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."

Comments

Ah linux betas...

[Exiler]

The most unstable of the most stable of the stable desktop OSes... Wait I think I messed that up

8.0 was great, but...

[MrZeebo]

...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?

There goes my bandwidth

[Znonymous Coward]

I was downloading at 300k till all the mirrors were slashdotted. Oh well, might as well Karma Whore.

Note: Remove spaces from URLs:

Soviet Russia
ftp://ftp.chg.ru/pub/Linux/redhat/linux/be ta/phoeb e/
http://ftp.chg.ru/pub/Linux/redhat/linux/beta/ phoe be/

Canada
ftp://ftp.nrc.ca/pub/systems/linux/redha t/ftp.redh at.com/linux/beta/phoebe/

USA East
ftp://ftp.rutgers.edu/pub/redhat/linux/beta/ phoebe /
ftp://mirror.eas.muohio.edu/mirrors/redhat/linu x/b eta/phoebe/
ftp://ftp.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu/pub/red hat/linux/bet a/
http://www.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu/pub/redhat/linu x/be ta/phoebe/
ftp://redhat.dulug.duke.edu/pub/redhat /linux/beta/ phoebe/
ftp://mirror.hiwaay.net/redhat/redhat/lin ux/beta/p hoebe/
http://mirror.hiwaay.net/redhat/redhat/lin ux/beta/ phoebe/
ftp://mirror.cs.princeton.edu/pub/mirrors /redhat/l inux/beta/phoebe/
ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/redhat/ beta/phoebe/
ftp://chuck.ucs.indiana.edu/pub/linu x/redhat/redha t/linux/beta/phoebe/
ftp://mirror.pa.msu.edu/linu x/redhat/linux/beta/ph oebe/
ftp://ftp.cse.buffalo.edu/pub/Linux/redhat/ redhat/ linux/beta/phoebe/
ftp://kickstart.linux.ncsu.edu /pub/redhat/linux/be ta/phoebe/

USA Central
ftp://linux.nssl.noaa.gov/linux/redhat/li nux/beta/ phoebe/
ftp://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.edu/pub/red hat/linux /beta/phoebe/
http://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.edu/ pub/redhat/linu x/beta/phoebe/
rsync://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.ed u/pub/redhat/lin ux/beta/phoebe/
ftp://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirr ors/linux/redhat/ beta/phoebe/
ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/redhat/ redhat/linux/b eta/phoebe/
http://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/redhat/linu x/beta/phoebe /
http://redhat.netnitco.net/redhat/linux/beta/ph oeb e/

USA West
ftp://limestone.uoregon.edu/redhat/beta/phoe be/

Pacific
Australia
ftp://planetmirror.com/pub/r edhat/linux/beta/phoeb e/
ftp://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/redhat/redha t/li nux/beta/phoebe/
http://redhat.pacific.net.au/red hat/linux/beta/pho ebe/

Hawaii
ftp://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mirrors/redha t/linux/be ta/phoebe/

Updated Mirror List

[Laven]

This is a more complete mirror list. Mirrors will hide and unhide as they become full. Please e-mail me if you find additions or corrections for this list.

http://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/phoebe_mirrors.html

I was hoping they would wait.

[FreeLinux]

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".

Re:I was hoping they would wait.

[Phillip Birmingham]

KDE 3.1 has been delayed until early/mid January for a security audit. ... KDE 3.1 has been delayed until early/mid January for a security audit.

I think you just answered your question before you asked it. RedHat has no assurance that the release of KDE 3.1 won't be delayed further. At some point, you just have to go with what you have.

Re:I was hoping they would wait.

[lunenburg]

I think Redhat is still dumb as shit regarding KDE. Both X and GNOME-2.2 have not yet been released as stable versions, so they could very well have added KDE-3.1rc6.

Did you even bother doing basic research before flapping your yap?

ncftp ...en/os/i386/RedHat/RPMS > pwd
ftp://beta:PASSWORD@ftp.beta.redhat.com/pub/redhat /linux/beta/phoebe/en/os/i386/RedHat/RPMS/
ncftp ...en/os/i386/RedHat/RPMS > ls kde* ...
kdebase-3.1-0.9.i386.rpm
kdebase-devel-3.1-0 .9.i386.rpm
kdebindings-3.1-0.3.i386.rpm
kdebind ings-devel-3.1-0.3.i386.rpm
kdeedu-3.1-0.3.i386.r pm
kdeedu-devel-3.1-0.3.i386.rpm ...

Looks like just another "Red Hat is eeevil" fool.

Re:I was hoping they would wait.

[CondeZer0]

Why don't you check your facts before posting?

1) As others have pointed out, this is a *Beta*, RedHat 8.0.92 to be exact, so many things can change between now and when 8.1 is released
2) This beta actually *includes* KDE 3.1(RC5 or CVS I guess) see http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=redh at or check the RPMs in the FTP, or install the damn thing!
3) This is *exactly* the same as with Gnome, the beta includes the latest Gnome 2.1(from CVS I think), that by the time 8.1 final is released will become Gnome 2.2(and the same is also true for XFree 4.3)
4) KDE on RedHat is/was not "crippled", I will not bother arguing about this, but if you think the version in 8.0 was "crippled", then doesn't mater what version they ship in the next release you will think the same.
5) You can be sure that RedHat 8.1 final release will include KDE 3.1, you may think that it's still "crippled" though...
(BTW, Gnome 2.2 and KDE 3.1 are both looking very good, I'm sure RH8.1 will be a great release, even better than 8.0, and 8.0 was already very nice)

Hope this sets some facts straight, BTW, I don't even run Linux or KDE/Gnome on my boxes(I administer a few RedHat desktops running both KDE and Gnome at work though), I love my FreeBSD box with Ion, just hate to see people spreading misinformation.

Best wishes and do some research before you post next time!

\\Uriel

Windows XP was great, except....

[Drakantus]

-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

Put blame where it belongs...

[Kjella]

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

8.1 will have to wait...

[ACK!!]

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.

Put Redhat on Kazaaa and get it there

[HanzoSan]

Upload it to Kazaa so the rest of us can download it from you