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Red Hat 9 To Be Released March 31
Garfunkel writes "Looks like Red Hat is breaking tradition and skipping 8.1 and 8.2 and jumping directly to 9.0 RHN subscribers
get it a week ahead on March 31st. Available to the rest the world a week
later (April 7)." The website refers to the upcoming release simply as "9" -- which doesn't rule out future point releases, but could it be?
Just trying to keep up with Slackware.
"Are you running Linux 9 yet?"
"I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
I suppose that higher numbers are better from the perspective of new users comparing products, although the race ahead didn't seem to do Mandrake enough good.
A day shy of April 1 is kind of fishy, though.
Lastly, imagine the chaos that will reign when Redhat releases Red Hat 10.
Yes, it will be "ten", as in the same version as the Apple OS X, also a UNIX.
Oh, but "X" is the windowing system for UNIX, you know, "eks eleven", which is much better than "X10", the same as the clunky old protocol for handling devices around your house. Not Windows, but "X Windows"...
It'll be like "Who's on First" all over again...
"Provided by the management for your protection."
It's been pointed out on the beta list that 7.0 was just called 7 when it came out. That didn't stop a 7.[123] from appearing later.
It's all very well RedHat playing "keeping up with the Jones'" with Slackware and Mandrake, but what about those of us who have spent our hard-earned money on a not-so-cheap certification that will now be rendered expired because of this jump to 9.0?
I got my RHCE less than a year ago, at RH7.2. It was stated that RHCE's are valid for two releases - ie when 9.0 came about, I have to recertify.
Was I wrong to expect that since it took two years to go from 7.0 to 8.0, I might actually have been able to hold onto my certification for more than one year!?
Phoebe (8.0.94) has 2.4.20 (too many versions!!!)... it includes the O(1) scheduler and some latency patches... the desktop is really quite snappy (X 4.3 will be included, Phoebe is working off a pre-4.3 snapshot). I hope 9 includes Nautilus 2.2.2 because the GNOME team added some speed increases there too.
Anyways, the nVidia drivers (the kernel module component) needs some changes to be able to run on the beta (they're available, but not from nvidia directly), but I suspect nVidia will have this released shortly after RH9. Additionally, some third-party stuff will have to be relinked, because of thread local storage stuff and the new NTPL -- Redhat backported a lot of stuff from the 2.5 series. Hence the 9.0 release (IMHO) since an 8.1 release would seem to imply that it's relatively backwards-compatible. It seems there are too many low-level interface changes to justify a point release.
Some drivers are already ready for the 2.5 kernel (as ready as you can get for software-in-progress), so you just need to hack the version numbers a little bit to get it to compile properly -- for example, the PowerVR drivers. Specifically, the VM API has changed quite a bit, so when RH backported these changes, they got the new API as well.
The beta looks really nice though, especially with GNOME 2.2. And CD burning is integrated in Nautilus (drag-and-drop, then click the burn icon, and it writes it to disc). Very nice stuff is on its way...
In related news, I'm changing my job title to Systems Analyst 2.0, to better highlight new features and capabilities. Of course, biweekly licensing fees will be readjusted to reflect this enhanced functionality...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
You might want to look up the meaning of wherefore. Unless you're questioning why Ximian exists at all?
i'd heard complaints about the unified desktop repeatedly here and in the newsgroups since 8.0 was released. over the week i finally downloaded the iso's and installed psyche on the last machine in my house that still had windows on it, and damn, i was impressed.
redhat still offers full customization of EITHER window manager, and if there is some esoteric g/kde setting i'm not aware of, download the newest k-rad alpha of whichever and install it. the point of the unified desktop was to make it appeal to corporate and grandmas without taking away either option.
within about 2 hours, i had my desktop looking and acting like mac osx (via kde) and my wife couldn't believe how wonderful it worked.
so, speaking as a person who's brand new to the unified desktop, and as an RHCE, either install whatever you prefer, learn how to install theme packages, or stfu.
Are you MORE than your SPINAL COLUMN?
Downloading DVDs is illegal.
There is one and only one reason that Red Hat bumps the major number, and that's binary compatability. If you can't run binaries under it that you could in the previous release, then it can't have the same major-number. Period. Usually the reason for the change in binary compatibility is due to library changes (e.g. new major version of glibc).
Now, there may be political, marketing or contractual reasons that a major number is prefered, but since binary compatibility is not guaranteed between major releases, you'll usually find that the one leads to the other, and thus the original statement holds true (i.e. engineers are free to rev libs in a major release, so they do).
The reason that Red Hat would release a new major version so soon after 8.0 is almost certainly to track the latest desktop updates which have been fast-and-furious since 8.0 was released, especially from GNOME (2.2.x is FAR more reasonable than 2.0, which IMHO, Red Hat released too early).
With no PR build-up, and no listing of new features on RedHat's website (can anyone else find any, because I certainly can't!) this release certainly looks like a bad joke, and if it's not an April Fools then it makes Red Hat look like a bad joke.
I'm using 8.0 now, and RH's games with registration and update-systems combined with their ridiculous "BlueCurve" rebranding (I'm sorry, but it just takes RH even farther away from any sort of standard, and forces it's users to go to RH for software updates), combine to make Red Hat look un-professional. Why should I buy any of their software, if they're just going to come out with a new major version months later and leave me in the dust?
I mean really, what warrents this? Is there a brand new Kernel major version that I've somehow missed hearing about? Does RH have the inside on a new blazingly fast XFree86? If this is serious it's a ridiculous marketing game, and if it's a joke it's wholly unprofessional!
As soon as I've time it's back to the source and on to Gentoo for me!
credo quia absurdum
couldn't an RHN member technically just leak it without consequence?
He could, and then start praying for the link not to be posted on slashdot for the first week.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
I've been using the beta version of this for a month now. Phoebe is the name of the beta if anyone is interested in seeing what might be changed as of the last update.
My impressions as a person who uses this as a desktop at home and is normally a Mandrake kind of user:
It is a very easy to use and install and stable distro. I don't like that they include almost no configuration tools. To make it a good desktop distro I had to download a lot of extra rpms because the cd's with the distro are packed with server/workstation rpms. Also, though not RedHat's fault, NVidia's glx driver doesn't work properly with the new kernel and some weird dis-optimizations to the code have to be done in order for it to work (as of mid Feb; haven't checked lately). This is an issue with all 2.5 and 2.4.20 and above kernels, IIRC.
It is very similar to 8.0 (but they might have changed some things in the last month). The biggest gripe I have is that they use GRUB as the bootloader, but have no configuration utility for it. I'm a LILO person, but I thought I'd install GRUB to see if it was better. The man pages weren't very helpful and RedHat includes nothing to help, either. I went back to LILO, but since RH has no priority for it, there was no graphical options for LILO, just text.
It works for what it is supposed to work for: servers and workstations. As a desktop user that wants to have a simple and easy distro, I switched to Mandrake 9.1 rc1.
IANAL, but I play one on
You bring up an excellent point - and you're along the right track. If we examine the features of Red Hat Linux 8.0.9x (Phoebe beta), we notice that several things have been added to the OS that will set it apart from previous releases. You can find the changes (so far) to Red Hat Linux 9.0 in the release notes of Phoebe:
o s/ i386/RELEASE-NOTES
g i? id=86498o w_bug.cgi? id=86465o w_bug.cgi? id=86449
http://rpmfind.net/linux/redhat/beta/phoebe/en/
I think the two major updates that will definitely warrant a few "major" number upgrade will be the following:
1) glibc update from the 2.2 development branch to the 2.3 branch; the major feature would be the addition of the NPTL (Native POSIX Thread Library).
The release notes cite that legacy (LinuxThreads) applications will work with NPTL if and only if they conform to the POSIX standard.
2) The new and improved XFree86 4.3 (usability, eye-candy, performance, drivers, et al.).
3) Extended attributes (EA) and access control lists (ACL) finally come to Red Hat's distribution - giving per-file control par with NT and other OSes that have already had EA and ACL.
4) The inclusion of Gnome 2.2 fine tunes Gnome 2.0 to a better degree.
So far, the glibc update (which seems to branch off the glibc that is shipping with Red Hat Linux 9.0) that was given to Red Hat Linux 8.0 users seems to be wreaking havoc with regards to threads implementations; a few examples:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.c
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/sh
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/sh
It should be noted that Red Hat has been extraordinarly adept with the inclusion of compatibility packages to allow legacy applications to continue working with their newest offering.
Ayup
Great timing, i *just* switched over my kde to kde3.1 via apt-get. I'm not really sure how I feel about redhat's odd way of grabbing their revenue stream. I do like the fact that they have a slew of people paid working on the code but the up2date thing makes me really unhappy. I'm very close to making a redhat wrapper (in the same way that mandrake was a redhat wrapper at some point) that is basically redhat/rpm compatibility based but w/out some of the annoying revenue stream add-ons. The obvious one is that is officially moving redhat over to apt Right now there are only a few redhat apt-mirrors, but I would be more than willing to host a mirror and it will easily allow us and anyone else to keep the security updates at least "up2date" w/out paying per year per node. The other thing to look at is synaptic which is also a really nice gui for apt as well and puts what i've always liked about debian on the redhat platform.
:)
,synaptic and having a slew of decent apt-mirror sites would be an obvious and simple fix
Also redhat doesn't seem to be doing very well w/ kde. I am not sure whether it is because kde3.0 was really buggy or something happened w/ the 7.3->8.0 transition but I wouldn't mind a redhat that was "un-unified." At the very least, a kde/konqueror that was usable then, since many people think the unified thing is a good thing
Anyway maybe talking to a few people and seeing if it would be possible to collect a cd of non-gpl but "open" developer software (Kylix 3, intel compilers 6.0 (kind of a weird license)) would also be nice addons.
At the very least I think defaulting/forking redhat to include apt
the security updating issue w/ the current incarnation of redhat. Its also I think obvious that redhat will never release the up2date server source and have obvious reasons for not incorporating apt into the offical distribution so it may require the redhat' wrapper trick to get apt in there.
In any case, i'm curious as to what you guys think, one the one hand i think its a bit "assholish" as it deprives them of one of their obvious revenue streams, on the other hand I think for those of us who run clusters or whatnot or even want to auto-redistribute custom software onto our own nodes having access to the equivalent of our own up2date software (which apt is a better version of to be honest) is a reasonable task, and furthermore wrapping around redhat (like mandrake did) is somewhat what open source is all about as well, especially as redhat and redhat-compatible rpms/source(i.e. ati/nvidia/vmware drivers) is a bit ubiquitous.
-bloosqr
Subject: Red Hat Linux 9 | Get the latest Linux early
Dear Dirk:
You may know that Red Hat Network is the best way to keep your
systems running the latest errata and always up to date. What you
might not know is that Red Hat Network passed the one million users
mark earlier this year. We've listened to valuable feedback and have
added two items of interest to keep those users happy - early release
of Red Hat Linux 9 ISOs and improved technical support.
Beginning March 31, 2003, paid subscribers to Red Hat Network will
have access to Red Hat Linux 9 ISOs - a full week before retail store
and Red Hat FTP availability. Also, Red Hat Network subscribers will
receive dedicated Red Hat Network Technical Support.
Learn more about the benefits of being a Red Hat Network Subscriber:
http://redhat.chtah.com/
To purchase a Red Hat Network subscription:
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Thanks again for using Red Hat Linux. We appreciate all feedback
from our users and hope you enjoy Red Hat Linux 9.
Sincerely,
Red Hat
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My RH 9 beta has a grub configuration util, it is located in /bin/vi
Here is your parachute and here is the manual.
Welcome to Linux.
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