Interview with Taylor & Pennington from Red Hat

RH-Gimp writes "OSNews has put together a long and informative interview with Havoc Pennington and Owen Taylor from Red Hat. They discuss about the KDE issues, the UI on Red Hat 8.0, the future of the Linux desktop and XFree and other interesting stuff."

Comments

All haters aside;

[glrotate]

RH 8 is slick. Kudos to RH for raising the bard for other dists that claim to be for the desktop. RH has shown consistent improvement from release to release, that's all we can ask.

Re:All haters aside;

[Anonymous Coward]

Alas poor Bard, we -new- him well. A grave man no more, it seems!

Re:All haters aside;

[AceMarkE]

Heh... I don't normally pick on misspellings, but this one's too good to pass up...

Would a mile-high minstrel also qualify as "Raising the bard"?

Mark Erikson

Re:All haters aside;

[Soko]

Kudos to RH for raising the bard ...

To KDE, or not to KDE: that is the question:
Whether 'tis GNOMEbler in the mind to suffer
The flames and trolls of outrageous UserInterface,
Or to take arms against a sea of disparate apps,
And by opposing end them? To kill -9: to sleep; ...

Soko

Re:All haters aside;

[Anonymous Coward]

I read it as an unsubstantiated rumor that a RedHat necromancer brought Shakespeare back to life.

Re:All haters aside;

[trueaveragejoe]

The point of distributions is freedom! Noone is restricting you to use one distribution. There is no BEST distribution. It is different for everyone. You should use it if it fits your needs and requirements. If none fits your environment, create your own. This is the freedom given by open source.

Re:All haters aside;

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. I love the new UI theme. The extras are nice too.

Re:All haters aside;

[shepd]

The difference between a linux user and a linux sysadmin is that one can only work with one distribution and complains when it's changed, whereas the other is happy to work using any distribution, assuming it has the basic tools.

Just my 2 cents.

And yes, a good sysadmin _can_ still have a preference.

Re:All haters aside;

[lithiumcloud]

Distros! Distros are for wimps! Real hackers compile from source.

Re:All haters aside;

[Anonymous Coward]

With each RH release, the stupification of Linux
is gaining momentum. One day we will be as easy
as Windows. RH is becoming earsier for the newbie; which implies,
it is becoming more cumbersome for the Linux old-timers. Is this great??
No! , at least not if you are an experienced Linux user because
the distro is not tailored for my needs.

Nothing wrong per se with RH. It is just a matter
a matter whether of which camp you belong.

Re:All haters aside;

[CableModemSniper]

Its impossible for it to get so stupified that you can't use it the way you were used to. You can always get rid of GNOME and install windowmaker or hit ctrl+alt+f1 and get to a tty. You will always be able to edit config files by hand, unless RH adds some sort of binary config system only accessible tru gui tools. And if they are ever dumb enough to do that you can always switch distributions. Increasing the usability for one user demographic does not decrease the useability of another in this case.

Re:All haters aside;

[Elflord1999]

I'll bet it is slick, but I've been trying to download the damn thing for a week and the most I've gotten is the first 300k of it. Yes, I use mirrors. No, I'm too cheap to buy it.

Re:All haters aside;

[Anonymous Coward]

you compile your operating system?

i feel a stabbing pain in my chest, i'm over come with horror.

you sir are a big fat fucking Luser

real hackers write their own os

Re:All haters aside;

[Jerry]

You obviously are not a power user, so what are you complaining about? Cumbersome? Are you telling us you don't know how to use the 'expert' mode of the install routine, or are you telling us you don't know how to open an xterm and remove KDE, GNOME or what ever and fire up a lighter desktop?

I'm not a RH user and I am certain you can find another distro more to your liking. There is always Gentoo, or Debian or even LinuxFromScratch if you as good in your actions as you feel you are in your mind.

Re:All haters aside;

[GigsVT]

Increasing the usability for one user demographic does not decrease the useability of another in this case.

I think people assume that is has to, because almost all of us were burned by MS in this way. As Windows got easier to use for the non-techies, it got harder for the techies to use, causing us to have to dig through layers of GUI to get the most basic tasks done, forcing us to edit the cryptic registry to do anything advanced, etc.

Re:All haters aside;

[Anonymous Coward]

I love Red Hat. I'm glad the they've lowered the price on the personal edition too. Yay!

Re:All haters aside;

[Anonymous Coward]

black hat or white hat?

Re:All haters aside;

[EnderWiggnz]

real hackers toggle in the boot strap.

Re:All haters aside;

[rnd()]

raising the bard? What does this story have to do with Shakespeare?

Re:All haters aside;

[Anonymous Coward]

With each RH release, the stupification of Linux is gaining momentum.

Wrong. It's becoming more accessible to average Desktop Joe. This only means good things. Someone on /. mentioned recently how many people would be getting the taste of Linux for the first time by purchasing LindowsOS preinstalled PC. Now if it were up to you, would you rather have Joe Public install RH 8.0 or LindowsOS? First impression is everything.

One day we will be as easy as Windows. RH is becoming earsier for the newbie; which implies, it is becoming more cumbersome for the Linux old-timers.

Ah for fuck's sake. Give me a break. I do not see RH CEO forcing their distro onto your box. There are tons of choices out there. I advise you to use them and quit whining.

at least not if you are an experienced Linux user because the distro is not tailored for my needs

Yes. It's impossible to view gay porn on RH 8.0

You're a fucking moron. Please kill yourself.

Re:All haters aside;

[The Faywood Assassin]

I just love how these harde-core Linux users sit there and preach that easy to use, pre-packaged and pre-configured Linux distros are for lazy and stupid people, and that REAL users produce everything from scratch....

....just before they go to McDonald's to buy a pre-packaged, and pre-configured Big Mac combo #3, because they are to stupid and lazy to prepare their meals from scratch!

Now excuse me while I work away here on RedHat 7.2 and munch on my Big Extra combo #6

Beny

Re:All haters aside;

[neitzsche]

You are wrong.

Red Hat 6.x did not break the Caps Lock/Shift key functionality to emulate Windows, but later versions did. There is no way to undo their insiduous change. I tried to not upgrade to avoid their horrid change, but their 'up2date' destroyed my system anyway.

I use CTRL-ALT-F1/F6 most of the time. Ever try to use xmodmap on an stty? Doesn't work. xmodmap only affects the Xwindows session(s).

So now, as I try to maintain 30 year old MUMPS code for work, I no longer have a working system. When I try to type "D ^%SS" it comes out as "d ^%ss" which does not work in any version of ANSI standard MUMPS.

What is wrong? The industry standard for ever has been that EITHER caps lock OR Shift will guarante an alphabetic character comes out in upper case. The windows experience paradigm is to use the shift key instead as a toggle so that Caps Lock+Shift+A = "a" <--This is the wrong behavior!

Now I have no way to fix the change that Red Hat foisted on me. So yeah, now I have a reason to bo build my own slackware, but I have to destroy my current system (and it's data) to do so. That should only take me, what 50-70 hours or so right?

It is specious of Red Hat so think that they are perhaps "helping" people with changes that make systems less usable.

Re:All haters aside;

[Tassach]

RH is becoming earsier for the newbie; which implies, it is becoming more cumbersome for the Linux old-timers

How is this so? Just because there's a new and simpler way to do something, doesn't necessarily mean that the old method has to go away. Linux != windows. RedHat (and linux in general) simplifies things by building a user-friendly interface over top of the underlying configuration infrastructure. Windows simplifies things by REPLACING the configuration infrastructure with one which can ONLY be manipulated by a single tool. This is a crucial difference.

So RedHat make a GUI tool which lets a novice configure Apache easily. So what? Under the covers all it's doing is manipulating the httpd.conf file. If you know what you are doing, you can still go in and edit it manually. Installing SWAT doesn't somehow magically take away your ability to open an xterm and type "vi /etc/samba/smb.conf".

Uninformed FUD like this does the Linux community no good.

Re:All haters aside;

[TKinias]

trueaveragejoe wrote:

The point of distributions is freedom! . . .

While I have to agree with trueaveragejoe's sentiment, I'm really perplexed as to what this has to do with OP (`RH8 is slick'). It seems a bit OT more than `+5 Insightful'.

Please feel free to enlighten me . . .

Re:All haters aside;

[CableModemSniper]

So use slackware, or debian or gentoo, or roll your own. You certainly aren't forced to use a specefic distribution. Thats part of my point. RedHat can change the UI as much as they want to make it easier, but experienced users don't have to be crippled by it. I say if RedHat wants to emulate windows key behavior, go for it. You might not use RedHat anymore for that reason but it certainly doesn't stop you from using linux.

Re:All haters aside;

[CableModemSniper]

Incidently, thanks for posting instead of just modding. If all you had done was modded me, I would have never found out about the whole shift/caps-lock key thing, and your point as regards my post.

Re:All haters aside;

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but I disagree.

Red Hat and the other big Linux vendors have buried, taken away, and/or changed a lot of the traditional config files. For example, from the early days of Linux to RH 8.0, the number of configuration files & scripts involved in networking configuration has multiplied by a factor of 2 or 3. Printer configuration in Red Hat has been buried in a sea of Python scripts ever since RH 5.0. I remember having to hack Red Hat's Python scripts to disable its print filter configuration in order to get my own Ghostscript driver working. You can't hardly build a new kernel anymore because so many scripts expect to see a certain set of modules. And then there's Linuxconf and SuSEconfig, which blow away most any configuration or customization you do by hand. And rpm, which will happily overwrite your edited config file without notice.

And the thing I hate most of all about the major Linux distributions is that they make fundamental changes to the way they configure a good portion of the software in every major version release. Every time I install a new distribution of a new major version of a distribution, I have to spend a shitload of time re-learning how to configure things and how to get my customizations working again. In 10 years of working on commercial UNIX platforms I was never subjected to anywhere near this much pointless change.

Re:All haters aside;

[trueaveragejoe]

Oops. I am sorry. I was replying to linuck's post. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=41932&threshol d=1&commentsort=0&tid=110&mode=thread&cid=4421 774

Re:All haters aside;

[Tassach]

You bring up some very good points, and I share your experience that the commercial Unices have nowhere near the rate of change of Linux distributions. However, there are some fundamental differences: Solaris and AIX are both intended to run on a very tightly controlled set of propriatary hardware, whereas RedHat attempts to support a huge variety of commodity hardware. Solaris and AIX are also targeted high end of the market -- where you have huge budgets and experienced administrators. RH is going after the lower end of the market -- less money and lower skill levels. But perhaps most importantly, Solaris and AIX are dedicated server operating systems where RedHat tries to be both a desktop OS and a Server OS at the same time. Given these fundamental differences in scope, it's no wonder that RH revs so frequently. Linux is still very much a work in progress. Some growing pains are inevitable. That being said, perhaps RH should put more distance between the server distro and the desktop distro.

Re:All haters aside;

[TKinias]

Ah, my fault. I forgot to change my threshold and didn't see linuck's rant as parent. Just ignore me ;)

Re:All haters aside;

[lithiumcloud]

But do they do it straight in machine code?

Real hackers don't need an operating system. Real hackers don't need languages. Real hackers don't even, when it comes down to it, even need a computer.

Re:All haters aside;

[neitzsche]

My point is that Red Hat *is* making bad changes. The parent-parent-parent post that you were pooh-poohing was saying something similar. The important fact here is that Red Hat *is* changing their very-popular-market-leader-many-people-think-this- is-linux distribution to emulate what I think is the WORST of the computing industry: Microsoft Windows.

What they do affects all of the linux community, whether they like it or not. What they are doing now affects me and my computer directly and I do not like it!

Switching what OS I use was a non-trivial task. Switching to a new distro is also non-trivial. I do think I've had enough of Red Hat now. But rebuilding my main computer with Debian is not something that can be accomplished overnight!

RedHat can change the UI as much as they want to make it easier, but experienced users don't have to be crippled by it.

Experienced users *are* crippled by RedHat changing their UI willy-nilly. Well, maybe just intollerably inconvenienced. But is certainly is not getting "easier!" Pontificating that just anyone can install any flavor of Linux on any box is silly. The time involved (and in my case, the expense of buying another hard drive) is also a larger factor than you are implying.

It's really too bad. RH was a nice distro to "mess around with linux" for a couple years. And it still is a great starter/newbie distribution.

Re:All haters aside;

[Anonymous Coward]

make /home a separate partition, and you should be able to do it in 2 nights with a 56k modem

Dear Havoc:

[Anonymous Coward]

Give us back the fucking virtual desktops! (aka viewports)

What the hell were you thinking when you said that "Multiple Desktops" had all the functionality needed, so viewport people were out of luck?

I mean, come on. With viewports, all you needed to do was turn off edgeflipping and you were done. Instead, you rightly say that changing your current code to allow edgeflipping would be a pain in the ass.

Re:Dear Havoc:

[The Original Yama]

I was pissed off about that, too. The GNOME2 release notes has info on getting workspaces back. It works well, but unfortunately the GNOME Pager can't see them.

Fortunately, somebody has managed to emulate most viewport functionalies with workspaces. The only thing that missing (from what I can see) is edge-flipping, but this script provides the infrastructure with which to implement that.

More scripts can be found at the WikiSawfishLibrary .

Re:Dear Havoc:

[Anonymous Coward]

I just use enlightenment these days (just like in the olden days), which seems like less trouble than fighting the configuration.

Re:Dear Havoc:

[leviramsey]

Of course, Red Hat and Mandrake have both decided to make metacity the GNOME window manager.

I still dislike Fred Crozat's (Mandrake's soel GNOME guy... oddly he does a better job with GNOME than Mandrake's KDE team with KDE) decision on that matter....

Re:Dear Havoc:

[Paul Komarek]

Hear hear! I submitted a bug to Red Hat about this. They closed it after commenting that it would be better handled upstream. While that might be true, I'm still pissed. We've had virtual desktops for , what, at least 10 years? Maybe I'll go back to fvwm2 to get them back.

-Paul Komarek

Re:Dear Havoc:

[G�tz]

If you don't agree with this decision:

killall metacity;sawfish&

Re:Dear Havoc:

[mark_lybarger]

i use e quite a bit these days also. i really like kde, but couldn't figure out how to drag a window to another virtual desktop. i know you can use their "send to" functionality, but it's not the same.

Re:Dear Havoc:

[The Original Yama]

Metacity feels castrated. I want a WM with balls.

To switch permanently to Sawfish, add the following to your ~/.bashrc (assuming you use BASH):

export WINDOW_MANAGER=sawfish

The next time you start GNOME, you'll get Sawfish as the WM (assuming it's installed). If you want to use something else, change sawfish in the above command to your favourite WM.

Re:Dear Havoc:

[Anonymous Coward]

Turn on "Active Desktop Borders" in the advanced tab of WindowBehavior module.

Re:Dear Havoc:

[Carnivore]

I had a lot of small, wierd problems with sawfish. There are a few bugs in the workspace switcher, and the window theme selector kept crashing--and I had to delete the .sawfish directory to get it to let me change back.

With metacity, I haven't run into anything like that. There are a couple of things that annoy me, but they're livable.

Re:Dear Havoc:

[leviramsey]

The solution then, is to fix Sawfish. Metacity doesn't offer half the features that Sawfish does.

Man I Love These Guys!

[coupland]

Man, Penn and Taylor are my favourite comedians of all time, I had no idea they worked for RedHat... Guys I totally loved that time you threw the glass of water in the talk-show host's face, and you rocked on Fear Factor! ;-)

Re:Man I Love These Guys!

[DeadMeat (TM)]

Believe it or not, Penn Jillette (yes, that Penn) used to write a column for PC Computing way back when it was a decent magazine. "I Heart My Dog's Head" is still a classic.

Re:Man I Love These Guys!

[Polo]

Yeah, and Penn sure knows how to Fly in Style... ;)

It's funny....

[mao che minh]

I have read alot of interviews, press release notes, and newslist postings by Redhat concerning it's UI in the past, and most seemed uninspired. It is interesting to see the developers/designers interviewed here so enthusiastic and impressed with their own and each other's work.

At first I criticized Redhat's blending of KDE and Gnome, but now I am beginning to appreciate it. It is adding yet another dimension to Linux on the desktop, and seems to be doing so in the same spirit of creative development that has driven Linux as far as it has come. Maybe having only two choices wasn't enough?

Re:It's funny....

[Anonymous Coward]

only two choices? so blackbox, fluxbox, fvwm, fvwm2, afterstep, windowmaker, etc dont exist?

My god!

[Anonymous Coward]

The article states that after many years of "It's not a bug, it's a feature!", real resolution changing has just been added to XFree86's CVS.

About bloody time.

Re:My god!

[Frank Grimes]

How long till XFree86 resolution changing is supported by your favorite window managers and desktops? And then how long until it gets included in your favorite distro?

A while, I'd guess.

Re:My god!

[papabear1]

Hey, it's not a feature ... it's a bug!

Re:My god!

[stefanlasiewski]

XFree86 resolution changing is supported by your favorite window managers

X controls the resolution, not the window manager or desktop.

Your Window Manager will support any resolution change made by X .

A while, I'd guess.

Unfortunately, this is true. It will take a while for X4.3 (or whatever) to make it into the next major versions of most distros.

But if your impatient, you can install XFree86 on your own. It's not that hard.

Re:My god!

[felipeal]

The article states that after many years of "It's not a bug, it's a feature!", real resolution changing has just been added to XFree86's CVS.

Also, I wonder how long will it take to support multiple mice "on-the-fly", i.e., without having to manually setting XF86Config-4 and restarting X.

That too would be really useful, mainly in the laptop arena.

Re:My god!

[Frank Grimes]

Your Window Manager will support any resolution change made by X.

I don't know, but I suspect that some window managers won't know what to do. For instance, I use Windowmaker; will it know to move the dock when I resize the desktop?

Re:My god!

[be-fan]

Actually, toolkits and window managers will have to be tweeked to support the changes. Read the RandR docs on Keith Packard's site.

Re:My god!

[simm_s]

Can you explain the difference between "real resolution changing" and switching resolution with ctrl-alt-(keypad +)???

Re:My god!

[Anonymous Coward]

Look upthread. In short, the desktop's size changes to reflect the new resolution.

And no mention of ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... the missing Taiwanese flag.

Smoke and mirrors...

[Soko]

Oops!

Sorry - that would be Penn and Teller. Silly me. ;-)

Soko

No brainer

[SomeOtherGuy]

It was really a no brainer that some distribution would finally decide to try to piece together the different UI's, and at least try to make them look similar to one another. Imagine a bathroom with a gold shower head, a chrome drain, and marble knobs. Things look much better when they are in sync. Kudos to RH for finally getting the ball rolling in this area.

Re:No brainer

[Chris_Stankowitz]

I second that. The UI should not something by default that people get stuck with, it should be by design.

Re:No brainer

[coupland]

I would tend to agree with you, making interfaces look similar is overall a good thing, particularly when it's only the distribution doing it, not a more central or insidious group.

After all, RedHat is strong because of its popularity, not its monopoly power. If RedHat genuinely ignores consumer interests they will crash in flames. They understand this, so don't think they took the united UI lightly. They must ride the crest of user desires or perish in the process.

The marriage of two UIs was inevitable and will make the KDE vs. GNOME debates more objective. We can stop hearing about how KDE/GNOME "looks" so much nicer and know that soon the market will decide solely on technical merit. We should be excited about this, consistent interfaces may help a WM to win based on its abilities, not the skins it has available...

Re:No brainer

[darkfrog]

This is a HORRIBLE comparison. Gnome and KDE are completely different window managers. If you were going to make a comparison of bathrooms... then lets say GNU/Linux is the house, then KDE would be one bathroom and Gnome would be a different bathroom. Unless you want all the bathrooms in the house to look identical for some weird reason, their isn't a reason that they should get changed. All bathrooms have a toilet and sink, some may even have a shower, and looking different is usually considered an asset! Gnome and KDE each have their own way of doing things, I think this change was strickly made for newbies that don't understand how KDE/Gnome work. Or in the analogy sense, were trying to piss in the sink instead of the toilet. ;-)

All that being said, I think if redhat wants to make itself the newbie distro, then thats fine, they'll probably draw a lot more people to the linux community and also gain a larger part of the distro market. I myself who have choosen redhat for the last 5 years or so will now be switching my distro to a more technical and less crippled desktop.

Re:No brainer

[einstein]

but the point is, when you have someone visiting your house, and they use the bathroom, you want them to be able to use either one, and expect that pressing down on that handle beside the thing that looks like a toilet to actually flush. As opposed to the one where it flushes and the other where it would merely change the color of the toilet shaped object.
--

Re:No brainer

[skt]

I agree, Linux distros have always seemed like "Frankenstein" operating systems to me. I think the philosophy is good, but taking a piece of software here and there from coders all over the world has some very serious UI drawbacks. Unifying some of the UIs of various programs is a very big step forward towards consumer acceptance, but in the interview even those guys were saying it isn't ready for Joe Blow user yet.. they mention a couple of times that RH 8 is intended for users who have a sysadmin available to set the thing up.

Re:No brainer

[F.O.Dobbs]

KDE=gold shower head
Gnome=marble knobs
Swing=chrome drain
Motif would be the filthy porcelain toilet.

F.O. Dobbs

Re:No brainer

[darkfrog]

:-)
yes, but if i took a 2 year old to the bathroom in my house, i would expct to help him out using it, whereas if i took a 5+ year old, i wouldn't expect to have to explain how to use a bathroom.

Good retort though, made me smile, thats not too often nowadays with eulas, company inovation rights, etc, etc. nowadays....

i appreciate the counterpoint though, well said.

P.S. - gnome/kde usually explain in tech terms what things do anyway though, such as (flushes tiolet... i suppose if you did'nt know what flush or toilet was you woundn't understand, but in my terms thats a new user)

anyway, good counterpoint

Future developers

[kingkade]

It's good to see young developers getting involved is OSS. I mean, what are these guys, 11, maybe 12 at most?

:P

Re:Future developers

[messiertom]

As a young developer (14), I couldn't agree more. I see a lot of young programmers who don't know what this whole "open-source" thing is all about. This is not a good thing: at the least, they should know about what OSS is and what values it stands for.

I for one, think that the best place to reach out to get OSS rolling past the Juggernaut is to get our young programmers involved. After all, I don't think even Linus can hack from the grave.

Re:Future developers

[absurdhero]

ya, it is very important to get young people into not only OSS, but Free Software as well. I try to teach my peers with limited success.

Re:Future developers

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up, kid.

There's nothing I hate more than little children coming on here and trying to proclaim how great they are at a young age.

Young developer? Develop yourself a job.

Re:Future developers

[Anonymous Coward]

The really young developers are still taking a break from programming Windows 98. Or so say their parents.

Re:Future developers

[boomka]

I am a young developer too (5). This Linux toy is just so cool and I want to get involved!
I already took apart my moms computer to find where the window manager lives, and it was much fun!

Now me and my buddies will be doing the theme for RedHat called Toddler Galore.

Re:Future developers

[Anonymous Coward]

He's probably a better coder than you are, you old geezer. That negative attitude will result in health trouble soon enough.

Re:Future developers

[Anonymous Coward]

> There's nothing I hate more than little children coming on here and trying to proclaim how great they are at a young age.

If he was 6 or 7, I would have my doubts. But considering he's 14, he probably has the foundation set to program well.

Besides, I didn't see much gloating at all in his post. All I was able to see was a person advocating the education of young folks in programming (and project management etc.)

> Young developer? Develop yourself a job.
There are several young (i.e. high school aged) developers who do have jobs (at least contracting pieces). For example, a friend of my son designed and upkeeps the website for our local church.

Many unanswered questions remain

[Jeff Probst]

It is a shame that OSNews did not question the UI designers about the removal of the taiwanese flag from redhat. It is even more shameful that no one on slashdot cares about it.

The average reader appears to take the stance that "Redhat exists to make money, and if this is what they have to do, then so be it." I find this insulting coming from a movement which is supposedly all about freedom.

It appears that free software is merely all about not paying for software and the downfall of microsoft.

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[Anonymous Coward]

I find this insulting coming from a movement which is supposedly all about freedom

Freedom to censor (ask Michael Sims and the slashdot crew!), Freedom to be communits (props RMS!), Freedom to run over protestors with a tank (suckers who bought LNUX at $320.00 a share!).

A match made in heaven

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[Planesdragon]

The average reader appears to take the stance that "Redhat exists to make money, and if this is what they have to do, then so be it." I find this insulting coming from a movement which is supposedly all about freedom.

It appears that free software is merely all about not paying for software and the downfall of microsoft.

Jeff, kindly go to http://www.redhat.com/ and find me a link to the FSF. Or even a reference to "Free Software."

Not everyone who uses Linux thinks that Free Software is a viable moral argument; some of them just use it because it is free-as-in-no-cost, not free-as-in-freedom.

But, even if they were advocates and zealous supporters of the FSF, it wouldn't be at cross purposes to kotow to Chinesse bullying over Taiwan. Free Software is about software freedoms, not necessarilly any other freedoms. (Sure, they probably go hand in hand, but there's a difference between a Linux Users Group and a Free Tibet concert.)

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[Chris_Stankowitz]

I can't say I know much about the flag issue, ( didn't read the link yet). But I have to admit, as far as RH being all about bottom lines, as long as the continue to raise the bar-more power to them. I do beleive that it will take a company with revenue, and lots of it to make linux more "rounded". Every now and then the ends DOES have to justity the means.

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[mao che minh]

The movement is about freedom. But that in no way guarantees that any company forged by that same movement, in a capatilist setting, will even vaguely treasure it's original values once money comes into play.

Besides, this site is full of people that busted a gut at the expense of some poor Korean guy that "played games to death". Why would these same people care about whether or not the bitmap of a flag for some little island nation off of the coast of China can be found in recent Redhat distributions?

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[jasonditz]

Why is it freedom only goes on to the point where it offends you, and then it becomes money-grubbing?

Seriously, if you're so all-fired worried about freedom, why not defend the freedom of RedHat to do something which is implicitly allowed in the GPL in the first place, namely adding and removing parts of a program to suit tastes?

I think the reason OSNews didn't bring this up is because either

1) They didn't know
or
2) They knew but didn't care

seems like a safe bet, because I didn't know, and now that I do I don't care.

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[Anonymous Coward]

I do beleive that it will take a company with revenue

RHAT has revenue. But really matters is profit. Maybe they're in a contest with LNUX to see who can have avoid being profitable?

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[Bingo Foo]

Ummm... What's stopping you from putting the flag back in yourself? Write a patch. Write a script. Link to that. You and I are free to put it back in.

I do sympathize with you though. It seems pretty spineless, but RH still can't get in anyone's way who wants to implement a retrofit with the Taiwanese flag.

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[MisterFancypants]

Jeff, kindly go to http://www.redhat.com/ and find me a link to the FSF. Or even a reference to "Free Software."

Not everyone who uses Linux thinks that Free Software is a viable moral argument; some of them just use it because it is free-as-in-no-cost, not free-as-in-freedom.

How about right on their MISSION STATEMENT?

http://sources.redhat.com/mission.html

The one where they not only reference "Free Software" MULTIPLE TIMES but include 3 links to the FSF in the space of about 2 paragraphs?

Feel like a fool? You should. On the plus side, you could probably get a job as a Slashdot editor considering the skill you just showed in spouting off without doing any basic double checking to make sure you're right before you post.

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[coupland]

You don't understand free software at all... Free software is about letting the market decide, and if they decide that the removal of the Taiwanese flag from Redhat 8.0 is acceptable then you should know where you stand. Don't assume that market forces will support you just because your story is sad...

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[shadowengr]

I am not to familiar with RH and some of the packaged software, so could someone tell me how the flag got there in the first place?

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[MisterFancypants]

Why is it freedom only goes on to the point where it offends you, and then it becomes money-grubbing?

You know that if the shoe were on the other foot and it was Microsoft who was doing this, all the Slashbots would be howling at what a bunch of money grubbers they are. Which flag goes next due to pressure? The Palestinian flag (for better sales in Israel)? The Pakistani flag (for better sales in India)? Who should be authorized to make these calls?

Red Hat..Really living up to the name! Way to show that Open Source != Communism, Red Hat! Bow down to your masters in Beijing!

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[Anonymous Coward]

I was wondering where you went, seth! Why are you stuck at -1 though?

I'm missing your diatribe!

Please come back Seth! You're only at -1, you can do it!

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I'm not gunna even begin to care about the Taiwanese flag until the Texas flag is in there.

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[MisterFancypants]

As part of its language chooser control panel, KDE includes the flags of virtually every nation on earth. RedHat removed it (and even logged it as a bug fix in their CVS!), quite obviously at the behest of the PRC (Communist China) government, which doesn't officially recognize the independence of Taiwan.

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[Jeff Probst]

show me where in the GNU Free Software philosophy it says anything about market forces. I'm sorry, but you've got open source and free software mixed up thanks to the king of flatulence

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll care about that when you refer to the company by its actual name, Red Hat. It's called common courtesy and it works both ways. I don't work for them but it sure looks petty to not even point fingers using the right name.

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[shadowengr]

Thanks for taking the time to explain that.

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[bilbobuggins]

first off, why are you looking to redhat for moral role models?

second, let me let you in on a secret about open source software...
if company X packages/distributes OSS in a way you don't like, you are FREE to do it differently yourself.

face it, redhat doesn't owe you anything, nor do they lead/represent/speak for 'the movement' and yes the majority of people use free software because of the free part and not the road to world peace part

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[diamondc]

umm.. what's the problem here? Can they NOT customize their distro? How are they depriving YOU of any rights? They're not.. they're a company out to make money (duh..), if that means taking out the .tw flag, well. so be it, its a business decision. I'm sure some of their hackers didnt like it but they have to make a salary somehow.

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[Malcontent]

MS has a monopoly. They have to play by different rules and get judged by different criterea.

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[Elbereth]

This comment should be moderated up to six and put in the Slashdot HALL OF FAME.

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[Anonymous Coward]

quite obviously at the behest of the PRC (Communist China) government, which doesn't officially recognize the independence of Taiwan.

No other country officially recognize the independence of Taiwan. It is a fact. You watched too much MTV.

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[Anonymous Coward]

Its nothing to do with RedHats right to customise their distro. Its about RedHat being imoral and underhand, by bowing to Chinese pressure and denying the rights of thousands of Tiawanese.

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[egghat]

Hey,

now their name *Red*Hat even makes sense ...

Bye egghat.

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[Anonymous Coward]

Played games to death, tee hee! That was funny!

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it could be arranged if you provide an en_TX translation ;-)

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[avdp]

Oh crap. Now all the MS zealots will continue to claim that Gnu/linux and "open source" is communist...

Having said all that, my wife is Taiwanese and I have yet to get her to switch to Linux. While Chinese seems to display just fine, the input system is a bit clunky. Of course, that may be because I don't know how to set it up - everytime I try all I can find is documentation which my wife doesn't understand because she is not a technical type, and I don't understand because it's in chinese. So moral of the story, not sure it will be missed that much.

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[avdp]

There is actually a handful of countries that do. Mostly small and not very powerful countries though. I think Senegal is one of them.

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[bicho]

Well, i didnt knew about that, but i think it was a bad move from RedHat.
Forget any OSS stupid argument, it is politics.

I personally think it could have been be tter to disable/enable at install time, and simple not installing the png to the flag IF on install time it was told country was China (or some other setting) could have been a much better solution.

Just my 2 pesos'cents.... wait! we only get as far as 5 cents coin here.... Ok, its not worth that much, but ... just my 5 pesos' cents

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[mikefoley]

Thanks for your comments Mr. President

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[Planesdragon]

How about right on their MISSION STATEMENT

Did you even read that page?

"The impact of free software (also known as open source software)"

They mean OSS, not necessarilly "free as in freedom."

"To underscore our commitment to this phenomenon, Red Hat is pleased to provide sources.redhat.com, a site aimed at providing first-rate hosting of open source projects for software developers"

The page you linked to isn't Red Hat's coproate page; it's a "community developer" page that they probably write up as a PR move, the same way MS writes up advertising.

The one where they not only reference "Free Software" MULTIPLE TIMES but include 3 links to the FSF in the space of about 2 paragraphs?

"Free Software" (capitalized) is used twice, "free software" (not capitalized) is used twice. "Open Source" is used four times, once capitalized and thrice not so.

Nothing on the text in that page denotes a belief in the "software freedoms" put forth by the FSF. Sharing of source code is a good thing that leads to a better infrastruture, but the moral argument isn't even mentioned. I suspect that the "Open Source" / "Free Software" equality was on purpose.

Lastly, though it's almost grapsing at straws, the three links to GNU on that page are the kind of links that might be sent to a standards body. RH is looking for PR, not furtherance of Stallman's FSF agenda.

Feel like a fool? You should. On the plus side, you could probably get a job as a Slashdot editor considering the skill you just showed in spouting off without doing any basic double checking to make sure you're right before you post

Why, thank you. I'm building an excellent anecdotal record of FSF advocates who are uncritical zealots who attack anyone who disagreess with them! Way to go!

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[ZaMoose]

Here's a start:

• "nuclear"->"nookyular"
• "tin" and "ten" are pronounced precisely the same way
• Epithets containing four-letter words are no longer necessary and can be replaced by the generic "Yankee"
• Pronounce any word that even vaguely looks Spanish like Peggy Hill would
• Replace all occurences of "Polish Jokes" with "Aggie Jokes" (or, alternatively, "Okie Jokes"

My wife's a native Texan, so I really hope she isn't reading /. today...

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[Anonymous Coward]

YES, I'm a Christian. Got a problem with that?

How are we supposed to take you seriously when you freely admit you have an imaginary friend?

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[pivo]

Why, thank you. I'm building an excellent anecdotal record of FSF advocates who are uncritical zealots who attack anyone who disagreess with them! Way to go!

YES, I'm a Christian. Got a problem with that?

Ha! Another kind of absurd zealot just sprang to mind.

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[chuckles1335]

quite obviously at the behest of the PRC (Communist China) government, which doesn't officially recognize the independence of Taiwan.

Actually i don't think any countries officially recognize Taiwan as a independent nation, including the US. So if RedHat is listing Taiwan as part of china is technically correct.

So until Taiwan is recognized as an independent nation it RedHat is correct in its placement of Taiwan

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[Planesdragon]

LOL.

Go ahead and disagree with my religion. I won't disagree with them, but I won't automatically attack them, either.

I *have* seen every FSF (not Linux or OSS, just GPL/FSF) zealot on /. I've had the pleasre to converse with has insulted me personally and directly. I don't remember the last time I was in a religious discussion and I purposefully insulted someone (not just accidently offend--and even that's not easily recallable.)

Truth be told, I think the FSF has a lot going for it, and that if they do succeed in changing the world they'll make it a better place. But I'm not about to waste my time helping them when they've got nothing but insulting zealots advocating for them. *sigh*

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[mvdwege]

I *have* seen every FSF (not Linux or OSS, just GPL/FSF) zealot on /. I've had the pleasre to converse with has insulted me personally and directly.

Perhaps that says something? The fact that you antagonise everyone in a certain movement might just point out that you have a clear antagonistic attitude to that movement.

Before removing the splinter from thy brother's eye, first remove the beam from thine own. As a Christian, you should have known that, and acted accordingly.

Then again: "by their acts shall ye know them". I have always found that people who proclaim their faith the loudest are also the most obnoxious ones. You're not doing a good job as an evangelist, are you?

Mart

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[Planesdragon]

Perhaps that says something?

It might. Could you browse up this thread and let me know what you think of my posting?

Before removing the splinter from thy brother's eye, first remove the beam from thine own. As a Christian, you should have known that, and acted accordingly.

Sometimes I wish that JC had never said that. It almost seems like whenever a Christian stands up for something, they get accused of hyporcircy. *sigh* (And, yes, I wish that my fellow Christians were less hypocritical...)

I have always found that people who proclaim their faith the loudest are also the most obnoxious ones. You're not doing a good job as an evangelist, are you?

Well, no. I'm here on /. to be a geek, not an evangelist. Evangelism is something that I've found to not be worth the bother; people simply don't like being told that they're wrong, no matter how you say it.

I started appending my religion into my /. sig when I realized that no one knew what faith I was. Still, time for a new sig, me things...

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[pivo]

Just for the information of people moderating me down, YES, I'm a Christian. Got a problem with that? was his .sig when I posted my comment and it appeared right below the other line. He's since changed his .sig.

The comment wasn't not meant as flaimbait, I was simply pointing out the pot-calling-kettle-black nature of his post (when you consider the original .sig) since it's often difficult and pointless to argue with people about their religion, especially aggressively self-assertive people.

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[Anonymous Bullard]

The little fly in the ointment is that Taiwan still officially considers them to be the Republic of China, i.e. the "rightful heirs" to the whole of China (and even neighbors like Tibet!), despite losing the civil war to Mao's communists. Therefore any country that recognizes ROC/Taiwan will by default support the claim that the Mainland China (aka People's Republic of China; PRC) has been illegally controlled by the Chinese Communist Party since 1949. ROC/Taiwan even represented whole China in the UN into the seventies until PRC ended their self-imposed isolationism and started throwing their weight around.

The island of Taiwan (formerly known as Formosa) was the place where the Nationalist army retreated in 1949 (initially protected by a US navy blockade) and after decades of occasionally ruthless party/military dictatorship, democracy only started to blossom there in the nineties.

However the main point is that Taiwan as an independent entity has never declared their national independence and these days the communist leadership of the awakening giant is threatening the island with war (ultra-patriotism is potent propaganda material for rulers everywhere) if they even dream aloud of declaring independence now.

I personally support democracies over one party/military dictatorships any day, but in this case the people of Taiwan really can't afford to whine about their lack of international recognition since they haven't even declared independence for the island.

Re:Many unanswered questions remain

[Anonymous Coward]

These shouldn't be "countries" on UI in the political sence of the word, maybe "teritories" or "regions".

It just gives an impression that RedHat chooses to please communist regime that is powefull enough to force others to make wrong doings to avoid to annoy him. I know RMS & Co is going to hate that saying, but it just looks like that there is a plenty of communist symphatizers amoung free software fans (e.g. RED Hat, Mozilla's Red Star and so on).

GUI

[SexyKellyOsbourne]

I'm glad they're busy tweaking out a decent interface and making it more readily-usable -- making sure everything's aligned right, implementing an xFree86 that can actually do dynamic resolution changes, sticking to a GUI standard, and so forth.

But if people spent more time working on or with Redhat and less time talking about/flaming it, it would have a lot more commercial success and would serve as a better bulwark against you-know-who.

Re:GUI

[d_redguy]

would serve as a better bulwark against you-know-who.

Who, Voldemort?

Re:GUI

[Anonymous Coward]

No, FreeBSD.

Complainers

[madsenj37]

How can some of you people complain when you use a free open source OS. I understand some donate but come on, this is not microsoft.

Re:Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!

[jonnythan]

Did you see his picture?

Naming a gerbil "Mauler" doesn't make it scary.

Hooray for -someone- making decisions

[Ars-Fartsica]

There are dozens of linux distros you cn get that meet any specific desire. Kudos to RedHat for actually trying to differentiate themselves with continued enhancements. If you don't like what they are doing, fortunately there are dozens of other distros out there and surely one is right for you. Everyone wins.

RedHat is one of the most important companies involved in getting linux accepted and used outside of its traditional audience, along with IBM and now Sun. I personally like RedHat 8 and wish them coninued good fortune.

Re:Hooray for -someone- making decisions

[Andrewkov]

If you don't like what they are doing, fortunately there are dozens of other distros out there and surely one is right for you. Everyone wins.

Exactly. Check out Distro Watch for a list of the best distributions. They even have the packages that are included in each, as well as pros and cons, and reviews.

Issues, but all in all I am moving...

[ACK!!]

Listen, you have to run out and get an exta rpm for playing mp3s. As always you have to download Nvidia drivers and if you have an ATI card I suggest going to the gatos.sourceforge.net and using those drivers. Fonts are an install away from the corefonts sourceforge project and dvd playback requires an ogle download.

I can understand every single bit of this. However, apt-rpm needs to come with the distro.

Also what is the deal with the extras submenu? I understand simplifying the menu structure. The SuSE distro menu is a huge mess with a hundreds of programs organized fairly well but still hard to find and half with no icons in the menu! Still, when a new program is installed the user should have a choice of whether they want it merged into the main or the extras menu (can't they come up with some better frickin' title for the thing?) not very easy for an end user.

Finally they need to be hit by a clue-by-four from of all places with the dipsticks at Lindows. Every desktop OS has at one time or another a compatibility layer to ease users over to its use. Mac OS X has one for old OS 9.2 apps. Windows had one for dos and Win 3.11 apps. We need a compatibility layer that runs Windows apps and it is called Wine. It is time that the distros come together and I mean everyone including the OpenLinux distros, Redhat and Mandrake and figure out how to make Wine as good as it can be without it being completely taken over by codeweavers and transgaming.

A good compatibility layer that works as well as CrossOver Office does right now out of the box with no messing around. Install Redhat, and then install Office 2000 and it just works. This is needed not by me but the newbie easing into Linux use.

It is still going to take a shift in thinking to get Linux to the desktop in any numbers even within IT departments.

Currently the Distro is still seen by too many as simply being the OS layer -- kernel, GNU shell and the GNU utilities.

The Distros need to think of the Linux OS as being made up of three parts as most OSes do --

OS layer -- kernel, GNU shell and GNU utilities.
Compatibility layer -- Wine
GUI layer -- kernel frame buffer support to Xfree86 to finally the desktop

Redhat is almost there and considering how quick the shift in focus came from Redhat they did a pretty good job.

Re:Issues, but all in all I am moving...

[Papineau]

For being subscribed to wine-devel, Red Hat seems to be (with Lindows) the only distro with someone actively working on Wine. I don't recall seeing somebody with a @suse.com or @debian.org email address, but I do know a @redhat.de (yes, Germany) and a @lindows.com participate on a regular basis. Unless employees of other distros prefer to use another e-mail address than their job's one...

Re:Issues, but all in all I am moving...

[Maul]

I just installed Red Hat 8.0 on my laptop. I had some issues.

Somehow, someway the GRAPHICAL installer messed up on the configuration for X. Go figure that one out. It more than likely has something to do with my crappy video adaptor, though. I don't think it is a universal problem. At least I hope not.

Then I discover KDE has been messed with. That's okay, since I like to tweak my KDE a bit anyways no matter what. As far as everything else, the Bluecurve KDE theme is nice looking and probably will be welcomed by new users.

I agree on the apt-rpm bit. That would have been nice to have with the distribution. It is a very useful tool for getting the stuff Red Hat neglected to put in.

Re:Issues, but all in all I am moving...

[Pike65]

I wouldn't have minded about the MP3 thing quite so much if they had included Ogg support. Especially now my PC has overtaken my stereo as my main source of music . . .

Now all major distribs needs a unifed desktop....

[trueaveragejoe]

Now all the other desktop distributions that wants to attract users should also create a unified desktop. The problem is if all the desktop distribs create their own standards, it will create more confusion. What the distribs needs is the committee that actually makes worthwhile decisions like a desktop standard.

Anwser

[Pros_n_Cons]

She did not bring this up because when the questions were written & sent RedHat 8.0 was in beta and many issues hadent came to light yet. Here is a quote from her :

"I sent these questions to the Red Hat guys, BEFORE I actually installed Red Hat 8, get pissed off with the nvidia drivers, and wrote that review. If I had sent it later, my question would have been different, more direct, and maybe even a bit rude (eg. "you are a big company now and nvidia has the gfx market. Why don't you PARTNER with nvidia to make sure the damned driver works with your OS?"). Count on it."

Did I Miss Something

[Anonymous Coward]

This is complete offtopic, but did Slashdot get scooped by Wired on the ChrisD story?

Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, if you read the earlier posts you'd know Redhat raised the bard.

Thanks,
The Bard

UI changes

[Henry V .009]

Not surprised that they didn't comment on the newest UI change found in my sig.

Re:UI changes

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see a sig ;-)

Re:UI changes

[Henry V .009]

For those who browse without sigs

Redhat kowtows to China

And to the moderators--saying something bad about a Linux distributor doesn't automatically make a comment flamebait. Sometimes it's true.

Re:UI changes

[jaymzter]

Taiwan is not a member country of the UN, so having their flag listed is purely arbitrary. Plenty of companies do things we don't like, but that doesn't mean they're bowing to the ChiComs. Exactly why should Taiwan be listed?

For the record, I support Taiwan in what they do, and have always hated Reds. Red Hat's decision however is being attacked in the wrong way. Removing Taiwan's flag is a thing that sometimes Grownups have to do. Nixon had to do it (removing Taiwan's status as a recognized country), so what makes Red Hat any worse?

Re:UI changes

[Henry V .009]

Red Hat has just told a democratic people that live in constant fear of invasion by one of the most authoritarian and aggresive powers in the world to go fuck themselves--and it's all right because they don't belong to the U.N.?

Nixon did it because he was a shortsided coward. We thought China would make a great ally in the cold war. It didn't.

Exactly why should Taiwan be listed?

Because they are a free and democratic people. Look up a bit. Even Palestine is listed--and that is hardly free and democratic, not even a member of the U.N.

Tayler brought up a good point

[Pros_n_Cons]

I never thought about:

"OWT: A lot of it was misunderstanding, but there are certainly real issues as well. Red Hat is interested in a desktop that is well integrated into the OS. The KDE project is interested in a desktop that is well integrated with itself. These goals don't always completely coincide. "

Now that I think about it this is so true KDE seems to try and do everything itself, gnome apps seem to add onto things while KDE makes its own program for something already there.

"of course thats just my opnion, I could be wrong" --Dennis Miller

Re:Tayler brought up a good point

[Karma Sucks]

That's bullshit when Red Hat rewrote the whole GNOME desktop instead of joining KDE. They had to do it worse too, with the whole thing based on a C and CORBA mess.

So GNOME steals other programs and is poorly integrated. That's a good thing?

Re:Tayler brought up a good point

[Anonymous Coward]

poor kde fanboi

Re:Tayler brought up a good point

[taniwha]

nah - I'd argue that KDE is interested in building a desktop that is well integrated into a number of different OS's - that necessarily means they often need to do stuff themselves so that it works in places other than Linux. Redhat is just one corner of the KDE universe

Re:Jesus

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardly.

i wish

[asv108]

Redhat would never put apt-rpm in by default because then why would anyone pay $60/year to get their system updates via up2date? I would gladly pay for up2date if it were $60/user but there is no way I'm paying a $120/year for free software updates on my 2 redhat boxes at home. So I installed apt-rpm on my redhat machines, and gave my $60 to the mandrake club.

Re:i wish

[avdp]

You wouldn't pay $120 for two systems. RedHat Network gives one free to each user (email address). As far as I can tell there is nothing preventing you from having multiple RHN accounts (each gets a free subscription) but you know, I personally don't do that. As a stockholder of RHAT I'd like them to make some money soon :)

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

But if you accept the big picture, OS X and XP are both good implementations of that picture in my opinion. Better than most other attempts, at least.
really? that must be why the 2 combined have over 90% of market share.
come on guys! let's not walk on water here...

BeOS 6?

[Xenex]

From page 3 of the interview:

"9. How do you feel about XFree's inability to fully function as a modern graphics subsystem? (e.g. you can't change real resolutions on the fly, no support for OSX's and BeOS6's smooth window moving etc)..."

BeOS 6?

Did I miss something? Yes, the R5.1 'Dano' developer release leaked, but I hadn't heard anything about R6.

Re:BeOS 6?

[Anonymous Coward]

That WAS supposed to the the BeOS 6. The "BeOS 5.1 Dano", which was the internal codename, is what the Be marketing wanted to call "BeOS 6". But they sold out everything to Palm, and now everything went the way of the dodo..

Re:BeOS 6?

[rsax]

What a lame and biased question - why doesn't the author just come out and say that he/she hates X?

I think he/she did just that =P

Re:Now all major distribs needs a unifed desktop..

[orcaaa]

First of all, there is a committee for free desktop standards[freedesktop.org]. Secondly, all other distributions have no need for creating a unified desktop. Red Hat did it because it felt that it was its responsibility, as market leader, to provide something that offers new users that extra cushion. Distributions like Slack, Gentoo etc, on the other hand, don't command such a high market share, and therefore, do not feel the need to spend thousands of $$ developng a unified desktop. The user base of such distros(Slack etc) is already well accustomed to the idea of two separate DEs and a bunch of WMs. If these users want a unified desktop, they should go for Redhat. If RH users want the full freedom of choice between DEs and not something modified by RH, then they should go ahead and try out other distros like Mandrake, Suse etc. Linux is all about choice and every distro has something unique to offer. If distros start copying each other, then linux bubble will burst, just like the unix bubble did a few decades ago. Kudos to RH for trying to stand out from the pack.

When willl the screen fonts stop sucking?

[occamboy]

Like most computer users, I stare at text all day. The screen fonts suck on all Linux distros that I know of. Screen fonts are excellent on Windows. When, oh when, will Linux screen fonts stop sucking! (Without my spending hours dicking around with internals)

Re:When willl the screen fonts stop sucking?

[be-fan]

They've stopped sucking for a long time now. I don't know what cookie-cutter distro you use, but my Gentoo installed automatically included a TT-bytecode interpeter enabled FreeType and MS Windows fonts. When I got my UXGA laptop, there was initially some problem because the LCD looked best when all fonts were anti-aliased (it has enough resolution that AA text looks sharp rather than blurry) but all I had to do was download FreeType2 CVS, get some nice Postscript fonts, and I ended up with font rendering that whips OS X all over the place and easily matches ClearType.

Re:When willl the screen fonts stop sucking?

[ChrisWong]

They still suck. You got around the suckiness by installing high quality TT fonts from Microsoft. Out of the box, screen fonts are far inferior to Microsoft's. The open source world does not have comparably high quality fonts.

Re:When willl the screen fonts stop sucking?

[be-fan]

Actually, with the FreeType CVS, the free Postscript fonts look just great. I've currently got the bytecode interpreter disabled because the autohinter in FreeType CVS is so good with Postscript fonts that it looks much better on my LCD than the hinted TrueType fonts. Letter shapes are a whole lot more accurate, while the outlines are still sharp. Read the FreeType mailing list (devel) sometime.

enough already

[Karma Sucks]

ok, enough already. haven't we heard enough of this propaganda? seriously.

No no no!!!

[bogie]

we do not need a compatibility layer, we need native apps!

"Every desktop OS has at one time or another a compatibility layer to ease users over to its use. Mac OS X has one for old OS 9.2 apps"

Yea so what's your point? These compatibility layers were for running apps from the previous OS, NOT apps from an entirely different OS! OS 9.2 couldn't run windows apps, and Win 3.1 couldn't run Mac apps. We already have an OS that can run all of the windows apps, it called Windows.

Making wine work perfectly only serves to enforce the Windows monopoly. Do you now want the MS Office monopoly, proprietary file formats and all, to dominate the linux platform? Because that is what your idea leads to.

How is a "compatiblity layer" even a marketing tool?

You: Hey switch to linux you can run all of your old apps.
Customer: But I can already do that now.
You: Yes but you also get to enjoy zero tech support because your running in an unsupported configuration
Customer: runs away

Wine is a crutch that keeps people stuck in the windows world. It's not like I don't understand why you or anyone else wouldn't want to stick with some old app you've been using for years, but the fact remains native apps are better in every way imaginable way.

I look at Open Office when I'm in Redhat 8.0 and think God, I remember using Netscape composer for word processing because there were no gui word processors for linux. It apps like that and Evolution that will over time surpass the very same MS versions you want to bring over. Don't you think that end result is better?

Linux gaining the ability to run all windows apps natively leads to a windows clone, and I didn't switch to linux so that I could use IE, Office and Photoshop.

Re:No no no!!!

[JSCarr]

I understand where you're coming from with your argument, and in many ways I agree with you. I have a slightly different point of view, however, that might help make the case for continued work on Wine. I know I'm not the only one in this position.

I'm a Linux user (well, a newbie really, but trying and learning fast) who really prefers to work within the Linux environment for many reasons. The problem is that I have work and school requirements that force me to use Windows for some very specific applications.

First is Microsoft Access. Yes, I know, but work dictates that that is what I use for database development. Access is used where I work as a front end to interface with a variety of other databases (Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Paradox, etc). Whether we like it or not, there just isn't any other software out there that is better at doing the things that Access does well, and therefore I'm stuck with it.

For school I have to have Outlook Express, and until there is a newsgroup reader for Linux that supports Secure Password Authentication (I've tried, believe me. Mozilla's working on it, fortunately.) again, I'm stuck. I can't even begin to tell you how nervous it makes me feel, running Outlook flippin' Express in Windows with all of the rampant virii (is that a word?) out there.

Get those two apps working on Linux under Wine, or replace the functionality they provide with other software, and I'm out of Windows.

we do not need a compatibility layer, we need native apps!

I agree, but until then...

Re:No no no!!!

[s4m7]

OK, dude, here's where you missed the boat:
Since necessity is the mother of invention, and since you're clearly not happy with the current state of wine, and the Apps You Need(tm) aren't yet native, you have three choices:

a) stick w/your old platform(win) or dual boot
b) help code wine so that it runs the Apps You Need(tm)
or
c)help recode / code your own Apps that do whatever it is You Need(tm).

since A just sucks, and B and C take roughly the same amount of effort, where would you rather see it go? compatibility with legacy apps that will be replaced, or new, free/open source apps that then become the standard?

Re:No no no!!!

[rnd()]

In your opinion, what are the main strengths of Access? I don't know all that much about its extended capabilities.

Re:No no no!!!

[scrytch]

> In your opinion, what are the main strengths of Access? I don't know all that much about its extended capabilities.

It's integrated. You design a schema, do data entry, define queries, run ad hoc queries, design forms and reports, all in one place. It can now use SQL Server as a native backend -- a real database -- or continue using ODBC to other databases, with basic functionality. From the perspective of a DBA, it's still a steaming pile of excrement. Using the SQL server backend makes it a passable front end to a sql server db, but it's definitely not something you'd do heavy lifting with. But as far as desktop data solutions go, it's surpassed only by Filemaker.

I personally use it to edit stored procedures on a SQL server db. The syntax hilighting of the SQL editor is pretty nice.

Re:No no no!!!

[JSCarr]

I'll only talk about the strengths that, as far as I'm aware, aren't reproduced functionally by any other bit of software out there. If I'm wrong and there's something that runs on Linux that can give me the same functionality, I'll be delighted if someone tells me.

The first is a GUI IDE for rapid development of forms and reports to front a database. This is an IDE that was designed specifically to work with databases, with the components made to make the things you want to do nearly painless. I'm talking about things like continuous forms, the holy grail of data components. Having this IDE makes it easy to knock together something usable and focus my time and mental energy on something more challenging (and interesting). It also makes it easy for my users to put together something that meets their needs without having to wait for someone to find the time to get around to it. For reports, you could use something like Crystal Reports, but anyone who's ever used it will tell you how unintuitive it is. My users just want to be able to base a report on a query and format it nicely. Access makes that simple.

The other big one is the ability to link to tables in a variety of other databases (Oracle, dBase, Paradox, SQL Server - we use them all), text files and spreadsheets simultaneously, create relationships between those tables, and query the data from all of those databases in a meaningful way. I know it would be much nicer to have all of that data in a single format, but we're talking fifty years of legacy data here, owned by not only different groups but different companies. Imagine the logistics of trying to move to a single format. First would have to come getting hundreds of people to agree on a format. That isn't going to happen.

An example: One of my current projects is a tool to allow users to interact with scheduling data for a specific purpose. This data is contained in one Oracle 8i, two SQL Server 2000, one Paradox and one MS Access 97 database. My job is to bring bits of that data together, provide a GUI for the users to query that data and suggest changes based on their queries, and then print nicely formatted reports that have to be signature-approved and then become legal documents. I could have done this using Java or C++, sure, but then I would be looking at twelve to eighteen months development time instead of six. From my point of view, I wouldn't have minded either way. From the point of view of my manager, however, who has a government agency breathing down his neck and needs this tool in production as quickly as possible, obviously speed is an important factor.

These things are where Access shines. Not as a database in itself: It's not particularly scalable for enterprise-level applications. But for the things it does do well, I'm not aware of anything else out there that can replace it at this time.

I'm heading out on vacation in about an hour, so won't see any replies to this unless you email me. Feel free to.

Re:NO NO NO!!!

[evilpenguin]

Except Linux is being adopted, all over the place. We've seen stories galore in this forum and others about Linux being adopted for servers, point-of-sale, and, yes, even a desktop standard. And don't bother pointing out that this is only a handful of companies. It was only a handful of companies in the server market at first as well. We've been hearing "It'll never fly, Orville" at every stage up to now. I expect that continue.

What Linux is not doing is breaking Microsoft's absolute and total control of the OEM distribution channel. The desktop has been the last market for Linux to penetrate because it is practically impossible to go into your local CompuMegaElectrodeHut and buy a PC with Linux on it.

When you can, Linux on the desktop will grow. It will still take time. But it will grow. Many companies are ready to produce apps for Linux, but they don't see the market justifying the effort.

Linux might still remain a minority of desktops, but it can't play with the market if it is ruthlessly excluded from the market.

Re:NO NO NO!!!

[bockman]

I believe they the 'you' in the post you are replying to was quite impersonal. Replace you with 'one', and you will see the point he was trying to make: since working on wine and working on a native application is bound to take the same effort (in his opinion), why not do the latter which produces better results?

As far as _your_ point goes, I think that with the adoption of free software by more and more people, a notion needs to be made clear to these newcomers: you^H^H^Hone _does_ pay for free software. And not, I'm not talking about buying distros or paying download time. I'm talking about contributions, which may come in a number of ways: coding, testing, filing bug reports, helping other people to use the software, refrain from wining, enduring bugs and missing features until someone finds the time to fix it, and so on.

If you^H^H^Hone is not willing to pay this price, it would be better for all if he sticks with the proprietary software of his choice.

Re:No no no!!!

[TKinias]

bogie wrote:

"Every desktop OS has at one time or another a compatibility layer to ease users over to its use. Mac OS X has one for old OS 9.2 apps"

Yea so what's your point? These compatibility layers were for running apps from the previous OS, NOT apps from an entirely different OS! OS 9.2 couldn't run windows apps, and Win 3.1 couldn't run Mac apps. We already have an OS that can run all of the windows apps, it called Windows.

MacOS 9 is not an earlier version of OS X, it's an entirely different OS. OS 9 and OS X are about as similar as OS 9 and MandrakePPC. (Calling OS X `ten' is just Apple marketing's attempt at not scaring off old Mac users.)

That having been said, you are quite right that native apps are more important than running WinCrap under Linux. I'll pick a native OpenOffice over MS Office 2007 XQ any day :)

Re:No no no!!!

[sgtrock]

We don't want Wine so we can run MS Office, IE, and Photoshop. We want Wine so we can run the dozens of 3rd party apps that our business relies on every day. Most of these apps were written by mom and pop shops as much as 10 or 12 years ago, and have barely made the crossover from DOS to Windows. Some of them can't even be run in Win9x or NT, let alone Linux! (OK, I know for those we need dosemu, not Wine)

My point is that there is a lot of old software out there that we HAVE to continue supporting. If we can't have Wine to do it, and those same mom and pop shops won't convert because they have a captive market, we are condemned to run Windows.

Free us! Give us Wine!

Umm... help an ignoramus...

[billbaggins]

I really do hate displaying my ignorance like this, but what does this mean? Admittedly, I've never really played with resolution, but as I understood it, if you really wanted to, you could set it up so ctrl-alt-[KP+|KP-] rolled you up or down one resolution level... and at any rate I know that certain apps (eg tuxracer) run at an apparently lower resolution than I usually have... so what exactly is "real resolution changing"? I don't doubt that it's something extraordinarily exciting, I just haven't the foggiest idea what you (or they) mean...

Re:Umm... help an ignoramus...

[Anonymous Coward]

It means that the desktop is resized to the given resolution. I look at ctrl-alt-+/- as more of a 'Zoom' function than anything else.

The effect of this change will be so that when you zoom in, your desktop does not extend outwards by about half a screen in every direction.

Think of the way Windows changes resolutions, if what I say isn't lucid enough.

Re:Umm... help an ignoramus...

[davros74]

Perhaps it means it can now change the desktop size too. Perhaps I'm also displaying my ignorance, but whenever I define multiple resolutions in my XF86Config file and switch between them, I always end up with a lower resolution screen with a virtual desktop the size of my maximum resolution.
The CTL-ALT-+ trick seems to change the screen resolution, but not the desktop resolution. I have never figured out how to change both from inside XFree86.

"attention to detail"

[tomlord]

Hmm. "attention to detail" was a phrase they used a lot. Ok, sure, these systems need polish.

But -- fuzzy icons -- unified shortcuts -- moving text around by a few pixels. Not _bad_ things to do, by any means. Still.

What about -- "attention to architecture", so that all of these "details" don't turn into infinitely long task lists, so that apps are far better and more consistent at being self-documenting, so that it doesn't take a ton of new code for every little app, so that interactive extensibility is built-in to the core, so that process are managed less horribly....

Re:"attention to detail"

[javilon]

What about -- "attention to architecture", so that all of these "details" don't turn into infinitely long task lists, so that apps are far better and more consistent at being self-documenting, so that it doesn't take a ton of new code for every little app, so that interactive extensibility is built-in to the core, so that process are managed less horribly....

You are talking about kde man... but it wasn't invented there

Re:Not That Good A Point

[krmt]

I think this is somewhat true, but not really. If you look at KDE, there are plenty of examples (at least on my system) of the desktop trying to integrate with the OS.

• The control center contains an incredibly useful "Information" section that unifies a lot of the info that can only be found on the console with a bunch of different utilities or cat'ing parts of /proc.
• The incredible integration of konqueror with manpages and infopages (if you haven't tried this, you really ought to, the manpages are much easier to read in a konq window.)
• I haven't tried the gnome-terminal from gnome2, but the kde2 terminal allows multiple terminals from one window, which allows very easy access to those console utils. KDE can import gtk+ themes quite handily if you like.
• There's a wealth of basic KDE utilities to do OS specific functions like changing password, managing users, and runlevels.
• The power of Konqueror as a file browser. Easy Samba browsing. Automated CD ripping and ogg encoding with drag and drop. Multiple window configurations. Embedded terminals. FTP and web browsing.
• The KPackage program for use with RPM or dpkg/apt.

These are just some of the basic things that KDE2 does to integrate in to the OS (I haven't even tried KDE3 yet). The KDE project just focuses on integrating with itself because they want to have a very well integrated environment. And they've obviously succeeded in that (just look at the programming model for evidence). Sure, they don't go out of their way to integrate with the Gnome folks, but then Gnome isn't doing any better. I think Redhat has a bias towards Gnome (there's a lot of historical evidence of this), and it's on display here. KDE does a good job of integrating with itself, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't integrate with the underlying OS as well.

Re:Word for the day...

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up, you ignorant, mongoloid weakling.

The Master Race comes in all colours.

That's why it's the Master Race. Once we're in charge, you KKK pukes are gonna be the first ones we load on the boxcars.

I'm confused

[Kaz Riprock]

Does this mean they don't do stage magic anymore?

Pennington and Taylor, I mean...

Smell that? Mmmmmmmm..burning karma....(gurgle)

Re: I'm not Havoc, but...

[21mhz]

What the hell were you thinking when you said that "Multiple Desktops" had all the functionality needed, so viewport people were out of luck?

They do have all the functionality needed.
If you need more pixels on your screen, go buy a bigger monitor. For everything else, there is Mast^H^H^H^H the multiple desktops functionality. Duplicate features must be occamed out. And boy, did I ever cringe over the clipboard implementations galore that coexist in Emacs.

To be true, I too have issues with over-simplification. Right now, I cannot drag windows between desktops with the deskguide applet, but I don't think it's infeasible to implement without re-inventing yet another way to provide more than single desktop.

Gnome1.4 vs. Gnome2

[nkv]

I was pissed off about that, too.

A lot of goodies which 1.4 had missing from GNOME2 IMHO.

The ability to dynamically bind keychords to menu items, lot of customisability options (panel behaviour etc.) etc. are all missing. I tried to customise Metacity and I get a small menu from the gnome-control-center with two or three options which is definitely less than what I can do with sawfish.

You have to love the fonts though :)

Cheerio

Re:Gnome1.4 vs. Gnome2

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome 1.4 also allows you to bind keys to menu options. I know, I use them all the time (alt + c = cookie menu in Galeon, ctrl + x = xterm in Rox).

Re:Gnome1.4 vs. Gnome2

[GauteL]

I don't miss options at all. Page-flipping could be sort of nice, but I'm seriously glad that there is only one choice for workspace/viewports now.

If I had a dime for every time I've heard someone scream about some option being removed from GNOME I'd be rich by now. If everyone was to be satisfied we would be back to the mess that was GNOME 1.4. Instead I have a beautiful, easy to use and clean desktop.

The point is that while an individual outcry for an option might be acceptable to include, including options for everyone will not because everyone wants different options. One thing people never seem to remember is that preferences do have costs. They are not something to just throw in so that everyone is happy. If the GNOME-team starts backing down on option after option then eventually NOONE will be happy because GNOME would be a bloated and unstructured mess.

Unless the requestor has some more insightful arguments about why the option needs to be included other than "this prevents GNOME 2 from being useful" it won't be included, simple as that.

I'd like to quote the questions put forward by Havoc Pennington when someone requested panel configuration:

"For all those options you need to go through these questions:

- why do you want the different behavior

- why would someone _not_ want the different behavior

- if _everyone_ wants the different behavior, we should just switch to it, not make it an option.

-Does everyone want it? Why or why not?

- if there are two different behaviors needed, can the two cases be autodetected? if so let's do that, no need to make the user configure it manually.

- is the reason for wanting or not wanting a minor issue that doesn't matter much? if so, then we should just pick a default, it's not worth a preference."

Re:Gnome1.4 vs. Gnome2

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but it would have been far more intelligent for Gnome to have picked viewports as the only option. As mentioned before, by turning edge flipping off, presto - you have multiple desktops (albeit with windows that straddle them)

Re:Gnome1.4 vs. Gnome2

[FooBarWidget]

What if:
- 33% wants behavior A, 33% wants behavior B, and 33% wants behavior C?
- the situation cannot be autodetected unless we invent a mind reading device?

Re:Gnome1.4 vs. Gnome2

[GauteL]

Then it will be an option. As I said, if you have a good argument for why something should be an option, then it will be.

Re:Gnome1.4 vs. Gnome2

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't miss options at all. Page-flipping could be sort of nice, but I'm seriously glad that there is only one choice for workspace/viewports now.

If I had a dime for every time I've heard someone scream about some option being removed from GNOME I'd be rich by now. If everyone was to be satisfied we would be back to the mess that was GNOME 1.4. Instead I have a beautiful, easy to use and clean desktop

Well, you have a "beautiful easy to use and clean" desktop. I, on the other hand, have something that I used for about five minutes before going back to Gnome 1.4 simply because it supports edge flipping.

KDE 1.X had edge flipping and this single feature is what got me into using Linux - I could have four times the desk space (even on my 1600x1200 monitor), and I could move my mouse to the edge of the screen and hop to the next one. This is, to me, the coolest feature ever. Call me a simpleton, but it's true. I love this feature more than any other feture of Open Source desktops.

When KDE 2.X omitted this feature, I switched to Gnome. The lack of edge flipping absolutely the only reason I switched to Gnome. Now that KDE 3.X has edge flipping once again, perhaps it's time to change back.

Seriously, in 1.4 it's off by default. It won't screw new users up if they don't check the little box. Make me do some sort of craziness to get it working - compile from source, export an environment variable, whatever - JUST LET ME HAVE MY EDGE FLIPPING BACK!!!

Re:Gnome1.4 vs. Gnome2

[Anonymous Coward]

Not in Havoc Pennington's world, it won't.

It's not the blending, stupid.

[ndogg]

A lot of people seem to misunderstand that most of the debate surrounding Red Hat's changes has to do with unified look and feel.

It's not that that I, and many other KDE-philes, have a problem with (in fact, I and many others support the idea), it's the seeming favouritism for GNOME applications for the default shortcuts. In fact, I don't know if any of the default shortcuts link to a KDE-based application. For example, why not setup a default shortcut to Quanta? It's a highly respected web-development editor.

Re:It's not the blending, stupid.

[Ur@eus]

There is 1 GNOME application that has been set up as the default
application in RH KDE and that is Evolution for mail. The other two major defaults are OpenOffice and Mozilla which unfortunatly isn't GNOME apps.

Re:It's not the blending, stupid.

[FooBarWidget]

RedHat is the only major distro with GNOME as default desktop. Face it: some people just prefer other things. And other distributions (Mandrake, SuSE, etc.) are all ruled by KDE favouritism.
What's your point?
Why do you people get upset just because there's 1 distro that prefers GNOME over KDE?

nVIDIA

[21mhz]

I cannot agree more with their stance on the closed-source nVIDIA drivers. Not only their closedness hamper the development of their open counterpart, it slows down their very adoption and resolution of real problems, as opposed to imaginary IP threats.

I rock

[Anonymous DWord]

Timing is everything.
http://shotgun.shacknet.nu:81/leet.png

I still think...

[Anonymous Coward]

I still think that 'Scot Hacker' (the BeOS Bible guy) is the best geek name I've come across...

TrueType Fonts easy to install in Redhat 8

[whoopie]

Now it is easy to install TrueType Fonts in Linux
Copy your truetype fonts in /usr/share/fonts/ttf and within 30 secornds the Xft2 font engine finds the fonts.

Re:TrueType Fonts easy to install in Redhat 8

[(H)elix1]

No mod points, so THANK YOU! I have been digging through the FAQ's trying to figure out how to add Arial.

Note to freshrpms -- use a font that comes with the base distro. Even with a 21" monitor, it was hard to read the RPM's!

Re:TrueType Fonts easy to install in Redhat 8

[drxenos]

Tried that; didn't work for me.

Re:No brainer-Harmony

[Anonymous Coward]

The important questions here is.
Will the other distro's do the same?
Will they impliment them in the same manner?
Will the KDE group complain about those changes?

Tune in next week for another exciting chapter of "As the distro's burn".

Re:When willl the screen fonts stop sucking?-BeOS

[Anonymous Coward]

" but all I had to do was download FreeType2 CVS, get some nice Postscript fonts, and I ended up with font rendering that whips OS X all over the place and easily matches ClearType."

But the important question is (considering who the poster is), better than BeOS?

Re:It's not the blending, stupid.-WYSIWYG

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla comes with a WYSIWYG HTML editor.
Quanta, nice as it is, isn't WYSIWYG.

One thing not mentioned

[Arker]

Is the decision to label the Flag of the Republic of China as a bug. Seems wourthy of mention. Read more about it here.

Bluecurve is only a theme

[Plug]

Red Hat 8.0's new consistency is provided using Xft2/Freetype with 'heavy modifications' and the Bluecurve theme. Underneath remember, it's still Gnome 2 and/or KDE.

The world is a big free and happy place. Which means you too can have the Red Hat desktop goodness on your distribution of choice and not have to complain about Taiwanese flags, RPM, additional packages for MP3 playback etc.

I haven't got a hard disc spare to install Red Hat 8.0 on (I'd really like to see it based on all the screenshots), but I do have a couple of Debian systems. Someone could make me a very happy man (and earn some serious karma) by taking the bits that are good about Red Hat 8.0 and making them available in other distributions.

That's how Linux works. Take the bits you like, ignore the bits you don't. Is Bluecurve on Freshmeat's themes section yet?

Re:Bluecurve is only a theme

[Plug]

I'd just like to add that, as reported on the Dot, it seems Gentoo users can issue

# emerge redhat-artwork

and be in Bluecurve bliss.

Re:Bluecurve is only a theme

[twener]

Very true, some do like RedHat has invented the Linux desktop.

Re:Bluecurve is only a theme

[ralphj]

Is Bluecurve on Freshmeat's themes section yet?

As far as I know, it's not. But getting the Bluecurve theme is not so hard. Go to your local RedHat-mirror and get the redhat-artwork source-RPM. Use MC or a program like Alien to extract the tar.gz out of it. Untar that to a directory. Go to the directory that contains the theme you wish to compile (i.e. KDE or Gnome2 version). Edit the makefile by hand to specifiy the directories that have the necessary libraries (this is not so hard as it seems - I tried the ./configure script on a Debian Woody-box, and that didn't work. Some of the dirs looked to have been 'hard-coded' in one of the scripts). Now type make and, as root, make install.

That's all there's to it. It might seem a little bit complicated, but it's not, really. And besides, what's wrong with doing a little bit of work for a very nice (Debian) desktop?

Desktop is a breeze today on linux.

[miffo.swe]

The only thing i think needs attention is installing/uninstalling applications. Today that is a pain in linux and should be addressed. To get adoption on the desktop that have to be as easy as in Mac or Windows to install and uninstall software.

Besides that i really like RH 8.0 and it works just fine for me and my wife.

Re:Desktop is a breeze today on linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

...have to be as easy as in Mac or Windows to install and uninstall software.

I'm pretty sure that this is not the way.

Re:Desktop is a breeze today on linux.

[TKinias]

miffo.swe wrote:

The only thing i think needs attention is installing/uninstalling applications.

Try this:

# apt-get install foo

# apt-get remove bar

It doesn't get any easier than that, my friend. The problem isn't Linux -- Debian has had apt for a long time -- it's the other distros.

Re:Desktop is a breeze today on linux.

[ejasons]

Try this:

# apt-get install foo

# apt-get remove bar

Try not running that as root -- doesn't work too well. And people complain that Windows requires everyone to run as Administrator.

This is my current biggest annoyance with Linux -- the fact that it wants to put everything in /usr. It's only a matter of time before someone puts a significant trojan into an RPM...

Just being able to copy directories around in MacOSX is wonderful! Put things where you want, rather than where the distribution thinks they should go...

Re:Desktop is a breeze today on linux.

[bcrowell]

That works great, as long as someone out there has decided to put some time into making "foo" work with apt-get and maintaining it on a permanent basis. The problem is that this is a lot of work, and in many cases, nobody has volunteered.

In my experience as a desktop Linux user, installing applications is indeed the number-one problem. The solution, unfortunately, doesn't seem to be anything as simple as "oh, let's all use apt-get." I think it has more to do with the problem of shared libraries as opposed to statically linked binaries. The problem with shared libraries is that you get situations where the application you want to install doesn't like the version of the library you have installed. The problem with statically linked binaries is that they're big, and you also don't get the benefit of a bug fix when you upgrade the library.

The whole thing is a complicated and difficult problem. Very Smart People are working on other issues that are perceived as more glamorous, like memory management in the Linux kernel. The problem is that Very Smart People do not seem to perceive installing applications as a glamorous problem worthy of their attention.

Re:Desktop is a breeze today on linux.

[miffo.swe]

I know about debian and i think it works pretty well for GPL software that lies resident on ftp servers and such. What i am looking for is some better easier way of installing comercial software. Today most installs is hacks of various success. A unified system cant be that hard to gather around.

Re:Desktop is a breeze today on linux.

[TKinias]

miffo.swe wrote:

What i am looking for is some better easier way of installing comercial software.

Oh. I assume you mean proprietary, binary-only software by `commercial'. I find the solution is generally not to run such software on general-purpose systems. With OpenOffice, Mozilla, Xmms, and a wide variety of e-mail programs, your standard home/office uses need no proprietary software.

Re:Desktop is a breeze today on linux.

[TKinias]

bcrowell wrote:

That works great, as long as someone out there has decided to put some time into making "foo" work with apt-get and maintaining it on a permanent basis. The problem is that this is a lot of work, and in many cases, nobody has volunteered.

In my experience as a desktop Linux user, installing applications is indeed the number-one problem. . . .

In most cases, Free (and quite a lot of non-Free) software is available packaged for Debian. Certainly all your standard Linux desktop and server packages are (more than 8710 in Woody [stable] according to www.debian.org). If it's not packaged, it's probably either brand new, obscure and complicated (e.g., GRASS GIS software), or illegal to package (lame etc.).

Seriously, what packages have you had trouble installing in Debian? The whole point of apt is that it keeps track of dependencies and shared libraries, so you shouldn't have any trouble with such things. In my experience, for desktop stuff it really is as easy as apt-get install foo.

Re:Desktop is a breeze today on linux.

[miffo.swe]

Well i am using mostly GPL and other Open Source software but there are occasions where there arent any. Games spring to mind and there are other times when there just arent any viable alternatives. Im not into linux for the price but because i like it. Ill gladly pay for software that i find worth the money. To get support from hardware and software there need to be some consistency in how you install software on all dists. Preferebly an easy way too so that even 00:00 people can use it.

But hey, thats just my opinion, im not going to force it on anybody.

=)

Freecurve for Mandrake

[Plug]

Texstar has some "Freecurve" RPMs for Mandrake 9.0 up as well, for Mandrake users who want a taste of Red Hat's new theme.

Owen Taylor sports some dubious facial hair ...

[LizardKing]

I haven't seen any comments on this yet, but they may have been moderated below my threshold. However, it has got to be said that Owen Taylor has some seriously nasty facial hair. It's always interesting to see what people you know from faceless mediums like mailing lists and IRC actually look like, but I never imagained Owen Taylor would resemble a 70's porn star ...

Anyway, the interview was far more insightful than most I've seen of late. Quite surprising, as I'm generally unimpressed with the interviewers usual review output.

Chris

Re:Owen Taylor sports some dubious facial hair ...

[Rudy Rodarte]

In walks OWT
Did anyone order a pizza?
Funky bass intro

Way back?

[tgd]

Thanks... with one simple comment on /., you've managed to make me feel old and ruin my day, and I haven't even had my coffee yet!

nonsense

[Malor]

Consider: since RedHat can raise the bard, surely Mandrake can bring back recently-dead kernel hackers. :-)

Re: All relativity aside

[nehril]

exactly! all distributions are identical. there is no such thing as good or bad. Just the other day I installed GhettoDistro and it reformatted my pet cat. I thought "wow, that's neither good nor bad, it's just not what I need right now." Somebody somewhere probably installs GhettoDistro every day just because it is *so* good for their own special needs.

As you get run over by the bus with a drunk driver, recall the words of wisdom that say "nothing is good or bad, people just have different needs."

Sys Admin Needed

[m_evanchik]

It's notable that the interviewees admitted that RH is still not ready as a consumer desktop.

Rather, RH is meant to be used by non-technical users on a carefully controlled system, installed by a knowledgeable systems administrator.

A lot of the PR I've read on 8.0 are breathless in proclaiming 8.0 as a Windows replacement, but as RH's own developpers point out, this is not the case.

Re:Sys Admin Needed

[Dehumanizer]

Most Windows users don't know how to install and administer it either.

In most companies, every NT / 2000 / XP desktop is installed by the sysadmin, and the user doesn't have administrator access.

Re:Sys Admin Needed

[m_evanchik]

Fair enough. Windows has its own flaws.

But it still is much more "novice-user" friendly than RH, and RH is pretty user-friendly for a Linux distro.

As was also pointed out in the interview, another of RH's shortcomings is hardware support. This is not really RH's fault. Microsoft gets hardware support for free for Windows because hardware vendors generally write the drivers themselves, because of the need to support the ubiquitous Windows user base.

Apple has a nice Unix-based OS, but really only one small core set of hardware to support. Even Apple users must be sometimes frustrated with not being able to use some hardware because of lack of Apple drivers.

RH, and by inference Linux, still isn't ready to challenge Windows with "Joe and Jane User". The UI seems to be moving towards that goal. I wonder if the hardware-support ever will. It's a chicken and egg type of dilemma - vendors don't support Linux until it gets more users and most users avoid Linux because of lack of hardware support.

And it will be too bad if Linux, or OSS in general, doesn't get more of a foothold on more desktops, because Microsoft really is an evil empire more attuned to its own megalomanical business needs than the need of end-users.

Re:Sys Admin Needed

[redtuxxx]

I think this is more a case of RH's traditional conservatism

NO NO NO!!!

[Kjella]

Sigh... it always comes back to this. "If Linux doesn't have it, do it yourself!"

Then why bother trying to make normal desktop users, companies, anybody that doesn't program, use Linux? And when they come back and tell you "Umm, I'd like to, but it doesn't have [missing feature], so I can't" you reply with "gee, that's too bad, you fix it".

They didn't miss the boat or anything. Slashdot asks time and time again why Linux isn't being adopted. Then you have to accept to be answered by people that have no skill, time or interest to actually fix it (or money, if there was a commercial alternative running under Linux). It's not like they all see GPL programmers as a bunch of people they can leech free (as in beer) software of, they just gave you the facts. Deal with it.

Kjella

Gnutella

[amorsen]

I'll bet it is slick, but I've been trying to download the damn thing for a week and the most I've gotten is the first 300k of it.

Try gtk-gnutella or another Gnutella program. Search for psyche-i386-disc1.iso (and so on). I'm sharing it and I know I'm not the only one.

Changing the world...

[crath]

One of the interviewees said, "But in general: say you woke up one day and everyone on earth simultaneously agreed to switch from windows/icons/mouse to some new paradigm. It would still take 20 years, trillions of dollars, and be mind-blowingly difficult."

This is more than an understatement. We've been trying to make the metric system switch for more than 20 years and we're still only inches off the starting line.

System/application developers frequently forget this point and underestimate the importance of backward compatibility. Evolution will always win in a war with revolution; even if revolution wins a few of the early battles.

Re:Changing the world...

[TKinias]

crath wrote:

This is more than an understatement. We've been trying to make the metric system switch for more than 20 years and we're still only inches off the starting line.

I assume you're writing from the U.S., because the U.K. has finally gone metric (at least officially -- there was a grocer prosecuted and convicted last year for selling fruit by Imperial measure).

The U.S. was going metric in the 1970s, but Reagan in 1982 disbanded the metrification board and halted the process. We were more advanced twenty years ago than now.

Re:Changing the world...

[crath]

Please check your facts re: the UK. The last I checked (5 minutes ago at UK Highway Code), the UK still uses Miles per Hour to measure highway speed. The odometers in cars are still miles too. I agree that the UK is ahead of Canada (where I live) and way ahead of the US, but non-metric units still unnecessarily abound.

Re:Changing the world...

[TKinias]

crath wrote:

Please check your facts re: the UK.

Yes, the process is incomplete. I didn't think the subject was really imporant enough to write an essay on the status of metrification in all facets of British life and commerce.

And yes, last time I checked (in London briefly in August 2000) they still drive on the left, too.

Re:Changing the world...

[markov_chain]

We've been trying to make the metric system switch for more than 20 years and we're still only inches off the starting line.

No further questions, your Honor :)

Re: Good point or not, depending on your POV

[21mhz]

This is all fine and good, but how about giving to the rest of the OSS world something to use and build upon, without pulling the entire project with it?
Like, a powerful C portability/utility library, a standalone signal/slot framework, a lightweight ORB (this means CORBA the standard, not another crippled-by-design object framework?), a configuration management server, or a fully internationalized font rendering system?

WTF?

[CaptPungent]

So, choice is bad?

- if _everyone_ wants the different behavior, we should just switch to it, not make it an option.

#ifndef SARCASM
#define SARCASM 1

You know, why do we have all these different places to go to buy a car? Cars, SUVs, trucks, Minivans, it all too confusing. And they even allow you to choose power locks, color, what stereo you want in it, and other options, it's too much. We should just have one and make EVERYONE use is because it'll be easier. Choice makes my head hurt.

#endif

I just don't understand some people. They are only happy if everyone else uses the same thing as them. Nevermind the fact that if it was too confusing for you to deal with, THEN LEAVE IT ON THE FUCKING DEFAULT BEHAVIOR!! Choice is good, period. It doesn't make it "bloated". Sure, it may be confusing for some people, but then those people don't have to mess with it. To say that it doesn't have feature X because that will make it too messy is just an excuse, of the "it's not a bug it's a feature" type. If some software doesn't have the features that I like, I don't use the damn thing. Kde doesn't have a problem with being messy, yet I have yet to see another Kde desktop set up exactly like mine. It is tweakable out the ass. And it is in no way "messy".

Re:WTF?

[GauteL]

You totally do not understand the issue. Too much choice is bad for everyone except the people that really love to tweak stuff.

For everyone else, too much choice is bad.
1. It clutters up the interface
2. It complicates the software and introduces bugs, some of which are hard to track down because of the myriad of options available to complicate things.
3. It is extremely confusing.

Choice is not "good period". Choice is good if the options are good.

KDE does have a problem with being too messy. The control center is way too messy. If you like KDE then by all means keep using it, but do not try to call me an idiot for not wanting all the options you like.

BTW: your analogy stinks. Choice about what software to use is good. That is what the analogy works with.
A better analogy is if the cars had big buttons that stated how fast the windows should open or close, or big fat buttons stating what concentration the window cleaning liquid should have. This would be tweakable. Certainly fun for someone but exceptionally bad for the rest.

"Nevermind the fact that if it was too confusing for you to deal with, THEN LEAVE IT ON THE FUCKING DEFAULT BEHAVIOR!!"

This is just insulting. The point is that there are some GOOD options. But how am I going to FIND those options if the interface is cluttered up with loads and loads of crack-options?

You my friend did not understand my point at all. Options DO have costs, which means you have to be careful about what options you give, and what you just decide on.

GNOME will hopefully never be a unification of all the options and features that have ever existed in desktop environments, like "emacs" is for editors.

Re:WTF?

[twener]

> KDE does have a problem with being too messy. The control center is way too messy.

How do you like the reordered control center of KDE 3.1 (I hope it was already in Beta2)?

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Choice is not "good period". Choice is good if the options are good.

No, choice is GOOD PERIOD, because no one person or group can say whether the options are good or bad. The mantra for X11 developers used to be that more choice is always better and the user is always right. Unfortunately, the Linux community lost sight of that on the way to turning Linux into Windows.

This is just insulting. The point is that there are some GOOD options. But how am I going to FIND those options if the interface is cluttered up with loads and loads of crack-options?

They're only crack options to YOU. To somebody else, they're good options - that's why they exist. You should be complaining about the design of configuration tools, not the abundance of options.

Re:WTF?

[GauteL]

Haven't tried it. It might be nice, and I should look into it before I comment on the messy control center more times.

Re:WTF?

[GauteL]

"because no one person or group can say whether the options are good or bad"

Sure I can. It IS possible to say what options are good or bad.
If these two are fulfilled, then it is a bad option:
1. If the option is wanted by a really small minority.
2. If it is just a minor inconvenience for the minority, and they can change the way they work.

"They're only crack options to YOU. To somebody else, they're good options - that's why they exist."

They are bad too me because they make it seriously difficult to find the good options.

"You should be complaining about the design of configuration tools, not the abundance of options."

Show me ONE SINGLE example of what you are talking about here. I challenge you, show me ONE example of good configuration tools that have the kind of abundance we are talking about here.

It is impossible to create a nice preference dialog for a big system if you do not set a certain limit on the number of options.

You should not need some sort of search-facility just to configure your desktop.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure I can. It IS possible to say what options are good or bad.
If these two are fulfilled, then it is a bad option:
1. If the option is wanted by a really small minority.

Almost all options are only used by a small minority of users. If they were used by a majority of users, then they should be defaults. Simply because the option is wanted by a minority of users doesn't justify taking it out.

2. If it is just a minor inconvenience for the minority, and they can change the way they work.

Again, the philosophy behind most X11 applications used to be that the user is always right. Developers have little basis for deciding what options present a minor inconvenience. A useless option for one person is a killer feature for somebody else. If I wanted developers to tell me which options I ought to find useful and what options I shouldn't have a need for, then I would use a Mac.

Show me ONE SINGLE example of what you are talking about here. I challenge you, show me ONE example of good configuration tools that have the kind of abundance we are talking about here.

It is impossible to create a nice preference dialog for a big system if you do not set a certain limit on the number of options.

You should not need some sort of search-facility just to configure your desktop.

The mistake is trying to put all the options for a given app into one dialog, worse yet to put all the options for a whole desktop into one dialog. You need to have more than one tier of configuration. Take something as simple as xterm for example. The most commonly used options have been put into three pop-up menus. But beyond that, there's an abundance of other options that are accessible through command line switches and setting X resources. Most older X11 applications work the same way - they provide a ton of options, but only the most commonly used options go into the GUI menus or dialogs.

Enlightenment, AfterStep, WindowMaker, and most of the older window managers have a menu of configuration dialogs that present the commonly used options. They also have theming systems that essentially allow you to swap in/out a whole bunch of options together as a set. And underneath, there is a system of configuration files. It's a three tiered system which meets the needs of both casual users and rabid tweakers.

Re:No brainer-Harmony

[twener]

What is the "KDE group"? Perhaps you mean parts of KDE community which don't intersect with all KDE developers?

Re:Not That Good A Point

[twener]

The gnome-terminal gained multiple terminals in Gnome2. And KDE3 lost its support for GTK+1 themes.

Re: All relativity aside

[cioxx]

Congratts! This qualifies as the most bizarre post on slashdot in recent history.

I just emailed this link to everyone in the office.

If KDE apps were better...

[0x0d0a]

I can only think of a single KDE/Qt app that blows the GNOME/GTK equivalent out of the water, and that's licq, which Red Hat *does* ship.

* Konqueror? Not as widely used as Moz.
* Anything in the KDE office suite? Not even close to Open Office, even for the most die-hard KDE fans.
* Kmail? Not as comfortable as Evolution for people used to Outlook, and doesn't have PIM/schedule management a la Outlook (frankly, I think everyone should be using mutt, which has the best PGP support of all time, but...:-) ).

Actually, I take it back. There is no GNOME/GTK equivalent at all to kcheat, a program designed to let you cheat in video games by editing memory. Kind of silly that there's nothing else like this for Linux, esp. since kcheat is KDE 1...

Re:If KDE apps were better...

[twener]

Kylix? KDevelop? UML? KPresenter? Quanta? Kile? Scribus?
KWord is better than Abiword (event doesn't know tables). And Mozilla and OpenOffice are not GNOME/GTK, don't believe the Gnome propaganda machine. And KMail is a mail program (which surprisingly has no PIM), compare it to Balsa and not other categories.

Re:If KDE apps were better...

[redtuxxx]

Kylix - news to me this is a KDE app (QT yes, proprietry yes - KDE no)
From what I have heard Kword is crashorama
People compare the mail compnent with Kmail - it just does a lot more

Kile? Scribus?

Re:If KDE apps were better...

[twener]

> From what I have heard Kword is crashorama

When did you hear this? Surely before the KOffice 1.2 release?

> Kile? Scribus?

freshmeat is your friend: LaTeX editor and DTP.

Worlds collide

[ChrisWong]

Most Linux veterans do not appreciate KDE's attempts at achieving the integration, uniformity and predictability that Mac and Windows have, because they are too used to the status quo. It's much more than putting a "k" in front of every app. I've addressed this point elsewhere. The trouble is that Red Hat has substituted a different app for every major KDE app. A typical user would use Red Hat's "KDE" and never use any of its apps nor see its potential. KDE-rh is essentially an oversized, overslow window manager. There is no good reason to use KDE in this form: you might as well use a lightweight environment like xfce instead.

Owen's comment that "these goals don't completely coincide" is an understatement. KDE wants to be the desktop. Red Hat wants to own the desktop. They are completely at odds.

Re:When willl the screen fonts stop sucking?-BeOS

[be-fan]

Yes. Most definately. Font rendering was never one of BeOS's strongest points. It was okay (better than Windows at the time), but the Bitstream renderer was showing its age. I was looking forward to the licensing deal with Bitstream to embed FontFusion (their new renderer) but that never happened. I saw FontFusion in action in QNX RtP and it was incredible. However, the version of FreeType in CVS right now is even better :)

Re:No no no!!! [Offtopic]

[rsax]

I can't even begin to tell you how nervous it makes me feel, running Outlook flippin' Express in Windows with all of the rampant virii (is that a word?) out there.

No actually, it isn't a word =P
http://www.perl.com/language/misc/virus.html

And personally (this isn't directed to the poster), I don't think boxen is a word either. Someone took the plural of ox (oxen) and decided it would suit box too, the plural of box is boxes.

Grammar nazi mode.. off.

Access, have you tried Gnome-DB?

[gnugnugnu]

Just using Access as a database frontend, have you tried Gnome-DB? If Gnome DB is missing stuff then please do take the time to submit bug reports.
http://www.gnome-db.org/

I dont use News much anymore and dont get what is so important about SPA (Secure Password Authentication) but if Pan does not support it then please do file a bug report and explain why it is so important
http://pan.rebelbase.com/bugs/

Even if you dont think of yourself as a programmer using and testing programs and taking the time to fill intelligent well informed bug reports and other feedback is really useful.

Kde

[CaptPungent]

Perhaps I jumped the gun a little, but I don't think so. I currently use Kde3.1 from cvs, so I don't remember exactly how it was in 3, BUT I don't remember being overwhelmed by a messy CC. KControl has always been fairly straight forward. Its even better in 3.1.

This is just insulting.

Sorry

The point is that there are some GOOD options. But how am I going to FIND those options if the interface is cluttered up with loads and loads of crack-options?

Hmmm, maybe go, "Do I know what this option does? No? Then I'll leave it alone." Then once you see an option to DO recognize, tweak it. What you are talking about it that the defaults should be what that majority wants. I agree. But don't remove the tweaks to change that default for the "minority" that wants something different. There are some options in KControl that I don't use, such as the Menu Bar in Mac OS style. Should it be removed because *I* don't like it? No, and it would be selfish of me to say so. Thats all I have to say. The point is, what you speak of is having good defaults that the majority uses. This I agree with. Such as changing the default style in Kde to Keramik and default icons to the Crystal icons. It makes Kde look good by default, its what a majority (including me) are going to set it to anyway, so those people that get scared by options don't have to touch KControl at all.

Re: Good point or not, depending on your POV

[krmt]

That's true, the KDE project isn't too big on making individual components that separate well from the rest of the project. But the entire point of the project is to have some kind of unity within the system. Say what you will about CORBA, it's hideously complex and overkill for the desktop. The KDE solution is lighter weight (not crippled-by-design any more than XML is crippled in relation to SGML) solution to their particular problem.

The KDE team didn't need something like a standalone signals/slots library because it's built in to the Qt toolkit which the whole project is based on. Why reinvent the wheel?

As for "a powerful C portability/utility library", I don't know what you mean besides libc, which isn't a part of gnome any more than libstdc++ is a part of KDE.

Pango is great, no doubt about it, but on the other hand KDE doesn't have shabby international support. They also didn't have someone from Redhat who was paid to write Pango for them.

On the other hand, why doesn't Gnome give us a complete development environment on the scale of KDevelop? A unified office suite (no, Open Office doesn't count because it's not really part of Gnome).

KDE doesn't focus on providing standalone libraries for uses outside the project, but they provide a hell of a toolset for use inside the project. DCOP is simple and powerful. Kparts was ready and in extensive use well before Bonobo. The C++ object model is inherently easier to work with than the hacked on gtk C pseudo-object model for UI programming. The KDevelop environment is the best GUI development environment on Linux. And that's just for developers. The whole system is very well unified, which is the benefit of the project's focus. Whether or not you like it is a whole other issue. They have done a great job at making a unified system for both developers and users on *NIX. You can't say this as well about Gnome, with its shifting window managers (Metacity is the third standard one in the project's lifetime?)and multiple Office programs.

Perhaps that's why so many of the KDE people are mad about the whole Bluecurve thing. They had already done a great job at making a unified desktop system, and to see it merged with Gnome in the name of unity was perhaps a bit insulting.

Re: Good point or not, depending on your POV

[21mhz]

Say what you will about CORBA, it's hideously complex and overkill for the desktop.

Come see ORBit, where they didn't bother to implement more hideous and overdeveloped parts of CORBA, and it's in fact pretty straight and efficient. AND, it can serve as a general-purpose ORB at the entry level.

The KDE solution is lighter weight (not crippled-by-design any more than XML is crippled in relation to SGML) solution to their particular problem.

It is a stretch to compare DCOP invention with the coming up with XML (which was a breakthrough hands down). In DCOP, there are fundamental omissions from what is considered industrial strength, mostly exceptions and multiple output parameters, taken, as the developers admit, in the name of performance. Come on, with Moore's law, this point was obsolete by the time they implemented the thing. Did we really need yet another COM workalike made with 133MHz Pentiums in mind?

As for "a powerful C portability/utility library", I don't know what you mean besides libc

I mean glib, which is free for use to anyone with a C compiler, in concert with GNOME/GTK+ or not. This library alone justifies existence of the project.

On the other hand, why doesn't Gnome give us a complete development environment on the scale of KDevelop?

Dunno, it's perhaps because they are all like medieval monks, happy with GNU autotools and Emacs. Phew :-)

The C++ object model is inherently easier to work with

Tell this to developers of language bindings and to distribution vendors making the transition from GCC 2.9x to GCC 3.2. All things come with a price.

The KDevelop environment is the best GUI development environment on Linux.

I, personally, would bet on Eclipse, but this is rather out of the discussion.

Volume EULA for Red Hat

[alphadoggy007]

I'm trying to figure out if I'm going to be in trouble if I install my single user copy of Linux on, like, 300 servers in one organization. Does anyone have experience doing this? Is there a special bulk-volume EULA from Red Hat that covers this kind of thing?