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Technical Review for Red Hat Linux 9
ewilts writes "Dax Kelson from Guru Labs has posted a technical review for Red Hat Linux 9. It's a definite read if you want to get away from the marketing fluff that focuses on eye-candy and instead read about the release from a sysadmin's point-of-view."
You certainly have a valid (or at least partially valid point there).
...Such is life, I suppose.
I was really disappointed that my mod points expired the other day...I was hoping to have some for today!
I've had BitTorrent going since last night, and I have about half of the ISOs so far.
This is one of the most immediately handy things about the new release. The ability to choose how interfaces behave via a grub boot menu item means that a laptop that is trundled around to be used in different places is now very easily usable without extra tweaking. No more hitting "I" for interactive boot to make sure that I skip "eth0" configuration when I power up on the train!
This is the FP after completely reading the article
Seriously a very nicely written article worth reading. This article has one thing i always look for in reviews of New distros. and this is diff. between OLD and NEW distros.
Most s/w release notes has a section called "What's new", but this is grossly inadequate to make a decission whether to upgrade or not. What is needed is the exact diff. in terms of functionality rather than a CVS code change LOG. and this article makes an effort to provide that.
Having said that, I just finished completely configuring and customising my RH8.0 so i guess I wont be upgrading. I will wait till 2.6 comes out. (I am speaking of the kernel version for those of you who dont get it)
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Yeah, it's not quite on topic, but I figured someone should mention it...
As of this posting, 26 hours after it began being distributed via BitTorrent, 5400 people have received copies of the ISOs using that protocol, and over 11 terabytes of data have been transmitted over that torrent.
There are now also torrents available for the source and documentation ISOs. To download either set, please visit f.scarywater.net.
BitTorrent worked excellently, and I was pulling it down at 100-400 KB/s yesteday, and already have it burned. Haven't installed it yet, however ... but I could have!
a well thought out review on SD? Say it ain't so! Regardless...the meat of the review sums what other reviews have said...most of the changes are rev bumping of utilities. A new kernel is used, which will probably break Free/SWAN, and UML. Does the freeswan break matter? People who are running firewall and or VPN boxes aren't likely to be rushing out to get an upgrade, and the same can probably be said for UML, although that is more of an issue.
For me, the biggest thing to change is the availability to take screenshots easily during the install...makes it easier to get good documentation. All in all I'll wait for 2.6.x...THAT will get my attention, sincee UML AND IPSec are in the mainline kernel.
Always value the individual over the system. --Bruce Lee "I don't need a Sig - I have a custom 191" - me
..a wonderful article like this comes along. Granted I had to wade through the 10 previous posts of reviews on RH9 that catalogued every change to the gui, but this one made it all worthwhile.
In fact, it's articles like this that make me wade through the oodles and oodles of whining about jobs, or the DMCA. Gems like this make it all worthwhile.
I'm not sure when slashdot decided to turn all political, but I really miss the technical stuff like this. Does anyone have any suggestions on slashdot alternatives?
Personally I think RedHat is shooting themselves in the foot with the short support cycle. The business I work for, for instance is a small buisness. There are customers who just want a Linux distro that gives them support - RPM and up2date lower the learning curve dramatically and can free a business to really start leveraging the power of Linux without worrying so much about watching for bug fixes and security holes. I certainly can't justify getting Redhat Enterprise for something like a small time webserver, backup server, file server or just serving junk like DHCP. And Linux can really shine in these areas.
I also think Redhat is going to miss the boat on the corperate desktop, where everything is configured for the user, and remote administration is fairly easy. Now your going to migrate an entire organization workstation every year or so?
Using command-line arguments, Anaconda in previous Red Hat verions can be forced to connect to an X server (using the X11 remote display capability). This way you essentially operate the installer over a network from another PC, in an 800x600 application window. You can then screen grab with ImageMagick, xv, or whatever your favorite X11 utility is.
I can't remember the details, but if you search Google Groups, you willf ind them.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Not meaning to sound like a troll but give me a little room for criticism here... (Keep in mind that I am a hardcore Linux user: RedHat, SuSE, Gentoo, Debian, Linux from Scratch... just to name a few distros I've used)
Selecting a network profile from the GRUB menu is OK, but it implies rebooting. Who wants to reboot just to change their network configuration? I know you don't NEED to reboot if you know what you are doing. But, if you are "Joe User" who just decided to try RH 9 because people are saying it rocks, you are probably going to be stuck either rebooting (if you have a friend who can set GRUB up to do this for you), or at worst you are just going to get frustrated with the fact that when you unplug your laptop from the network that the wireless NIC doesn't just fire up and work. This is exactly what "Joe User" will expect if he is coming from Windows XP land.
Say all you want about XP being a piece of crap (and I agree wholeheartedly), it's still got features that really need to make their way to a Linux distro or two. One of them being that the system is usually smart enough to figure out which route to take for network access when there is more than one interface. If no access is available, then it just indidcates that you are "offline".
I know this will get me modded down, but I had to point it out.
Un-news
Has anyone else reviewed the pricing model? Why does the Enterprise Workstation Edition cost $299? This seems kind of steep for an enterprise license... Or do most Slashdotters buy one copy (or download one copy) and copy it across the world?
Most enterprises go for a 1 to 1 -- one license for each desktop to ensure they have legal and proper support. Does that model not work for RH Enterprise Workstation Edition?
Does the upgrade path (upgrades of the stable product yearly, supported for only one year each) seem as bad as or worse than that supplied by MS? After all W2K has had a 3 year run and will have had 4 to 5 before support ends! A 1 year support window seems to:
1. Force upgrades
2. Force re-investments in technology and training on the vendors schedule -- not ours
We know and deal with that with MS but how does such a short (1 year) release cycle help the enterprise?
Wait, their are no ACL fle permissions in ext3???? And you call this an enterprise system? When we roll out desktops they are locked down -- the users have access to only what they need which includes rights down to the file system level. Am I missing something here or is this not already in NTFS????
Honest answers appreciated. If you only have the intelligence to flame please at least have the courtesy to write "flaim bait" as your subject.