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.

An OS for all occasions...

[Coplan]

It sounds to me that the problems are the same problems held Linux-World wide. These are common, and not necessarily specific to Red Hat 8.0. I'm a firm believer in using the best OS for the task.

As the writer wrote:
I was excited to see all the positive, glowing reviews of the latest version of Red Hat Linux. I thought, "finally, I can get away from Windows 98." "It just works" is the mantra. Unfortunately, this was not the case for me.

If the goal is to simply get away from Windows while still maintaining functionality, and you're just a hack user, I would recommend Mac OS X. If you don't have the money to buy new hardware...then I don't know what to tell you.

At this point, Linux is still not going to replace Windows or Mac OS X. And you can't expect REd Hat to solve all the problems in one release. It's a step in the right direction, but this isn't the miracle that Linux needs to attract joe-user.

Don't be so critical.

Re:An OS for all occasions...

[bricriu]

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.

Re:An OS for all occasions...

[brad-x]

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.

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!

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

This is what is really needed

[carlmenezes]

Sorry to say it, but it's high time the KDE - Gnome squabble stopped and both teams started concentrating on a unified desktop.

Consider this : given the fact that both are so refined already, if both worked together, you'd have a UI that easily bypasses anything MS can come up with and Linux becomes a viable desktop for Joe and Jane user (it already is for Joe and Jane techie).

Again, Linux NEEDS a unified desktop. I can't say it more. It may sound sad, but it has to be done.

Re:This is what is really needed

[Sylver Dragon]

Again, Linux NEEDS a unified desktop. I can't say it more. It may sound sad, but it has to be done.

I don't think that is going to help as much as some other features might.
I recently began tinkering with RH7.0, happend to have a copy kicking around. And ran into a huge mess.
My intention is to get it up and running as both a Web and Mail server, its not going to be the most powerful server in the world, but its mostly going to serve only me. Well enough, this is the type of thing *nix OS's are for right? They make good servers, right? Well, I'm not sure yet, I made the mistake of buying a Linksys NIC.
Alright, install hardware, boot machine on CD, install OS with server packages, and... Hmm, not getting a IP address from the DHCP server. Ok, check network settings in linuxconf, looks Ok. Check cable, try NIC in another machine, works there.
After a bit of web searching I noticed that there seems to be a bit of a problem with this generation of card, and the default driver. No problem, there's a new driver out, all I have to do is install it and I'm off to the races. Better yet, its on the driver disk that came with the card.
Ok, copy the driver over to the HD, and try to compile it. (Some gcc -blah -blah -blah command.) Ok, open the man page and try to figure it out (BTW I am not, nor do I have any wish to be a programmer.) After about 15 min. I close the man page and go back to the web. (10 trying to figure out what the hell I was being told, and 5 searching for the asparin bottle.)
Thank God, there are poeple out there with knowledge, who are willing to share. Ok, run the command as I found it on a message board. Hmm, says something is missing. Go back to message board, and look for more info. Ok, got it, this is a common problem too. Get more files, and try to compile those, damn something more is missing. At this point it was 1 in the morning, and I gave up and went to bed, I've not been back to it yet.
The moral of all this is that driver installation in RH seems to be hell if you are unlucky. This is not the way to attract users. Before Linux has any hope of becomeing the mainstream desktop OS, it needs to handle drivers in a better way. I can see 2 things that would have to be done.

1. If a driver is going to have a dependency that may not be in the OS by default, include it with the driver. Sure, it'll bloat the download a bit, but it will save the user from a headache. People like simple things, that's the draw of Windows, simplicity. Consider the last time you updated a driver in Windows, how many dependancies did you have to pull down off the web, do I hear none? This is one area where MS has done a pretty good job, there isn't the need to go running down dependecies, they are just there, and like most users want, "it just works."

2. Click, Click, oohh pretty pictures, hey cool its installed. Yes, its brainless, yes it puts stuff on which you have no clue about, but its what the end user wants. This is what is needed for both programs and drivers, simplicity. Again, this is somthing that MS has exceled at. Though it is partly why people hate Windows, no control, and no clue what is going on. Probably the best thing to do would be to have a "pretty picture" setting as default, and then let those people that want to, switch over to the full control interface. Again, it goes back to what the author of one of the articles said, "it just works". That is what Linux is going to have to acheive if it wants to be the desktop OS of choice for Joe and Jane user.

In closing, as much as I hear about it on slashdot, I don't think that the OSS community really wants to make a desktop for the average user. They want to have thier own "Uber-Desktop" (what is with the German usage anyhow?). They want to live in thier ivory tower and proclaim the rest of the world idiots for not joining them, but at the same time making it impossible for the average user. It reminds me of a time not long past, and an OS that has come and almost gone, DOS. The DOS aficiandos adopted an elietist attitude, and so the average home user bought a Mac. It wasn't until Windows that the basic home user started buying PC's. This is about where Linux is now, its like DOS with Win 3.1 as compared to Mac. Except, in this case its Linux and KDE/Gnome trying to oust Windows. Its not there yet, and won't be without some serious dumbing-down tools built into it. And, from what I have heard from the OSS community, they just aren't interested in doing that, so it will remain an OS for geeks and programmers, and will remain as nothing more that a footnote in computing history.

P.S. Flame away, though I challenge anyone to post a good couter argument.

Re:This is what is really needed

[Darren Winsper]

It's high time people stopped complaining about what people do in their spare time and give away for free.

The only way you'll stop people from working on either desktop is if they wanted to. Because they want to work on their respective systems, they will not switch, they don't want to.

Should we stop developing FreeBSD, NetBSD and all the other free operating systems? I'd say no, because all you're trying to do is create a dictatorship.

Re:This is what is really needed

[FattMattP]

Again, Linux NEEDS a unified desktop.

Linux needs a unified cut and paste first.

And 'select + middle mouse button' doesn't cut it (no pun intended). When I select something doesn't mean that I want to blow away what's in my copy buffer. I might just want to delete it or replace it with what is in my copy buffer.

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!

I feel for the writer

[Lumpy]

Yes, Linux is becoming bloatware. there is not one of us who can deny it. A Celeron 500 with 64 meg of ram is more than enough to run an OS, X server, desktop and browser+office suite. Why it doesnt? the only reason is feature bloat.

I just recently tried RH8.0 (I support RH in a corperate environment) and liked how it looks, but am appalled that in order to deploy it I have to replace all the workstations with new just to keep everything feeling right in speed. (WE have aincent P-III 866's here with a paltry 128 meg of ram... I know... I should be killed and eaten for using such old and outdated hardware.)

Redhat 7.3 is the last stage here.. and if Linux desktops in general keep getting feature bloat and exrta slow-down added... I may have to stand up with egg on my face and reccomend that we switch back to Microsoft in a few years.

KDE and Gnome... they need stop all development and focus on getting a 50% speed increase. If they have to cut and slash to do it, then do it. Mozilla needs to do this as well as Open Office.

everyone is sitting behind the excuse that "processors are ultra fast now and ram is cheap." Linux is not the big fish... we must be faster and sleeker than the big fish to survive and overcome.

Re:I feel for the writer

[Ektanoor]

Bloatness on Linux is a question of administration and not a distro problem. Distros are for features and for the laziness of building everything nearly from scratch. On Celeron 500 + 64Mb maybe RH 8 will slow down as you may have installed everything you could... On PIII 866 + 128Mb? Well I've just 2 months ago switched to 256 and I don't get where you could have had problems. For a simple office task the machine was ok. However it was hard to work on a destkop and having 3-4 servers working on background for good. Yes, for good, as one of them was no one else than the video broadcaster from mpeg4ip which loads the machine very well.

On what relates to Windows. Do you wanna tell me that you can find a Windows good enough to hang on the configurations you pointed? Even NT had trouble working on the Celeron you pointed out. With only a browser it managed to eat up all memory and permanently require some 20Mb swap.

Or are you talking about the "new" Windows? This new XP crap needs no less than 256 megs to live relatively well on a PIII 900MHz. On that same machine I'm able to use a full-featured Mandrake 9 and have always some 100Mb free for something else, Quake III for example...

Keep the FUD for yourself while you can't switch from Windows Help to man rtfm

Didn't even get that far thanks to grub and lilo..

[zerofoo]

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

USENET

[KelsoLundeen]

Ever heard of usenet?

Last I looked the RH ISOs were on nearly every CD group, just waiting to be snagged.

This is off-topic, but lately I'm finding that more and more people have absolutely no idea what usenet is. I mentioned this to one of our new IT guys here -- a so-called "hot-shot" just out of college -- and wondered if usenet "sells DSL because he can't get it through AT&T."

Re:USENET

[bsharitt]

and wondered if usenet "sells DSL because he can't get it through AT&T."

Well do they? I can't get it from Bellsouth either.

(Note: I'm only pretending to be someone who doesn't know what usenet is. I'm well aware that it's an operating system, not an ISP)

Re:USENET

[unicron]

Actually, for roughly $20 a month, Giganews is the equivalent of walking through Compusa's software section with a shopping cart and a shotgun.

Re:USENET

[felipeal]

(Note: I'm only pretending to be someone who doesn't know what usenet is. I'm well aware that it's an operating system, not an ISP)

You're wrong. Usenet is just a kernel. GNU/usenet is the operating system.

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:That title is double-redundant!

[Raven42rac]

This is one of the main reasons that GNU/Linux is so slow to grow. The condescending attitudes of people like you. What did you start off using? debian? suse? or did you just write your own flavor. jesus man, thats why people are so scared to try it out, because if they ask a question of SOME people, they get laughed at and made to feel stupid, and get stuck. Maybe these "newbies" just want their system to

• just work

maybe they dont want to compile everything, maybe they are just converts that want to email websurf and do light gaming. Give people a little slack. Just a thought.

My mini RH 8.0 review

[bogie]

Let's see if RedHat 8.0 works as a business desktop, its STATED target.

Easy for admin to deploy. check
Easy to use desktop even for a windows user. check
Comes with a great Office Suite and email client. check
Comes with a fast stable web browser. check
The best fonts and font tool ever for a linux distro. check
Absolutly 100% free to download ISO's. check
A billion times more secure than Outlook/IE. check
Responsive on modern(1GHz 256MB) machines. check
Companies has given/gives back a LOT to the community. check

I've been using Redhat since 5.0 and I've also pretty much every distro under the sun. For desktop linux this is a high wark mark. It still has a few rough edges when it comes to consumer usage, but really for the business desktop this is deployable NOW. If I were starting a company today there is not doubt RH 8 would be my choice regardless of cost. Also remember this is Redhat's FIRST attempt at the desktop. I can only imagine how good Redhat 8.1 or 8.2 is going to be.

Re:My mini RH 8.0 review

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

I'll agree with your points, I've been a RH fan since 5.2 (moved from Slackware).

However, my biggest complaint is that RH lacks the capabilities of 'apt-get dist-upgrade'. I've been using apt4rpm on all my RH boxes, but trying to move from RH 7.3 to 8.0 failed.

I looked around at what RH had to offer and what was available on the net, as it turns out, the only 'safe' way to upgrade a RH box from 7.x to 8.0 is to reboot with a bootdisk (install, kickstart, whatever) then perform the upgrade, then reboot to the working system.

This is unacceptable if you have a ton of racked boxes. I need to be able to remotely (scripted is even better) be able to upgrade those boxes, reboot and be ready to go. Having to physically install the media (even for an NFS kickstart) upgrade is a major PITA. It's one of the main reasons I'll never convince the deb-heads I work with to move to RH.

I really like RH, I do a lot of business and enterprise app development and deployment, and RH has consistently provided everything I need to do my job sanely. This one issue is really killing me though.

Some thoughts and specific user experience items

[cr@ckwhore]

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.

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 /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.

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.

It just works: Mac OS X

[burgburgburg]

Have to agree. If you actually just want it to work (and get away from Windows), use your x86 architecture as a server/firewall/router and go out and buy a Mac. Short term investment in long term functionality, ease of use and underlying power.

mp3 removed ? not really

[tanveer1979]

Well, many ppl would have already discovered this, but for others, this could be useful.

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!

not sad, and not difficult

[Ender Ryan]

All that this effort would need is common theming and common app/config launchers.

Then Gnome and KDE would be very similar, but would also remain separate. KDE would use Konq for file/web, Gnome would use Nautilus/Mozilla respectively, etc.

Then users could mix and match components, developers could choose which development architecture they want, and users would see a consistent desktop with common themes and fonts.

I can't read rh related post on kde mailling lists

[imr]

nor suze posts because I've setup filters to trash them.
Why ?
Because many of those many posts come from users having difficulties with choices the heavy thinkers of those distros made. And I got fed up of reading the same problems all over again. And the same answers, to the point that some day those lists look like a big huge faq.
"This a suze related problem. The solution to this problem can be found on suze forum "...etc ...etc...
Most of the times, the initiative was good and those people are quite eager to do the right thing, they just seem unable to do it THE RIGHT WAY.
In the KDE case, it would have meant in order to do the right thing (desktop appearence unification): to talk with KDE people to warn them and have feedback from them, to show respect for their work and project (leave the small about kde box in the app they put aside anyway) and to show that they have heard their concerns about a supposed preference toward gnome and that they're not funded (because they are not, right?).
But NO, they had to push it under the hat(!) and suddenly, flamewars everywhere, like we need them.
And in order to do it the right way for end users (because they are target for desktop unification, right? I mean, who ELSE need it?), that would mean a little less twinked systems which will behave a little more like everyone else's. If you don't believe me, go and check last transgaming release and see what systems have kernel related issues with last winex release.
If the real issue behind all this was to do the best desktop for end users, they certainly did it the wrong way.

Re:Some thoughts and specific user experience item

[cr@ckwhore]

One more thing to add to my list...

Regarding browser plugins, the default netscape location for plugins (/usr/lib/netscape/plugins) should be a symlink to the mozilla plugins directory. When some popular "netscape" plugins are installed, such as realplayer, it automatically puts itself in the default netscape location.

For a "joe user", this would probably be a big problem because after installing a plugin, realplayer, flash player, etc... it doesn't work unless the user manually copies the files from the netscape plugin directory into the mozilla plugin directory.

Huge problem, with a simple solution.

Re:Taiwan Ceases to exist, according to RedHat.

[ukryule]

Apparantly, in order to improve sales in China, RedHat removed the Taiwanese flag

The amazing thing about this is that it seems to be on all versions of RH8 that this has happened (not just the ones sold to China) - so the versions sold in Taiwan won't even have their flag ...

The Taiwan Linux UG have an online petition to reinstate the flag.

Linux is not about being nostalgic; it's adaptive!

[aksansai]

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.

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.

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:Bowing down to marketing

[Havokmon]

Say what you want about profit and money, but when marketing conflicts the ideals of free software (freedom), I choose not to use RedHat anymore.

There are lots of other Linux distributors who still supports the ideals of free software and open source. They'll get my business.

Because YOU'VE decided that Taiwan is it's own country, and not a part of China?

Reminds me of a show I once liked
Lois: Did you get the permit from the city.
Peter: No we're not part of the city. In fact we're not even part of the country.
Lois: What are you talking about.
Peter: Thanks to a technicality we have the right to secede from the United States and that makes us our own country. from this point on we shall be known as Petoria. I was going to call it Peterland but that gay club by the airport already took it.

Lois: We are a clean industrious people. Mostly white. My son Chris is in charge of our space program. We expect to get to the moon very soon.
Chris: (in tree) Almost there. (falls) they should really use monkeys for this.
Lois: And little Stewie here is our President of poopies.
Stewie: Oh har har.
Trisha: Where is the president now.
Lois: Oh he's on a goodwill mission to America.

I can't stop!! :P

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)

I am impressed with driver support

[div_2n]

Regardless of crippled this and not included that, I was damn impressed with the driver support. I got tired of my Windows 2000 installation on a Compaq Deskpro and installed 8.0

There were some suprising results and not so surprising results. The most surprising was that my Firewire PCI controller and Iomega Predator Firewire CD-R/W drive was supported. The not so surprising result was that my USB Alcatel DSL modem was not supported out of the box.

Overall, I am impressed. Since my first RedHat installation was 5.2, 8.0 is eons ahead of my original RedHat experience.

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 :-)

RH is just trying to fix a problem

[g4dget]

I have found that KDE has become less and less interoperable with other desktops: it uses its own audio output, Gnome and other applications that were formerly listed in its menus seem to have disappeared, KDE's drag-and-drop does not interoperate fully with non-KDE apps, and KDE flaunts many X11 conventions. If you try to start up a KDE application under a non-KDE desktop, it starts up big, noisy background processes. Under Debian, installing KDE automatically made kdm the default on my machine.

The KDE attitude seems to be that there is a war to win for the Linux desktop, while other efforts are more geared towards providing interoperable toolsets of which you can reuse as much or as little as you like. Fortunately, KDE code is open source, and it is entirely appropriate for RedHat and other developers to pick apart the KDE distribution and code and reuse whatever parts are useful. That's how open source works: if a project fails to meet the needs of its users, it gets cannibalized and its parts reused. KDE is probably due for a lot more cannibalization in the future.