begin with). Et cetera...
And kill Gnome or KDE. I'm not sure why there is a need for both. Again, Redhat should probably use the "interface" button to remove this decision for newbies. *That* would eventually kill one or the other since the predominant amount of new installs will be newbies.
$0.02
Not everyone has their machine hooked up. Mine isn't, but I have access to a machine with broadband and a CD burner, which is why I downloaded the ISOs. Plus they're a lot simpler for newbies, who *understand* about CDs, while installing an OS over the internet is a slightly scary concept.
A minor point is that only the first 3 disks are essential.
[This story was] a few days late.
Slashdot's new policy: don't link to an OS distribution's download site until the major mirrors have caught up. Do you question this policy?
Will I retire or break 10K?
or do you find it strange that the name Bluecurve(tm) was picked out after looking at KDE 3.0's default blue-with-curves background?
:)
Shouldn't the KDE creators feel more proud?
I have a Dual P3 machine that has been running stably for 2 years and it won't even get through the install without crashing.
I tried to install it on an old 486-120 that I have just so I could poke around at it but it has no i386 or i486 kernel. It let me complete the install without installing a kernel.
I have another P3 that has also run for years that I installed 3 times and it hasn't been stable yet. It doesn't do the firstboot stuff until the second boot for some reason. It detected but didn't enable my Ensoniq AudioPCI (1371). It also didn't enable my Dlink 530TX network card until I ran Kudzu manually. The first install froze a few times so I figured something must be wrong. I reinstalled and had all the same problems.
The machine has locked up twice since then Once was a hard lock while in X (no mouse, numlock, pings nothing) and the other time it was pingable and the keyboard lights responded but it wouldn't respond past that.
XMMS silently refused to play any MP3 I threw at it on my first install and on my last one it Segfaulted and core dumped whenever I ran it.
The install is huge and slow. It takes about twice as long for a basic install than 7.2 did.
I really like the new Tetris game. I hope that becomes a permanent addition.
The GUI is slick. I really like the new login and the font antialiasing is finally looking good in RedHat. The new icons look really nice too. This is not ready for the average desktop yet but it's getting really close, much closer than 7.3 was.
I may have just had a run of bad luck but my guess is I won't be the only one that has problems getting 8.0 stable. 8.0 has all the problems of a typical RedHat x.0 release and then some. I think I will really like 8.2.
-Eric
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
I thought I'd do my part and actually buy 8.0 from Red Hat. I bought 6.0 a couple years back, it was decently priced.
So I'm at redhat.com reviewing my purchase for 8.0. First thing I notice: UPS Ground shipping isn't an option! The least expensive option is $11 second day air. I don't *need* this in two days, I'd rather save a couple bucks and have it shipped ground. Hell, I'd settle for carrier pigeon if it'd be cheaper. The second thing: I'm being charged tax on my order. I thought tax wasn't charged on cross-state commerce..?
Combined that up'd my order by $15 that I didn't want to spend. That's $15 which won't even make it to Red Hat's pocket.
They kept getting expensive irate "customers" who bought CheapBytes CDs and wanted the customer install support that only comes with Red Hat's $50 commercial product.
I think that's pretty generous. They're letting people use all the software they made, but they've gotten fed up with support requests from confused people who bought "Red Hat" CDs from CheapBytes. If you want that support, slap down your five tens.
May we never see th
If you want the very minimal out of mplayer, yes. If you're trying to get it to run w/o blowing CPU cycles out the window (like me, with a PII/266):
./configure in the mplayer package manually about all the locations of libraries that have decided to install elsewhere from where mplayer is looking for them.
.9 branch and how the hell to make it play out your *second* sound card instead if your first.
Try to compile, find what isn't enabled, track down missing libraries, some of which have probably never been used by any other software package. Figure out how to build and install each. Get avcodec from CVS (as per mplayer documentation), manually copy it into the mplayer directory, build, find out that it doesn't compile, obtain snapshot, manually copy that in and compile. Tell
Download a font. Run script that generates font description files and font files, which you manually copy to your home mplayer directory. Set up rc file so that proper hardware acceleration is used. Compile and install kernel module for x-based matrox card. Realize that said kernel module is incompatible with devfs -- write a patch, submit, compiled the fixed version. Tell devfs about the permissions on said device by writing a few more lines manually to its config file. Ensure that mtrrs are set up on your X install (not an issue anymore with XF86 4.x era stuff). Realize that non-root (even suid to root) cannot use the RTC for timing, thanks to stupid check-for-root code in the kernel -- start su'ing every time you want to play a movie. Figure out how the hell to get the thing working with alsa
Now we can start finding codecs. Download various versions of divx4linux/divx5linux, discover that only one works properly, another simply causes segfaults, and the last plays properly most of the time but tints everything green and occasionally can't understand frames. Download Windows codecs, figure out how to tell mplayer *not* to use the Windows codecs by default to keep speed at a sane rate (but you want 'em if you're working with a codec with no native support). Set up permissions on said things.
Note: I haven't even bothered trying to get a GUI working for this, which would involve skins and whatnot.
Mplayer is a sweet piece of software, but boy is it a PITA to build properly. I think the only piece of software that I've spent more time trying to get working properly is iptables.
May we never see th
I just finished installing rh 8 on my workstation at work and a test server here. I am relizing more and more, rh isn't geared towards servers these days. Debian fits the bill better. But, as far as a desktop, rh is taking a great lead.
:) We played around with Lindows and found its got a long ways to go.
.xml file which defines the menu structure and both use it.
:)
I had to sit and look at the new desktop changes from a normal users stand point. There are a lot of simular things to windows, which will make a migration easier. The things that the Linux comunity forgets about, things like user creation wizards, hardware installation wizards, and things of that nature are starting to work correctly
The one thing that _still_ isn't done, and which pisses me off is a standard menu system. KDE and Gnome need to get together and create a standard
Open office is installed on a stock desktop install, which is nice for your typical home user or office user.
Over all, I would give it a 8 out of 10. I did encounter 1 problem with my menus so far, I had to reset everything including my panel. This is a know screaw up with all redhat updates
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Here's a list of all changed rpms between 7.3 and 8.0
Keywords are: A for added, R for removed, S for same and U# for upgraded with # being the the index of the version number that was upgraded. e.g. 2.9 to 2.0 is U0 while 1.2 to 1.3 is U1.
Example:
$ grep gcc diff-7.3-8.0
A compat-gcc-7.3-2.96.110.i386.rpm
A compat-gcc-c++-7.3-2.96.110.i386.rpm
A compat-gcc-g77-7.3-2.96.110.i386.rpm
A compat-gcc-java-7.3-2.96.110.i386.rpm
A compat-gcc-objc-7.3-2.96.110.i386.rpm
A gcc-gnat-3.2-7.i386.rpm
A libgcc-3.2-7.i386.rpm
R gcc-chill-2.96-110.i386.rpm
U0 gcc-2.96-110.i386.rpm ==> gcc-3.2-7.i386.rpm
U0 gcc-c++-2.96-110.i386.rpm ==> gcc-c++-3.2-7.i386.rpm
U0 gcc-g77-2.96-110.i386.rpm ==> gcc-g77-3.2-7.i386.rpm
U0 gcc-java-2.96-110.i386.rpm ==> gcc-java-3.2-7.i386.rpm
U0 gcc-objc-2.96-110.i386.rpm ==> gcc-objc-3.2-7.i386.rpm
"Mandrake also has dektop integration, my menues look the same in GNOME and KDE. The task oriented menues pick the best apps wherever they come from. It really feels integrated. But it looks like RH invented the concept. And this is simply not true."
Nope, it's not true. But Mandrake didn't invent it either. It came from Debian.
In fact, it sometimes didn't work in earlier versions of Mandrake, so there were plenty of newsgroup/BB posts about how to undo the "Debian menu hack."
Hell has frozen over. A first post got +5 Insightful.
:)
Other than the FP! subject, it was deserved though.
I think this is the second time in the history of slashdot that this has happened.
I played with Mandrake 9 last week and I downloaded and installed RedHat 8 on Monday of this week. So I thought I'd share a few thoughts about the differences in the distributions.
/etc/hosts, it worked just fine. Mandrake's install of apache didn't have this problem.
I've used Mandrake more, so I'm more familiar with its menu structures and way of doing things, but I hope my comments are objective. Or at least that my subjective opinions are biased for other reasons than my experience with Mandrake.
Both the installations were pretty easy. The only slight edge I would give to Mandrake is that if you are adding or removing packages it will tell you immediately what other packages will be added or removed. With Redhat, you select your packages, then it tells you all at once what dependencies are required. My preference would be a combination of these two approaches so that I don't have to say ok constantly, like on Mandrake, but I can easily make a choice about whether I really do want to get rid of efax if kde-utils depends on it. For example.
Another point against the Mandrake install is that I don't have the option to put in a grub password if I choose grub as my boot loader. And I couldn't find it in the preferences after install either.
For the desktop user, neither one of these is really an issue.
After install, I found Mandrake to be quicker and more responsive. I don't know if that is because Mandrake is using i586 compiled rpms and Redhat was 386. My test computer at work is a pII 300 with 196 megs of ram.
At first I thought it was a kde vs gnome problem, but Redhat felt slower even with kde.
As far as the look and feel, Mandrake had a reasonably consistent look to it for both gnome and kde. Yes, the themes were different, but that isn't a big deal. The menu structure, desktop icons and wallpaper were the same for both gnome and kde. While I like the idea of a common theme for both gnome and kde and think that RedHat could have executed it better. They did a good job, but I'm still up in the air on whether it was necessary.
The Mandrake menu structure is more complicated than RedHats in that it has more choices and more submenus. The upside is that the labels are more specific, including a really basic "what can I do now" menu item for beginners.
Mandrake also has a winner in the Mandrake Preferences application. Very well done. RedHat's configuration tools are just as impressive, and I prefer their theme and icons, but they aren't as convenient.
The only big problem I had with RedHat was that Apache did start. A quick check of the logs showed that it couldn't resolve the domain name (dhcp_ipaddress as assigned by the dhcp server) but once I added it to
It's really a toss up as to which one I like. So I'll have to try suse next.
I cant believe my eyes just reading the comments!
...and on and on and on - blah, blah, blah, jada, jada jada...
/. ... Geez, what a bunch o' pansies.
"Mandrake X is better than RH y, but SuSEs green is prettier"
"I can't get no mp3s running *sob*, but I got a candy blue rippoff of Mickeysofts rippoff of KDEs rippoff of Apples Aqua"
"I wanna pay for software or else it ain't a professional OS"...
Why are there so few people noticing that, for instance, default KDEs usability sux like a bag of leeches compared to, let's say E or FluxBox?
Probably because you have to compile the stuff b4 u can use it.
Seems like I'm actually growing out of
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Well, I upgraded from 7.3 to 8.0 using the upgrade in the installer, first time I ever did this.
:
It was kinda weird since I didnt get to pick and choose anything, since I did already in 7.3 I guess. Anyhoo, I was really suprised to see apache 2.0. I havent seen this mentioned anywhere and it was a but to re-do my httpd.conf file, including some weird issues with gallery and php nuke.
I have always used gnome and I like what rh has done and I doubt ill be downloading ximian any time soon, except maybe for redcarpet which I dig a lot more then up2date. I switched over to KDE to see what it looks like here (I thought kde 3.0 look pretty yet cluttered for my tastes by default). Unfortunatly, I cant get gnome to come back up in desktop switcher : I say use gnome, it says restart X session, I restart vnc, and im back in KDE. This, I dont like.
I like the ~./fonts. I carried over my win32 fonts (tahoma, comic sans ms) and loaded them up. The fonts do look pretty. I dunno how other distros are comming on this, but I think the ~./fonts thing is really handy, just needs to be noted that it can be done. It would be nice is if ALL APPS interacted with this. I opened up Open Office and it didnt have these fonts for me
Oh, the whole not labeling cds 4-5 kinda pissed me off. Im glad to see source RPMS, but since I cant specify to install with those (at least, I dont see how) and I really have no use for them, I dont wanna download and burn.
As for mirrors, I got on the indiana ftp and pulled in @ 2mbit or so. Not bad at all. I see where I can create a kickstart and do a network ftp or http install, I just wish I woulda known how to do this before. This should be a well documented feature on how to just have an ftp w/ the rpms and be able to install remotely. Oh well, :
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
1. Release RedHat 8.0
2. ?
3. Profit!
personally, I'm a mix. RedHat at work, Gentoo at home.
And subsequently punisheda tesmug1.ht ml
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/mugshots/g
If you are a desktop user and don't want any hardware configuration problems, etc... and you just want it to work... go with Mandrake!
Meh.
Red Hat, Mandrake, or any other company doing this to their distros would get hit hard with lawsuits. Yeah, P2P has it's legitimate uses, and you personally might follow the law exactly, but there's still a hell of a lot of people that use P2P solely for stealing mp3s (or piracy, or copyright infingement, or whatever you want to call it. It's still illegal.).
Until the RIAA realizes that sueing anything remotely threatening is ineffective at best, making P2P a transparent, built in feature is just asking for a lawsuit.
and as recently as Sunday was playing Seven Cities of Gold on Vice64 and enjoying it.
Dude, how did you get 7cities working? I have tried it with Frodo and Power64 on the Mac and with Vice on Linux. It'll run, but I can't actually get it to start a game. It just hangs after I hit F7 or whatever it is. You must be sooo cool and amazing to have gotten it working. Please share your miraculous knowledge. Oh please, oh please.
You only need the first 3, CD 4 & 5 contain the source code...
All of my /etc files are still in the same place, and vim still works the same way.
I agree that 5.0 and 6.0 were shady, but what about 7.0 (code name "Guinness", w00t) was unstable? This is an honest question - I never had any problems, but hear bad things about it.
in my opinion, RedHat is doing the correct thing. there is nothing wrong with them taking open source software (kde, gnome, etc) and modifying them to fit their look and feel for their OS release.
i'm tired if hearing the KDE team moan and whine about RedHat modifying their source. if this is such a problem, perhaps KDE should close up their code?
ya ya, call this flamebait or whatever, but before modding it that way, think about it and you'll know it to be true:
based on my experience meeting the gnome team, reading their monthly summaries and hearing them speak on newsgroups, i feel that the gnome team is a group of very professional people, and it shows.
however, after meeting KDE teammembers, reading their posts and reading their press releases, it's hard for me to imagine some of them as being anything but crybabies that whine and scream about every little things that doesn't taste sweet.
if it wasnt for you meddling kids!
/.'d.
Starting to download it when only a few hundred thousand people knew about it... at 4k/s was painful but bearable. Start the download, leave and come back to find the slashdot announcement and two broken ftp connections! redhats site (mirrors didnt have it yesterday) is basically
bah! slashdot! i would have gotten away with it if it wasnt for you crazy kids!
i was trying to ftp normal non-evilhat related stuff last night and found that 50% of the ftp mirror sites that i tried were refusing connections.
redhat -really- needs to use a p2p app such as bittorrent or jigdo when they do their initial releases to prevent disrupting people who could care less about a distribution that doesn't manage package dependancies. they're being irresponsible.
Linux is for weenies. Real men code their own OS using nothing but a hex editor.
It's been a long time.
Well, I couldn't really get 7.0 running on my server; X didn't work, quite a few other things I can't remember also didn't work... 7.2 was fine.
-cmh
I found the milk one -- either spiltmilk or bluemilk, forget the exact name -- and have never wanted to change. Fantasically beautiful and usable.
I use redhat 7.3 and Openbox. It supports XMMS for MP3s and MPlayer for DivX/Avi/Mpeg videos. I also have stable versions of Apache/Samba/MySQL/PHP/Perl/Gcc. So for people like me is there really any perk for updating redhat?
Png:s you want and png:s you get... so here. The fonts look nice. Which is of course a matter of taste, but...
What comes to using something than the default GUI... well, at least GTK2 and QT3 programs compile right away with AA support, others may or may not.
You can see in one shot that even mozilla (which uses gtk 1.2) and thus galeon don't have AA fonts... yet.
http://www.saunalahti.fi/voas0113/rh8/
Installed it yesterday.
I've been a KDE user for years. Logged into Gnome 2.0, figured out the keybindings that were different from KDE, and I *still* haven't even logged into KDE since installing Psyche! I think I can live with this. I'll try Psyche's KDE, so whether I stick with Gnome remains to be seen.
Attempted to switch to Evolution. The SECOND freeking e-mail I received crashed the mail component of Evolution every time I clicked on it! I was like "uhh, no." Back to Kmail.
Started KDevelop. Told it to index the KDE/Qt documentation on setup. The ht:/dig process just kept going and going and going, spidering over EVERYTHING on my freeking filesystem! I eventually had to kill it.
Maybe I should have stuck with 1024X768 resolution instead of upping it to 1280X1024. It's a tad flickery, but not bad. I have a G400 and a 19" monitor.
Other than that things are working fine.
Is it just me, or is Bluecurve the ugliest theme ever? Heck, I prefer the KDE2 default theme...
I have the same reaction when everyone begins marveling over how great it looks. Better than say, the default kylix theme...but only by a matter of degrees. Seems very subdued, where I usually much prefer more 'in your face' bright themes like keramik or orbit.
Still, enough people seem to love it that I'd say it's filling a large artistic prefrence somwhere.
Everything will be taken away from you.
As I skimmed briefly though some of the replies here, what baffles me is the hypocrisy of many linux users. There is no end to your lamenting how awful Windows is, and you will be discussing the superiority of Linux time and time again.
Yet when a linux distribution comes out with an interface similar to Windows (XP in this case), you are already praising RedHat for a step in the right direction. What happened about all these lamentations about evils of Windows? I thought you never wanted anything to do, even remotely, with Windows.
Since obviously you think this is a step in the right direction, the next time you lament about uselessness of Windows, stop and think about it. Remember the original post.
5 Discs $14.99 shipping included. No fuss no muss, just wait 2-3 days for the mail...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Slashdot should post as soon as they get the info and then repost the story two days later. At least it would keep the repost tradition alive.
2002-09-30 14:53:50 RedHat 8.0 is publicly available (articles,redhat) (rejected)
And I'm sure I'm one of thousands. Hey, let's not post the release until we have downloaded and tried it out! Don't want to slashdot ourselves off of ftp.dulug.duke.edu!
~w
sig?
In RedHat 7.2, file-globbing (* operator) in tcsh had a bug that it would silently ignore any file larger than 2GB! If you typed out the whole filename, you could work with the file, but globbing would not match it. This is fixed in 8.0.
Also in 7.2, the gzip utility could not write more than 2GB when streaming stdin to stdout (gzip -c). I was using it in a pipeline to compress backups, and it would die at exactly 2^31 bytes. This is also fixed in 8.0.
If you have written a utility that could potentially work with more than 2GB of data, please make sure to recompile it with the O_LARGEFILE option (see open(2)). Please!
I never used RedHat 7.3 so I don't know if these things were fixed in that release.
Redhat have always had the policy that binaries should be 100% compatible between subrelease versions (i.e. 7.0-7.1-7.2-7.3). Since the default compiler is now gcc-3.2, the major release number was increased.
where did you find that?
Personally, I'd rather my default settings about applications STAY across desktops. After all, I select galeon for my default *because*I*want*it*to*be*default. That shouldn't change because I used a different DE for a bit, for crying out loud.
Especially true for people who store login information, or certificates in their browser. I use galeon and Opera for various things, and it is much easier to have a default browser be sticky, so I can manage only one set of credentials.
"I already put in my login/certificate info?? Why is it not remembering it?!"
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
winamp.org, I think. xmms can use winamp skins.
After working in XP for the last couple weeks, this much I'll add: And Microsoft keeps changing the damn interface. They must just laugh 'til they pee their pants at the amount of productivity lost as new users try to refind or retrain to find that familiar way of knowing where things are and how they work. Every new version gets them profits and every new version eats into those companies which surrender hours for retraining.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
After the music and quill start, I hit space and it zips along to the credits, then wait for the f3/f7 screen. IIRC you need to change the disk image over to a mapdisk befor hitting f7 to play. Sorry can't be much more help, since my copy works...
Surely everyone knows that you shouldn't get a *.0 release of RH!
OK. I find now that xmms is behaving strangely, not appearing on the display and not playing the sounds. OK, time to look at what version of xmms I have, maybe dump it if I have an older version...but RH 8.0 hides the nice GNOME and KDE GUI layers around rpm from me, and the "packages" menu item it now gives one leads to a dumbed-down program that is fine for people used to the Windows "Install/Remove Program" menu item on the Control Panel, but which will not give me the information I need and that the previous GNOME and KDE programs for package management made trivial.
I am not as happy as I was this morning.
Close but no cigar. While this is probably the reason his scripts dont' work, register_globals is just turned off by default now. There hasn't been enough time between deciding it was bad and shutting it off to get rid of it. Script writers need some time to update their packages.
:) As far as apache 2 issues. Any scripts you have that look like:
:(
To "fix" this so that your scripts will work, (Not redhat 8 specific, should work for any platform) write a quick script that consists of
<?php phpinfo() ?>
and hit it with your web browser and look the for "Configuration File (php.ini) Path" setting. Edit/Create the file, modify/create the following variable:
register_globals = On
Restart your apache server and hopefully you will have better luck. One widely used example of a package that doesn't work is <a href="http://www.postnuke.com">PostNuke</a>.
NOW, this fixes the php issue
<?
dosomething();
?>
will not work and need to be changed to:
<?php
dosomething();
?>
As for anything else you would like to do with apache 2, unfortunately... most maintaners have no interest or time at this point to rework their modules to work with apache 2
Netscape 4.x got kicked from the distro. Red Hat 8.0 comes with Mozilla 1.0.1, Galeon 1.2.5 and Konqueror 3.something. Go Web standards!
Firstly, I think once again RedHat are clearly setting trends here. Mark my words, BlueCurve is good stuff and the other distros will be doing something similar soon. Actually, the credits for giving Linux a serious facelist first should really go to Connectiva, who sponsored the Crystal icon themes and a truckload of artwork for KDE, but that's beside the point .
One thing you realise pretty quickly using Psyche though is that the method BlueCurve uses to make things look the same is the wrong way. By wrong way, I don't mean to criticize RedHat, as right now it's the only way. However, the stock RedHat install places for instance the OpenOffice icons on the panel. Click them, and you're greeted with a Windows 98 style theme. Where did BlueCurve go? Well obviously we know that OOo uses its own widget toolkit, which there isn't a version of BlueCurve for. What's really needed then is some kind of standardised theming system, so you can write a theme once and have it run on many different widget toolkits. FreeDesktop.org would be an ideal place to do this.
The second thing that strikes you is that, at least on the surface, KDE and GNOME are so similar that there is little point having both. I pretty quickly reset GNOME2 to its default layout with a menu panel, and I think it's a shame that RedHat uses the KDE layout. For new users at least, KDE and GNOME compete based on their desktop interfaces. By making them the same, you remove a reason for having them both there.
To sum up, I think RH8 is a step in the right direction, but in some cases they went overboard. Using the same themes is a good idea. Making the inital setups identical isn't such a hot idea, even though it is easy to change them around.
Finally, there is a comment way up at the top that criticizes the layout of the preferences/settings. Yeah, that sucks it's true, but really it's about the only thing I can think of that does UI wise in Psyche. Really, don't knock it until you've tried it. Overall, it's very easy to use indeed, and there are GUI applets for virtually everything. As a long time SuSE user, I must admit I'm being seriously tempted to switch. Perhaps I'd rearrange the menus slightly, change the installed apps a bit, but I'd have no hesitation in showing this to people and having pride in it - look, this is Linux, see what we can do.
I'm not arguing about those innovations. I'm asking for someone to show me a UI environment that doesn't look like Windows! And I'm not talking about a skinned window manager. I'm talking about something really innovative unlike all the other desktops out there.
Here is a collection of window managers. There are some for all flavors. First, notice there is one for just about every other operating system standard. One for Plan9, one for Amiga (and IceWN), one for NeXT (actually, several). I know - no innovation.
Then see Enlightenment Windowmanager, which added anti-aliasing and alpha-blending BEFORE Windows and Mac did (no alpha-blending for them), as well as non-regular shaped widgets for your windows. Then pwn and FluxBox with tabbing on all windows.
But User Interfaces HAVE NOT been innovative for much of anything for about 20 years since Mac came out looking a lot like Xerox PARC. But, see the list, there are lots to go from. My favorite are the minimal memory consumption ones, like Blackbox and pwm and twm, but there is something for everyone. Unlike Windows or Mac, where you can have any flavor you like as long as it is vanilla.
the red hat installer is nice, but extremely fragile.
yesterday I was building phoenix on my RH7.1 box when I realized that the version of ld that ships with 7.1 is broken. so I went to rpmfind.net to grab an updated binutils package. no http response. redhat.com? really slow. what's going on? I try yahoo.com, and it's zippy as usual. I finally get in to redhat.com and I see that 8.0 is released and I realize there is little chance that I'll be able to find the rpm I need. so I head down to compusa to buy the disks (only $40!).
I test out the upgrade on my laptop, and it goes fine. ld seems to work, at least. as others have noticed, the default desktop look is pretty nice. it's easy to figure out what's what.
then I went to do the upgrade on my desktop. I back up my home directory and pop in the cd and reboot. the installer chugs away. the cd rom door opens and it asks for disk 2. I pop in the disk and wait.
now, I should note that this machine was built by me, and it's not made from high-end parts. still, they all work most of the time.
the installer is still hanging. I alt-f5 to the other console, which is spitting out hundreds of I/O errors. something's wrong with cd or the cd rom. whatever to do? is there a 'Skip package' option? is there a 'Cancel Upgrade' option? no, there's nothing to do except kill -9 the installer and start over, which I do.
after running through the upgrade option a few times without success, I decide to reformat and do the full install. going from disk 1 to disk 2 works fine this time, as does going from disk 2 to 3. the next time I check on it, it's at 99% with 3 packages (out of 1000's) remaining. I switch to other console and see hundreds of I/O errors. ARGHHHHH. so I start over. again, the same thing happens.
I'm no rpm expert, but here are some ways I that the installer would be better:
- install the boot loader and the kernel at the beginning, or the end, BUT INSTALL THEM TOGETHER. having one without the other is useless.
- add a 'cancel' or a 'skip package' option, even if it breaks dependencies.
- put the kernel and base X on the first cd, and reboot the machine to install the other packages. this garuntees you will have a working os regardless of media/hardware flakiness.
I've installed a lot of OSs (solaris, win32, bsd) and red hat is the only one I've had trouble with, and always because when it fails, it fails hard.
anyway, right now gentoo is building on my desktop. it's a good thing I backed up my home directory...
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
There are lots of fonts in this world, and SOMEONE who uses Linux could have designed a 'nice' one.
Then what is an office suite supposed to do when somebody sends you a .doc file that uses Helvetica and Times Roman?
The real reason fonts look shitty is because the font HANDLING is bad.
The good font HANDLING is patented. Without the hinting methods in Apple's patent, the FreeType software can't legibly render TrueType outline fonts at the small point sizes used for screen display. That is, unless FreeType 2's auto-hinter has improved dramatically since I last saw it.
Will I retire or break 10K?
One big complain is that 7.0 has a crappy version of gcc.
Can some kind soul please post the contents of the RedHat 8.0 file /usr/include/asm/param.h ?
I have to see what's in it without downloading the entire redhat kernel source rpm.
Thanks.
I lost patience with Redhat quite a while back, version 7.0 was terrible and finally put me off. Used to resell the stuff.
I use OS X.1.5 at the moment as my desktop with Fink, XDarwin, Mozilla, OpenOffice etc and it's truly wonderful, my first pleasant end-user computing experience since my old Atari ST 520FM. Dare I say it it can also run PowerPoint and Explorer, so I can open what clients send me and see things how they do. And the ability to print from any Cocao application to PDF is top!
And for servers, sod the desktop integration and all the unecessary stuff, just use Debian GNU/Linux 3.0, if only for the stability and apt-get et al.
That's my vote anyway, all credit to Redhat for continuing to improve their produce and it looks like this one is excellent and will be a winner with a lot of people.
I don't think the Mac interface is different from Windows at all. After all, Windows modelled itself after the Mac UI. KDE is not different enough from windows to make a difference.
Hey, all, I have what is probably a dumb question, but I figure that someone in here can help.
I have the ISO images for the 7.3 version, which I transferred over to CD. I created a boot disk and have been trying to do an install on an x86 laptop from it.
The boot disk loads up fine, but when it goes to do the install from the CD, it pops up a dialog which tells me that the CD is not a correct Linux CD.
My CD burning software is Nero, which I'm not all that familiar with, so I'm thinking that maybe I didn't burn the image correctly.
Any help would be appreciated. Everything that I've seen and heard about Linux looks pretty kickass, and I'm getting pretty sick of WinCrap, so it's time...
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
Microsoft didn't seem to have any trouble with "Arial" and "Times New Roman".
Arial is based on Helvetica font design. Microsoft probably has to pay royalties to the owner of Helvetica for each copy of Windows shipped in Europe.
even if I copy over my Helvetica and Times from my Windows side, the fonts STILL look like ASS on Linux.
Here are the steps to fix fonts on Linux; however, they will require a bit of patience, especially for step 2:
Will I retire or break 10K?
I tried installing the 'null' beta on an extra 800 meg hard drive. I couldn't really install anything except for the base and a few text tools (no X, gnome, etc). RedHat is not for people that don't have a few extra gigs.
Not only that, it REALLY slows down my 1.2 ghz Athlon box. Do we REALLY need to start up NFS daemons and every other daemon when we boot up (not to mention the security issues.) Seems like the "user-friendly" distros just get more bloated. I installed Debian sid on the 800 meg HD and had space for Gnome 2, KDE, Apache, Galeon2, etc.
I don't know about anyone else's install, but when putting 8.0 on a pretty standard box, I got and error from a corrupted zlib package, killing the install entirely. And this was AFTER I wasted my time "checking the install media." There goes my home directory.
Does the installation recognize Firewire hard drives?
I think the subject says it all... I thought glibc
was only up to 2.2.5. At least that is what is on the gnu ftp site.
Steve
Your right and I agree with you but downloading by ftp CAN actually be more of a bandwidth hog. I downloaded the ISO's to mandrake 9.0 because i plan on installing it on many computers and maybe more than once on a single computer. Usually i mess something up on an install and its nic to be able to restart.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Debian is really not trying to do the same thing as Redhat or SuSE or Mandrake. They're really in a class of their own in the Linux world, closest to the BSD's if anything.
/usr/share/doc, where you always know a lot of answers are to be found. There's the kernel-package tools which put even customized kernel in to the dpkg database (and make kernel compiles a little easier to boot). There's the complete lack of items in /usr/local until you put them there yourself. There's the wonderful alternates system. All these things give Debian a coherency that other distros don't seem to have. It all comes down to what you want in a distro. I always know where to go in debian because it's so coherent. I never felt that way in Redhat or Mandrake. It's just a question of priorities. If you really want GUI tools, Debian isn't the right place (yet) but if you want one of the best systems and collections of developers on the planet, Debian is a good bet.
Debian is not known for newest and flashiest. Generally, unstable can have the newest stuff well before any of the other distros should you choose to run it, but the focus is not there. It's also not on having GUI config tools. Instead it's on having a really well thought out and technically adept system. You simply don't get a better package upgrade system out of an RPM based distro. Yes, there is apt for RPM, but that's the not the same thing as having a well defined policy that all packages in the system must adhere to. You get an excellent open bug tracking system and individual package maintainers who are responsible for their own packages.
Everything official is be done via the various mailing lists making the entire development an open process from start to finish. And, of course, there's the fact that it's entirely community based. You and anyone else who wants to put in the time and energy can become a Debian Developer. This is incredibly powerful, and it allows a sense of community that I find lacking in most other Linux camps. Of course, it leads to the incredibly vocal minority of Debian users who think it's the be-all, end-all of computing, but that doesn't make it any less a compelling work.
A lot of what Debian emphasizes is under the hood type things. People rave on and on about apt-get, but they tend to ignore things like the fantastic menu system (consistent menus in all window managers) and the various subprojects like Debian Jr. and Debian-Med. Plus the ability to choose which version of Debian to track (stable, testing, unstable) is a wonderful feature.
Debian doesn't have GUI configuration tools, this is true, but it does have very powerful debian-specific tools like dpkg-reconfigure that no one seems to talk about outside of debian-specific channels (IRC, mailing lists). They require reading some docs, but that's the price you pay right now for being able to use them. There's nothing stopping anyone from writing a GUI tool for these or appending the functionality to dselect or one of the other apt frontends, so there's no reason to suppose they won't go in later. Plus Debian has a real feel to it that goes beyond the skin-deep level of having unified themes for KDE and Gnome. There's the wealth of information in
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
I think I found a bug in the RH8.0 install. While I was installing I was getting a weird XFree86-4.2.0-72 RPM couldn't be installed error, and it said that the media was bad or something. After many hours of toil and turmoil, I found out that it was trying to access the /etc/X11/xkb and /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb files, and that they were infinite links. SOOOO... If you just delete these directories before upgrading to 8.0 (I upgraded from 7.3) then the install should run smoothly!
Prozilla has both a text interface and a GUI (I've only used the colorful text UI). You provide the URL of the file you want, and it retries until it collects all the parts. You can even suspend a download and resume later (in case a roommate--D'OH!!--needs to interrupt the download to make a phone call on the modem line).
Prozilla got me OpenOffice 1.0 the same evening it was first released; after my manual downloads all timed out, I located, compiled, and started Prozilla downloading then I watched television--and it was still quicker than if I had kept retrying manually.
"Personally I think Red Hat should abandon the idea of giving away copies entirely."
I have bought several copies of Red Hat to support the company. Many of my friends have as well. We do, however, like to "test drive" it before we buy it. Just like a car. I remeber years ago when I bought Win 95 how I wished I hadn't. I think by allowing "Test Driving" it pushes a company to produce a better product because it gives the consumer more choice as to whether they think it is worth their dollars. Just like buying a car. If the ride stinks not a lot of people are going to buy it. By producing a good product people who want to see Open Source prosper will buy a copy. I am donwloading it right now. If it is as good as everyone says I will order it.
I think Red Hat should switch from linux over to the true blue FreeBSD kernel. It's much better than all the unstable linux kernels of the week.
What about that annoying bug that keeps non-root users from renaming shortcuts on their desktop? But seriously, If any distro ever wants to even attempt to come within spitting distance of challenging MS on the desktop, they're going to need to do a lot more than Mandrake has so far...
Until Linux produces a single desktop scheme better than Gnome or KDE complete with working management utilities, working multimedia applications, working SMB integration (like the capability to see shares on a Win32 server by typing \\servername\sharename somewhere) and of course, better than average support for games, Linux will continue to be a fourth place OS, after Microsoft, MacOS and BeOS, in that order. Until the Linux community decides to beat Microsoft by duplicating every ounce of integration, functionality and usability that are Microsoft's claim to fame, I will keep Linux on the server where it belongs and continue to Make Mine Microsoft on the desktop, because, hey, I want to USE my computer, not be USED by it =]
Sorry, Linux STILL sucks on the desktop
"Your CPU came with a keyboard? What kind of ghetto deal is that?" -McSuede
Redhat said they were standardizing the Gnome and KDE desktops. I didn't know that meant changing Gnome into KDE. The Bluecurve icons are way too cartoony.
Are they honestly trying to compete with OSX's Bluepill (or whatever it's called) and Win2K (obviously, XP's interface is nearly as stupidly cartoony as Bluecurve)?
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Until one of these Linux distributions come with decent fonts forget about it. Version 8, still comes with junk fonts. Why does Windows and Mac OS look so good? Cause they buy fonts. Give me a break. RedHat has bolted Sarif into the damn thing so hard that it wrecks everything.Junk free trash fonts. Forget it. When will they get it.
"2.4.18... what's up with that. I guess it's been in testing too long..."
From http://www.kernel.org/
"The latest stable version of the Linux kernel is: 2.4.19"
In the newly release redhat 8.0 distribution, we Taiwanese users found that our national flag (the national flag of the Republic of China) was removed from the KDE 3.0 Control Center. No doubt, the Republic of China is a country, and the modification made by you guys is nothing but an evil political attack against our nationality. Please show your respect that all KDE developers/users from Taiwan deserve. http://www.linux.org.tw/rh8-kde/
-Rex
Install apt and do a dist-upgrade. It'll update all your packages (including redhat-release), and it'll save on the bandwidth.
But they updated the gcc a few weeks after the initial release.
I can not in good faith agree with this
except from a home prespective
for one simple reason
Our GM is a completly clueless user and he was able to go from win98 to win XP without trouble.
The man had trouble going from win 95 to win 98
what is the issue 90% of your users have ?they use email, some office product, and an ERP
if your a decent IS shop why not dump the icon's on the desktop?
10% of the users who use more tend to be IS and should be used to change
heck between RH 6.2 and 7.2 the default boot loader changed!!!! from LILO to Grub to Anaconda
It was not a hard change, but comeon, anyone not wanting change is in the wrong industry
period
I just don't understand these arguments. I too use iPhoto. And yes, it is very easy to use.
But on the other hand, my digital camera (Nikon 4500) has just about the world's most complicated interface. It's got a shitload of different buttons of various types (plain, rocker, two-stage, hat switch), most of them have more than one use, the menus aren't laid out logically and are full of confusingly named options, and of course the whole interface is modal. I've had the camera for a while now and I still bring the manual whenever I take the camera and consult it frequently. Basically, my camera's UI is less intuitive and much harder to learn than any end-user application I've used on any platform in a long time.
So, what I'm wondering is why people put so much value on ease of use when it comes to computers but not much value on ease of use with other things. If people can learn how to use the average digital camera, then any lightweight photo editing application should be a piece of cake. How much value is there in making iPhoto easier and easier to use if most people are going to be stuck on learning how to operate their camera?
I recently installed RH7... and I feel much the same way you do about windoze. Trying to figure out where stuff is... you have to know where to look. Yeah sure, I have "find" and other tools (as I slowly learn what they are), but it's still difficult if you are new to it.
You are happiest with the one you are most familor with (at least, until you use it for a bit)
Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
Looks like Red Hat is moving towards the windows XP style
Yes, now Red Hat Linux 8.0 is more XP-ish, needs lots of RAM:
Windows 95: 16mb was fine.
Windows 98: 32mb was enough.
Windows 2000: 64mb Please. Windows XP: 512mb to have the eXPerience (usually 192 is fine)
RedHat 5.2: about 8mb 16 with X
RedHat 7.x: 64mb runs well.
RedHat 8.0: 192 recommended, what the... what it does? cuts, chops, slices, does your home work, clean up your room?
C-x C-c
Uh, WindowMaker, uh, Enlightenment, uh, Blackbox, uh, ICEwm, uh, lesstif, uh, openlook, uh, fvwm2, uh, fvwm, uh, twm, uh, how many more do you want that look *nothing* like Windows? Because these are just a few.
You can buy a computer with Linux pre-installed, too.
http://redhat.newaol.com/redhat/linux/8.0
Breastfeeding is actually a learned skill, for both the baby and the mother. So the phrase should actually be: "Nothing is intuitive, everything must learned."
'Yes, You missed something and must be stupider than usual', SHE says, as SHE mods down your ridiculous original post...
Ass.
- I am made of meat.
As far as the "Counter-intuitive" - the interface actually is counter-intuitive, but my comment re cuing sound of gears - can't you take a joke? Oops, apparently not. Sorry. .
Look, I've seen both sexes having trouble, not just with the start bar, but also running the mouse to the end of the pad, and, when it doesn't go far enough, not realizing that the have to pick it up.
The whole topic was about changing the UIs to look more "consistent" with each other.
Please don't use "political correctness" as an excuse to cover up the quirks, foibles, and weaknesses that make us interesting as individuals.
I wasn't trying to "slag women as a whole". I used a common experience to point out how something was counter-intuitive, and tried to add a little humour.
On a side note, IIRC, I said that maybe I was stupid because I didn't get it in re to your comment about stalking. I don't know if you've been stalked, but I was, in 1997-1998. She would take pictures, follow me wherever I went, track me down when I went into hiding ... this was a woman who could not, would not, take rejection. I was the first man in her life to say, "This is not going to work." When we got to court, she totally lost it, and was ordered out twice because she was trying to tell (actually screaming at) the judge how to run his courtroom, etc. So I don't think stalking is funny. There's a lot more, and it makes "Fatal Attraction" look like light entertainment, but this is not the right forum.
I didn't make ths 'stalking' comment. Read.
(and, FWIW, I really don't care to hear your stalking story, so I skipped it)
I'm tired of you. You've said more about the actual topic in your defense than you ever said in your original post. You don't realise why you're an ass and you probably never will. I've wasted enough time...
EOM
- I am made of meat.
I suspect that there may have been a problem w. slashdot's posting comments, and may have interleaved parts of yours and someone elses, in which case we may both be the victim of a bug.
As for your continual name-calling, yeah, I'm tired of it, too. Maybe you should re-think what the 'i' in 'BiOFH' means.
Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done, is
it being done, or is something to be done? Reports are now written in four
tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense, and pretense. Watch for
novel uses of CONGRAM (CONtractor GRAMmar), defined by the imperfect past,
the insufficient present, and the absolutely perfect future.
-- Amrom Katz
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