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New Red Hat Beta
Alkini writes "Red Hat just announced a new beta, codenamed Phoebe. Their highlight list includes Mozilla 1.2.1 with Xft antialiased fonts and glibc-2.3.1. The new beta can be downloaded from RH's FTP site or one of the mirrors."
The most unstable of the most stable of the stable desktop OSes... Wait I think I messed that up
Banaaaana!
...it left me feeling it could have been much better. It showed promise, but had a few faults which keep it just short of being, well... perfect. I always felt that if Red Hat addressed just a few concerns, 8.1 could be great. Problems, in my opinion, were:
*Lack of NTFS support by default: Near-neccessary for 2000/XP dual-booters
*That silly "Extras" menu: you never quite know where software is going to turn up
*Lack of a good package management front-end: That Windows-like one they include is good for managing the software on the RH8 CDs, but for removing, installing, and upgrading third-party RPMs, one must resort either to the command line, or better yet, apt4rpm. Apt4rpm should be in by default.
*No MP3 support in XMMS
*DMA is off by default on CD-ROM drives. This is easily fixed through config files, but for the average user, this is a hurdle to DVD playing and CD burning.
*No nVidia drivers
These were all easily fixed if you knew what you were doing, but kept RH8 out of the realm of being usable for average people -- or even being usable out of the box for techies. Does anyone know if any of these gripes have been addressed?
First, this is old news at OSnews here but also ... here is a small list of features to come:
/etc/mail/sendmail.mc and change the DAEMON_OPTIONS line to also
listen on network devices (or comment out this option entirely using
the dnl comment delimiter). You must then regenerate /etc/mail/sendmail.cf by running the following command (as root):
m4 /etc/mail/sendmail.mc > /etc/mail/sendmail.cf
Note that you must have the sendmail-cf package installed for this to
work.
Gnome 2.2
New HTree enable filesystem for ext3 (speeds enhancement). The HTree feature makes file creation, deletion, and lookup faster. On filesystems that have HTree enabled, these file operations should not get significantly slower as the directory grows in size.
XFree 4.3
CUPS is default
but also note SENDMAIL is now only configured for LOCALHOST, if you want to serve you have to do some modifications:
To use Sendmail as a server
By default, the Sendmail mail transport agent (MTA) does not accept network connections from any host other than the local computer. If you want to configure Sendmail as a server for other clients, you must edit
The RELEASE NOTES can be found HERE
NOTE: There has been problems upgrading if one if using Ximian Gnome, you must uninstall then reinstall using Gnome form gnome.org
I was downloading at 300k till all the mirrors were slashdotted. Oh well, might as well Karma Whore.
e ta/phoeb e// phoe be/
a t/ftp.redh at.com/linux/beta/phoebe/
/ phoebe /u x/b eta/phoebe/d hat/linux/bet a/u x/be ta/phoebe/t /linux/beta/ phoebe/n ux/beta/p hoebe/n ux/beta/ phoebe/s /redhat/l inux/beta/phoebe// beta/phoebe/u x/redhat/redha t/linux/beta/phoebe/u x/redhat/linux/beta/ph oebe// redhat/ linux/beta/phoebe/u /pub/redhat/linux/be ta/phoebe/
i nux/beta/ phoebe/d hat/linux /beta/phoebe// pub/redhat/linu x/beta/phoebe/d u/pub/redhat/lin ux/beta/phoebe/r ors/linux/redhat/ beta/phoebe// redhat/linux/b eta/phoebe/u x/beta/phoebe /h oeb e/
e be/
r edhat/linux/beta/phoeb e/a t/li nux/beta/phoebe/d hat/linux/beta/pho ebe/
a t/linux/be ta/phoebe/
Note: Remove spaces from URLs:
Soviet Russia
ftp://ftp.chg.ru/pub/Linux/redhat/linux/b
http://ftp.chg.ru/pub/Linux/redhat/linux/beta
Canada
ftp://ftp.nrc.ca/pub/systems/linux/redh
USA East
ftp://ftp.rutgers.edu/pub/redhat/linux/beta
ftp://mirror.eas.muohio.edu/mirrors/redhat/lin
ftp://ftp.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu/pub/re
http://www.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu/pub/redhat/lin
ftp://redhat.dulug.duke.edu/pub/redha
ftp://mirror.hiwaay.net/redhat/redhat/li
http://mirror.hiwaay.net/redhat/redhat/li
ftp://mirror.cs.princeton.edu/pub/mirror
ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/redhat
ftp://chuck.ucs.indiana.edu/pub/lin
ftp://mirror.pa.msu.edu/lin
ftp://ftp.cse.buffalo.edu/pub/Linux/redhat
ftp://kickstart.linux.ncsu.ed
USA Central
ftp://linux.nssl.noaa.gov/linux/redhat/l
ftp://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.edu/pub/re
http://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.edu
rsync://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.e
ftp://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mir
ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/redhat
http://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/redhat/lin
http://redhat.netnitco.net/redhat/linux/beta/p
USA West
ftp://limestone.uoregon.edu/redhat/beta/pho
Pacific
Australia
ftp://planetmirror.com/pub/
ftp://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/redhat/redh
http://redhat.pacific.net.au/re
Hawaii
ftp://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mirrors/redh
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Sorry but if it is like 8.0 they can keep it. I'm still running fine with 7.3. I appreciate the intense struggle for RH and other companies to improve their distro to help the community out, but are they not trying a little too hard to keep pushing out the newest release? I mean it almost feels like the CPU race where we are told that a 900Mhz is too slow to keep up with a 1.4GHz. It just seems a bit over kill. I'm not blaming RH, at least they make sure their Distro is beat and tested against many arch's and problems.
I know this is a beta but come on, when was 8.0 released??
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
Can you say me where i can get WMP for RedHat please ?
Here
Any other questions ?
http://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/phoebe_mirrors.html
KDE 3.1 has been delayed until early/mid January for a security audit. KDE 3.1 is VERY nice and is another big step forward for KDE. I had hoped that Red Hat would delay their 8.1? release until KDE 3.1 could be included. Unfortunately it looks like we will still have the "crippled" KDE 3.0.5 in Red Hat 8.1.
I definitely understand that Red Hat has an affinity for Gnome, and that's fine for them, but for full compatibility you really need to install both Gnome and KDE so why not have the best KDE?
With Mandrake's newly returned cash crunch, Suse is looking like a strong contender on the distro front. However, don't forget Knoppix, the newest "distro".
Actually its Phoebe like the character from Friends.
The joke in the changelog or release notes go like this:
"You know, Chandler, you being here is the best gift I could
ask for Christmas."
"Aww. Thanks Pheebs."
"Ok, now where's my real present?"
It is right there in the link on the story if you take a look. Going to wait on this one. Got my 8.0 box running right and just updated the kernel not going to jump right now unless I get a good reason.
ACK
-Lack of EXT3 filesystem support by default: Near-neccessary for Linux dual-booters
-That silly "start" menu: you never quite know where software is going to turn up, some make shortcuts on the desktop and in the menu, other programs only in the menu, some don't create any shortcuts
-No MP3 encoding support in WMP
-DMA is off by default on CD-ROM drives. This is easily fixed through device manager, but for the average user, this is a hurdle to DVD playing and CD burning.
-No nVidia, ATI, S3, Creative Labs, Turtle Beach, AMD, Intel, 3Com, VIA, or Matrox drivers, except very limited (no openGL, poor directX) drivers for some older devices
-These were all easily fixed if you knew what you were doing, but kept Windows XP out of the realm of being usable for average people
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
MP3 support is due to Fraunhofer licencing.
Nvidia drivers is due to Nvidia licencing.
DMA support, extra menu and NTFS support I agree is things RedHat should fix. But they can't do much about the rest.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I just got my RH8 laptop singing with the new kernel and they go out and release a beta!
:->.
Well, I think I will just wait. Sit back and watch the flack and see what people like/dislike and have trouble with before I go jumping into a new release. I got a lot of the stuff they are pushing already from Nyquists apt repository. At least the stuff I wanted like fontillus and gstreamer and such.
I think RH has come a long way so far and hope to see it progress even further.
My wish list is:
Larger set of server configuration tools like NIS server, client, LDAP server and client GUI apps. A network shares app that could handle samba and nfs would be really helpful (Ximian Setup Tools had one way back in the day).
Menu-editing for individual users.
Faster hardware check tool so bootup wouldn't hang there figuring out my configuration so long.
Graphical boot messages screen so my bootup can get slower
System-wide font installer like KDE has. Fontillus installs fonts drag and drop for users.
Package Management tied to apt freshrpms repository. I like the GUI package management tool but end up using synaptic because it is not tied to apt.
I can think of other things. Can you?
What things would you like to see?
Constructive stuff not just RH sucks garbage.
ACK
>RH6.2 - stable
>RH7.3 - beta
>RH8.0 - alpha
>
>I just got done evaluating 7.3 for use
>on our production boxes, and the decision is
>to stick with 6.2. Anyone else have issues
>with RH releases above (or before) 6.2?
Not really. I've had no trouble running 7.3 for both workstations and servers. What issues did 7.3 have that you found unacceptable?
I'm currently testing 8.0, and so far so good. At least after the latest patches and compiling my own kernel.
One thing I did notice about 8.0 is that it would be nice if you could create LVM physical volumes on top of a RAID partition in their installer, but that is easy enough to do after the fact.
Kernel.org mirrors Debian and Redhat. Or didn't you know? Plus they've moved from 100 to 250Mb/sec
a /phoebe/
.pk and .ph are fast for me in the UK, believe it or not.
Grab em while they're hot.
http://mirrors.kernel.org/redhat/redhat/linux/bet
Don't forget to use your local mirror from kernel.org if the main one gets slow. I find
This is not whoring. It's showing people an alternative source for the future.
Get your own free personal location tracker
Too small text doesn't come from high physical resolutions, but from a wrong logical one. If you crank up your physical resolution, you have to adjust the dpi settings (called "User Defined Font Size" in Windows). A typical 17" running at 1152x864 has approx. 100 dpi, with 1600x1200, you're up to 140.
Higher physical resolution means finer text, not smaller one.
Looking at the package list...
/usr/bin/showfont that was already installed. That's not too cool.
On the surface it seems good that they're upgrading to Mozilla 1.2.1, but I've had several problems with it compared to 1.0.1. It doesn't display updates to some XUL properties correctly after they update with JavaScript (Yes, I filed it... Bugzilla #185432). Also, it's not caching anything. If I press the BACK button or View Source, it always reloads the page. That's bad news.
OpenOffice.org -- fine now at 1.0.1, but I think the OOo folks are planning a bugfix release soon. Hopefully that will make it in the final release. OOo in RH8 has, for me, crashed the whole X server several times when scrolling around in certain Word and Excel documents. The development branch 643C fixes that problem. Has that happened to anyone else?
Anyone know what "musicbrainz" and "redland" are?
PHP: still at 4.2.2. Apache: still at 2.0.40. PHP 4.3 sounds like it will have a boatload of improvements. They're including beta versions of KDE, Gnome, and X (which will probably be finalized by release date), so why not PHP? And Apache has had several updates since then.
PostgreSQL 7.3. Nice, but upgrading requires a dump and restore. Is that a wise thing to do inside the 8.x series?
Why don't they include SDL_ttf??? Several programs require it. For 8.0, I couldn't find a binary RPM and had to build a source RPM. That worked, except that it conflicted with a
Overall, it looks like it will definitely be better than 8.0, but not a revolutionary upgrade.
Upload it to Kazaa so the rest of us can download it from you
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