Red Hat 8.0 For KDE Users (And Newbies)

pantropik writes "OSNews has been giving quite a bit of bandwidth to Red Hat's newest offering lately. This article, which generated quite a bit of controversy in the comments section, detailed a new user's 'frustrations' with the new release. The latest article, written by yours truly, is rather lengthy, explaining such things as adding 3D drivers, missing MP3 functionality, DVD decoding, using APT with RHL, and customizing Red Hat's modified KDE. At the end, I wrap up with my impression -- as a simple user -- of this 'crippled' KDE implementation. Of course, you can also check out this story, which takes a look at RH 8.0 from 'Joe and Jane User's' perspective."

Comments

Crippled?

[jaavaaguru]

I used it at work yesteday and all the functionality that I would normally use in KDE was there. It's only a desktop environment, and that's all I expect of it. The Window Manager works fine, the UI is clean and easy to use (just as it was before RH played with it) and the file manager/web browsing works just fine. The first difference I noted was that the links on the panel went to Mozilla and Evolution instead of Konqueror and KMail. I have my links on RH 7.3 at home set to do that anyway.

Re:Crippled?

[maloi]

And anyway, they don't actually link directly to the browser, but to a utility called "htmlview," which can easily be configured either system-wide or on a per-user basis to use any browser you choose.

Same here

[rash]

I had the same problem as the author of this article about the slowness.

My computer has a xp 1600+ processor, yet gedit for example took 16 seconds to start (time gedit, then close the window as fast as possible).

Some comments in the article suggested that he should change the hostname. It was possible that X didnt get it correctly, then the apps hadto wait for something to time out.

I saw that the hostname when I typed hostname in the terminal was green.rsn. But in the more standard hostname config files it was localhost.localdomain.

So I changed the hostname from green.rsn to localhost.localdomain

Problem solved. Gnome was now very fast.

So if anyone else has speed problems with Redhat 8.0 this might be worth looking into.

Re:Same here

[GypC]

The best solution is to alias whatever hostname you want to localhost. So if you want the hostname to be Cooter.Graw you would put this is your hosts file:

127.0.0.1 localhost Cooter.Graw Cooter

Cooter.Graw and Cooter will then just be aliases for localhost. (You can get rid of localhost.localdomain, but you need the initial localhost there.) So, in your case you would need to change the localhost line to:

127.0.0.1 localhost green.rsn green

MP3 is GPL issue, not Thompson

[forevermore]

Thompson Multimedia, holders of the patent in question, have not unilaterally stated that Linux distributors are exempt from the licensing fees associated with providing MP3 decoding functionality in a non-free product.

It's my understanding that RH removed mp3 functionality because of GNU GPL issues, not Thompson's licensing. Apparently, the GPL prevents including code from patented, non-open/free protocols (I don't know the exact clause, but I'm pretty sure it's true). This means that all of the mp3 players out there are actually in violation of the GPL.

Re:MP3 is GPL issue, not Thompson

[be-fan]

The relevent clauses are 7 and 8 in the GPL Interestingly, the MP3 situation seems a bit fuzzy. They say that if you cannot redistribute the source freely (because of patents), then you cannot distribute the program at all. This does not necessarily mean that a GPL program cannot implemented patented non-open/free protocols. It just means that it can't implement such protocols if they require a license fee per copy, which until recently MP3 did not. Also, since most MP3 players are distributed mainly as source, it is questionable whether they violate the GPL. After all, FreeType includes the bytecode interpreter in the source, but that doesn't violate Apple's patent unless an actual product (binary) is generated with the bytecode interpreter enabled.

read the release notes if you want dvd playback!

[iamwoodyjones]

Man, I skipped them and ended up getting burned bad! They made it where you can't enable Direct Memory access on your dvd player unless you modify /etc/modules.conf and put a options line in it. I banged my head on my desk for hours wondering why I couldn't get my DVD player to work right until I read a note on Ogle's FAQ. So, just a reminder to all you DVD playing cats out there, read the release notes!

DMA is disabled on CD-ROM drives in this release in a different but more reliable way than previously. If you are sure that your CD-ROM drive is capable of IDE DMA, place the following line in the /etc/modules.conf file:

options ide-cd dma=1

Re:I feel for the writer

[bytor4232]

Linux is not getting bloated, some distros are. I use Debian and can fit my entire os and every app I need on one CD. I put a PGI installer, which was trivial to do, and started handing it out. People have been loving it. Not to mention that you can just download a net installer which is alittle over 150 megs and let the installation process download just the packages you want.

Or you can go the http://www.linuxfromscratch.org route and kiss a social life goodbye.

Re:Just great!

[bassman2k]

Try rsync'ing it from a mirror. Find one that supports rsync on http://freshrpms.net/mirrors/psyche.html, then do:

rsync -Pzrv --size-only rsync://(rsync site you found)/(path to site's iso dir)/ .

to download all 6(?) ISOs under the local directory.

For example, to download from mcs.anl.gov, type:

rsync -Pzrv --size-only rsync://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/redhat/redhat/linux/8.0 /en/iso/ .

If the download is interrupted, just enter the command again from the same directory and rsync will continue where it left off. Another advantage is rsync will compress the download on the fly.

(I hope I didn't just start the first rsync DoS from /.!)

Re:I feel for the writer

[Platinum Dragon]

I'll have to be one of those "works great here" types.

PII-266. 224 MB RAM. 6.4 GB HD.

Runs fine.

Balsa starts up fast. Galeon starts up fast. Mozilla starts up fairly fast. The only thing really slow starting up is OpenOffice. Hell, I have less trouble running DivX videos on this than on my folks' Celery 500 with 256 MB RAM.

Got the httpd running. Got named running. Got sshd running. Nautilus sits in the background doing Kosh-knows-what.

Distro? Red Hat 7.3. May go to 8 or Mandrake 9 if I can get my hands on some CDs.

I couldn't imagine running WinXP on anything less than a 600 MHz box with at least 256 MB ram.

But, that's just an anecdote...

One can always use Google to look things up...

[Svartalf]

A quick check on Google popped up the following links:

(LILO CRC error...)
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue50/tag/24.html
http://brenner.chemietechnik.uni-dortmund.de/doc/s db/en/html/kfr_50.html

(Grub cannot fit selected item into memory)
http://www.gnu.org/manual/grub-0.92/html_node/Stag e2-errors.html
http://mm.ilug-bom.org.in/pipermail/linuxers/Week- of-Mon-20020729/005620.html
http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-mtd/200 0-March/000346.html

Based on those links, I'd be chasing down something taking some of your low memory away from you so that it doesn't boot right. Keep in mind, it may still be an ailing HD as intimated in the LILO links. As for the bootloaders being ready, they are- you've got a special case that's causing you problems and many, many others don't seem to have your issues with them. I can't speak of Red Hat's support since I've not used their distribution in a while- so you may have a beef there.

But, I only want MYSQL?!?!?!?!?

[WebWiz]

I'm one of those guys that just can't resist installing a fresh new copy of the latest version of RH the day after is is released. With all the hype surrounding 8.0, I was stoked to start running this OS. Truthfully, I was less interested in the GUI and more focused on the integration of Apache 2.0, gcc 3.2..etc. The install was quick, AND painless. BUT, the damn installer would not allow me to "deselect" the base DBMSs and install MYSQL alone unless I "selected all packages individually".

Seems ODD to me....

Other than that...the only problems I had was with my own PHP code being incompatible with the latest version of PHP 4.2.x (which also annoys me). Oh, and P.S. don't try to "dump your data" out of your old phpMyAdmin, and try to import it in to the new version. IT NADA WORK.

But I must say, RH 8.0's interface is perty. Sucks there is no MP3 support..Unless you go HERE

Easy way

[Pros_n_Cons]

touch .htmlrc echo "X11BROWSER=/usr/bin/konqueror" >> .htmlrc thats it! now webbrowser is konqueror instead of mozilla, or opera, etc, etc.

Re:Didn't even get that far thanks to grub and lil

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Dude, I came across a very similar thing recently. The problem was down to a bad memory module. Everything ran fine in doze, including memory testers. Install Linux, and BOOF! No go. In the end I `mem=64M' to the lilo and BOSH! It all worked. From there it was a single matter of finding out which DIMM was duff. Once replaced, the system works flawlessly, including the infamous gcc thrashing tests.

Good Luck!

Red Hat even points it out sometimes...

[mbourgon]

This was interesting timing... I'm trying to get an 8.0 box up on our network (issues with the autosensing switch), and it just wouldn't come up on the network.

So, imagine my surprise when I saw this box pop up:

Could not look up internet address for mycomp.
This will prevent GNOME from operating correctly.
It may be possible to correct the problem by adding
mycomp to the file /etc/hosts.
(Log in Anyway) (Try Again)

So, they're aware of it. But why does it act this way? Wouldn't that effectively penalize anyone not on an active network? (i.e. dialup, etc)

Redhat 8 KDE

[iamacat]

That's really all there is to it :-) Some of the damage can be undone, but it seams a lot of effort to bring in dozens of small things that made KDE look so high-class compared to gnome. You can turn on icon scaling but the ones provided by RedHat will not not scale. Gone are the soft sounds when you do things with windows and menus. You don't even get konsole on the default taskbar and you have to hunt for it in an obscure menu! And no easy way to download mp3 plugins for various KDE media players.

The distribution is also buggy in other ways:

- If you have an NVIDIA card with a DVI cable to the flat panel monitor, you will get nothing but blue static when you run the installer. Since there is no way to run anaconda with VESA or good NVIDIA driver and text based installer is not complete, I ended up undusting my old CRT monitor to get through this stage.

- The provided kernel source is broken and you will not be able to build modules (such as NTFS or the working NVIDIA driver), unless you include rhconfig.h into modsetver.h. You also need to run genksyms by hand because Makefile somehow will not get the compiler name right.

- Redhat can't decide on which encoding to use for a locale. Try to login with russian language if you can. Now half of the programs will come up with a bunch of blank squares where text should be and "man ls" is not a pretty site. That's because they switched to UTF8 encoding but most programs and man-pages-ru still use KOI8 encoding. Basically, logging in with russian language is unusable. Even with English login, man still displays garbage instead of dashes. The only cure is alias man='LANG= man'.

The sad thing is, you will probably swallow those things (if you can use English desktop anyway). Part of it is because of smooth fonts, up-to-date packages (it's no fun to download new versions of gcc etc over dialup) and a subdued look of Bluecurve which is pretty easy on the eyes. Mostly though, it's rpmfind.net, since most of the things just work with RedHat without having to install tons of support packages.

This are the same reasons as to boot into XP though. Any suggestions are welcome :-)

Re:This is what is really needed

[FooBarWidget]

You mean something like this?
It's been around for ages, and supported by GTK+ since 1.2, QT since 3.0, and Mozilla since as long as I can remember.

So upgrade to KDE 3.0!

Re:An OS for all occasions...

[ajs]

I really can't say MacOS X is a more attractive commercial solution than XP [...] a closed UNIX variant

Wowza! I need to start paying attention. Last I knew, Darwin (the OS part of MacOS/X, not to be confused with the proprietary GUI, Aqua) was an open source project! Man, am I behind the times!

Re:Taiwan Ceases to exist, according to RedHat.

[Anonymous Coward]

Boycott Red Hat
As reported in this kuro5hin article, Red Hat removed Taiwan's flag from KDE under pressures from China. This change affects every copy of Red Hat Linux sold/distributed in any country -- including Taiwan. The Taiwan free software community have now decided to boycott Red Hat after Red Hat's week-long silence since it was requested to make a reasonable explanation.

To all friends of the Taiwan(& all the world) free software community:

It has been nearly one week since the CLE coordinator Mr. Chang, Chung-Yen (candyz) discovered (and announced) that Red Hat has removed the national flag of Taiwan (ROC) from the KDE subsystem in their newest version of the operating system. The following represents the general opinions of our community:

By removing our national flag, which has always been in KDE by default, Red Hat has denied Taiwan GNU/Linux community a freedom of choice -- the freedom to choose the flag that represents us;
By removing a flag -- any flag representing any country -- from KDE, Red Hat has shown serious disrespect towards the KDE developers and KDE users, especially those from the country at issue;
Our locale being officially part of the Openi18n standard and being supported by most Openi18n programs, it is a serious insult to all the traditional Chinese users in Taiwan for a company to brutally remove the flag representing our locale, leaving users an incomplete list of flags representing locales all over the world except ours.
Red Hat is responsible for a reasonable explanation, and even an apology, in public. During the past week, Taiwan users have joined the petition in Linux.org.tw or individually expressed our objection. Red Hat, however, has remained silent. RedHat sacrificed the long-time contributing community in Taiwan for the China market today due to discrimination based on the size of the market. How can we be sure that Red Hat will not sacrifice the freedom and dignity of larger communities in the future, doing freedom a disservice in the name of free software?

We therefore choose to make the request to the Taiwan GNU/Linux community on 10/10, our National Day, that we stop downloading, using, buying, or distributing Red Hat Linux 8.0 and any newer versions. This request to protest will stay in effect indefinitely unless Red Hat gives a reasonable and acceptable explanation, or unless Red Hat removes all these problematic box sets from the market and their Web site. If Red Hat does not respond sincerely, further actions will be taken until our request is answered, or until there are no more Taiwan users using Red Hat 8.0 or later.

We would also like to ask Taiwan GNU/Linux users to consider migrating to other more freedom-friendly, less politically-crippled distributions to avoid such incidents in the future.

Software Liberty Association, Taiwan (slat)
http://www.softwareliberty.org.tw

The official version of this article: http://www.softwareliberty.org.tw/event/redhat-fla g-en