Slashdot Mirror
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."
Bought RH 8.0 Professional expecting to get support people that could actually speak English...no luck there. Four calls to tech support and I've yet to find any tech support person that could spell my email address correctly or understand English.
So I post to the Bug-Grub bug reporter thing....no answers yet.
Funny how other OSes(and their respective boot loaders) have no issues on this hardware....but Grub throws an "Error 28....cannot fit selected item into memory" and lilo just hangs or gives me a "CRC error".
I understand, nothing in the IT industry is perfect, but when I pay for support, I expect to get my problems resolved. (That's a stab at RedHat, not the Grub maintainers.) Other commercial OS vendors are quite responsive...I've even had MS tech support people on the phone for hours on end on a Saturday fixing an Exchange problem!
These bootloaders and Redhat's support system need a lot of work before corporate America commits time and resources to their products.
-ted
me me me ... I've been using RH80 for a few days now. I was initially a bit scared of the XP-ish UI, but I found it to be quite pleasant and non-annoying like the real XP.
...
/root. Most commonly, the end user is root, but probably runs as a normal user most of the time. I don't want to log out, and log back into the GUI as root, just to perform some basic tasks.
There are a few things that initially annoy me, but these are relatively minor and I'm sure they'll be addressed in the next point releases
1. The lack of MP3 support in XMMS is retarded. Supposedly, they were going to provide an alternate XMMS plugin that would at least inform the user about MP3 support, but somehow that didn't make its way into the final release. So, try to initially play an MP3... doesn't work, no information about *why*. (not a problem for me, because I just went and compiled up my own xmms, but for an average joe, this would be a problem).
2. I'm sick of Mozilla being included in these distros without any plugins! For christs sake, at least throw some java in there by default!!
3. Logged into gnome as a regular user, there should be some way to supply a root password into Nautilus to be able to manage files in restricted folders, such as
4. Some bugs... don't leave any non-gnome apps open when you log out, such as xmms or gkrellm. If you do, when you log back in, your session will be f*cked and for some odd reason, you won't be able to log out. The fix (if this happens to you) is to go to one of the many setup menus and find the "sessions" admin app, and clear the non-gnome apps from the current session and save. Then, you'll be able to log out and return to normal.
5. FIRSTBOOT!! There's a daemon that runs on the first boot, and it uses X. Sometimes, at least in VMWARE, X fails to load for firstboot, and hence, it gets skipped. Without going through the firstboot process, certain parts of the distro get broken, such as the hostname, and thus, gnome runs like crap with hostname problems.
6. Too many setup menus!! There are just too many menus for configuring the system. Seems kinda redundant, and silly to have to search through multiple menus to locate a single app because the user can't remember whether the item is in "preferences" or "system settings".
7. Get rid of the "extras" menu... just move those apps to their appropriate menu items. For example, the x-chat IRC client is located in the "extras menu" beneath "internet"... well, it should be in the real "internet" menu.
--------
Thats it from the complaint dept. Otherwise, even as an experienced linux user (and a CLI oriented programmer at that), I find the RH80 gui environment to be extremely nice to usem, wihtout many annoyances.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Does OS X run on the guy's Celeron? What about his Toshiba laptop?
I have an old 233 mHz Dell kicking around. It runs the most blessedly stable Win95 install you could hope for, courtesy of 2 intentional drive-wipes right after purchase. It is my general backup computer. I've played around with Linux, and having put Mandrakes 7.2, 8.2, and 9.0, and Lycoris Amethyst on, I can safely say that none of them 'just worked' (so far, only Mandrake 7.2 worked with my sound card without a hassle). I was thinking about RH as the next test distro, but no longer.
Anyway, the point is that OS X seems like a great system. I would love to run it. But I'm not going to go out and drop $1000 on new hardware from Mr. Jobs. I have hardware. I want to get away from running Windows on it for purposes other than games. Linux made much of its name by supporting older systems. It shouldn't be too much to ask that it 'just works' on these systems.
AHHHHHHH! I'm burning with goodness again!
- Reakk, Sluggy Freelance
RedHat says there is no mp3 support, but surprisingly there is! ;-) The trick. Mozilla :). They have by default added a plugin(plugger).
Plugger can play Quicktime, mpg and mp3 in the browser window. Well not many of us like to listen to mp3 in mozilla, but this completely refutes Red Hats claim about not including mp3 support coz "We dont want to be the first to be sued". To be frank, wether the support is in mozilla or xmms, if hypothetically there was a case of patent violation, it wouldnt really matter. Well now that the roayalty has been removed it dosent matter, but my guess is that this hindsight was there mostly due to lack of knowledge... or mebbe there is some developer sitting with a sense of humour!
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
This is really an incorrect philosophy - one that is evident in the argument that Linux is not the distribution but the kernel that is common to all Linux-based distributions. Even the modern, stable kernel of Linux runs on a 386 processor, some slow RISC processors, and a handful of other legacy chips that have pretty much long left our desktops. The kernel falls in line with these goals.
When developing for small platform devices (hand helds, tablets, etc.) one does not think "how do I fit Gnome or KDE on this little thing". On the contrary - it poses a problem that the open source community is ready to tackle. FLTK (fast lightweight tool-kit), among many others, was developed to bring graphics to small hand held devices. The spirit of "Linux", or rather the open source community and all of the software which it provides, lives on - on the hardware of old, hardware of new, and hardware of the extremely small.
The distributions which use Linux as the kernel are made up of all kinds of utilities and applications. All of which are considered modern and targetted for modern times. To be nostalgic and develop all software to run "antique" hardware is not intuitive - why not take advantage of what our computers have to offer? Do we not enjoy vehicles with anti-lock brakes, air conditioning, a quiet cabin, engines which start almost flawlessly, and all sorts of other amenities that we take for granted?
Software, as well as the hardware upon which it is run, is constantly changing - adapting to the needs of the people who use the computers and as well as the computers themselves. I find it ironic that over the years that Linux-based distributions have increasingly become more popular, more advanced, and more feature-rich the groaning has switched from "Linux doesn't have enough stuff or it isn't stable like my Windows box" to "Linux is so bloated it doesn't run on my four year old machine." Another old argument was "Linux is too hard to understand and configure" - now the argument has switched to "they hide too much of the specifics". Distributions were developed so that the users of those distributions had a convenient and consistent environment to take advantage of the latest and greatest software offerings. Of course the interfaces change over time but developing utilities to replace legacy applications within a distribution maintains a level of consistency to help, not restrict, the end-user.
Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, Debian, et al. are all attempting to take advantage of the modern offerings that our technologically elite provide us in terms of hardware and software concepts. To do so would be living in a era of restriction - preventing Linux-based distributions from forging ahead to utilize the technologies that only Microsoft could provide for (in the past).
Face the facts - most people want an easy to use operating system. Consistency is nice! Fancy features are nice! A good looking interface is nice! A faster, more responsive system is nice! It's frustrating to see people ready to tear down an honest effort of an organized entity to provide features requested by their paying customers and the comments of the open source community as a whole.
It's very confusing when the mob asks for "consistency and features like Windows" and then immediately gripes when the consistency and features are added into the distribution. Nonetheless - you have a choice. Use Red Hat's, Mandrake's, SuSE's, Debian's, or the other's offerings. Build a Linux distribution from scratch and add your home-grown, home-built installation of KDE. When a company attempts to differentiate its product to better suit its customers (paying and the open source community), be constructive in your criticism and inform the developers of your suggestions rather than finding a forum to gripe because a piece of 2002 software will not run on your 1996 hardware platform.
Ayup
I really can't say MacOS X is a more attractive commercial solution than XP is. I hate to buck the anti-Microsoft trend, but the purchase of a G4 that ships with DDR RAM it can't use just to use a closed UNIX variant because it has throbbing default buttons doesn't strike me as a smart plan.
I don't think MacOS X is the best OS for the task.
I think RedHat and other distributions like SuSE et al who are making an effort at user interface usability and flexibility are on the right track. Get adoption first by office users and non-gamers, and as the userbase grows, the applications will come. It is becoming a better OS for the task.
// -- http://www.BRAD-X.com/ --