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Technical Review for Red Hat Linux 9

Posted by michael on from the what's-in-it-for-me dept.

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."

34 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. great by Triumph+The+Insult+C · · Score: 5, Funny

    i spend 2 full days downloading the isos, only to read the review and determine i shouldn't bother

    ip security bit stories are good enough ... FOR ME TO POOP ON

    --
    vodka, straight up, thank you!
  2. A Real Article? by DarkKnightRadick · · Score: 4, Funny

    OMG!

    --
    "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
  3. The big question by lseltzer · · Score: 4, Funny

    Does it support RFC 3514?

    1. Re:The big question by questionlp · · Score: 3, Funny

      I know FreeBSD now has support for that RFC. ;)

    2. Re:The big question by Entropy_ah · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yeah, i'm tired of being left out in the cold on stuff like this. Slashdot should post a story about it or something.

      --
      my other penis is a vagina
  4. That's the april fool's joke by Transient0 · · Score: 3, Funny

    stupid posts will be modded down, intelligent posts modded up. Only this one day a year.

    --
    lysergically yours
    1. Re:That's the april fool's joke by IronTek · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You certainly have a valid (or at least partially valid point there).

      I was really disappointed that my mod points expired the other day...I was hoping to have some for today! ...Such is life, I suppose.

  5. First Post of the First Real Story! by puto · · Score: 3, Funny

    Thank you lord, finally back to my normal nerdiness. Yes, we can now return to our opinionatd, often un-substatiated, rants!

    No more April Fools.

    Of course the real joke could be that no one gonna say the following.

    1. Red Hat Sucks
    2. Debian Rules
    3. Been rolling my own with Gentoo since the dawn of time.
    4. PROFIT

    That would be the real April Fools. No my distribution is better than yours. THAT is what would shock the hell outta me.

    Puto

    --
    The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
    1. Re:First Post of the First Real Story! by athakur999 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Now that the BSD's have merged into one Empire, us Linux users need to put aside our differences and form an Alliance to ensure that BSD to teeter on the brink of death as it has for several years.

      --
      "People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
  6. Does anyone know by inode_buddha · · Score: 5, Funny

    if it supports the George Foreman iGrill? I'm waiting on the boxed set, and could really use the functionality.

    --
    C|N>K
  7. Possible Comprimise? by the_pooh_experience · · Score: 3, Insightful
    A nice feature for authors of documentation (such as myself) is the ability to take screenshots during the installation via SHIFT+PrntScrn. The images are placed in /root/anaconda- screenshots/. Previously large hoops had to be jumped through to get screenshots of the installation process.

    Is it just me, or does this seem like a hole waiting for a compromiser? Does anyone know of if there a way to turn this off?

    1. Re:Possible Comprimise? by ArsonPanda · · Score: 3, Funny

      It's an easy fix, once the install reaches about 10% of the way through, reach around back of your box and give the thickest cable a good solid yank. No more screen-shot option.

      --

      --I don't want the world, I just want your half.
    2. Re:Possible Comprimise? by velkro · · Score: 3, Informative

      This is during the installer, not after install So if you're worried about someone compromising your system during the install process, and you've already removed the network cable/wireless card, then you have a larger problem to deal with :)

  8. BitTorrent! by Professor+Bluebird · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've had BitTorrent going since last night, and I have about half of the ISOs so far.

  9. Red Hats? by Shadow+Wrought · · Score: 3, Funny

    So now in addition to White Hats and Black Hats, we're supposed to buy into Red Hats? Next thing we'll be getting reviews of Blue Hat, Orange Hat, and Green Hat, or even software named after obscure African antelopes.

    --
    If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
  10. nice to see... by EZmagz · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It's nice to see a review like this. Usually with stuff like this (whether it's a distro, software package, etc.) there's a generic CHANGELOG that might say "Updated to Gnome ver. 2.x" but it won't say WHAT is new! I admit that I'm lazy, but I don't want to go to each software package's website to see what they've done on my own.

    Just a pet peeve of mine, and I would like to see more reviews/articles like this. Now, back to the fake-RFC's and slew of other shitty April Fools jokes.

    --

    "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA. ..."

  11. Multiple network profiles! Yay! by crush · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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!

  12. What a review should be like by InodoroPereyra · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I very much welcome the post of this informative review of RH 9.0 . I hope this starts a trend in Slashdot, and that childish, bitching, immature first-person-experience reviews (should we even call them "reviews"?) are no longer posted here. Posting serious Journalism is a way to promote it. Slashdot Editors: please stop feeding trolls

    On the bright side, I think that RedHat's decision to split their software in a publically available, bleeding edge distribution and a more conservative, corporate version is just great. The former is a test bed for the latter. Donwnloaders and enthusiasts do the stress tests, corporations get a stabilized product. Excellent scheme !

    1. Re:What a review should be like by archen · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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?

  13. devlabel by lerhaupt · · Score: 3, Informative

    He left out a feature in his review: 9 includes devlabel.

    www.lerhaupt.com/linux.html

  14. This is... by frodo+from+middle+ea · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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".
  15. BitTorrent by TheSHAD0W · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  16. My review using Whitespace by Rudy+Rodarte · · Score: 5, Funny



    Thanks

    --
    What, me Tweet?
    1. Re:My review using Whitespace by de_boer_man · · Score: 3, Funny
      Your source wouldn't compile for me.

      I think on line 2 you typed [space][space][tab][cr][space] when you should have typed [space][space][tab][space][cr]. When I made that small change, it worked just fine.

      --
      .sig wanted. Inquire within.
  17. New Features -- get 'em all out now by guacamolefoo · · Score: 4, Funny

    From the RedHat site:

    "...evil bit support under IPv4..."
    "...Volkswagen-sized packaging..."
    "...support for /lib/congress/..." [um...I'll leave that one up to the imagination]
    "...support for new hardware, including the Foreman iGrill..."
    "...networks with Windows versions, Macs, and all one version of BSD..."
    "...guaranteed to filter dupes at /...."
    "...guaranteed to filter dupes at /...."

    GF.

    --
    Lots of petrified grits
  18. Re:This must be an April Fool's article... by dougmc · · Score: 3, Interesting
    ...considering that at 9KB/second nobody has gotten past ISO 2 of 3 to install and review the thing...
    Hardly.

    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!

  19. I just installed it on a dual P4 mobo by elwinc · · Score: 5, Informative
    I just installed RH9 (shrike) on a dual P4 mobo. It installed both an SMP and a regular kernel, automatically, whereas RH8 only installed a regular kernel (i.e. failed to sense dual CPUs). So this better sensing of multiple CPUs is an advantage in RH9.

    While I have your attention, I'm gonna make a tiny little rant about gnome, which I generally like. In gnome-1.4, gnome-terminal takes arguments like --foreground=lightblue --background=black. This annoyed me when I first encountered it because it breaks the standard color choice arguments that work in so many X11 appsl for example: xterm -fg lightblue -bg black.

    But now gnome 2 breaks the old 1.4 convention! As far as I can tell, the only way to choose your colors is to create a bunch of profiles, and then use --window-with-profile. This business of manually creating profiles is doubly annoying!

    The reason it matters to me is that I admin several boxes, and I use different color codes for terminals and editors on the different boxes. I have to keep on re-creating my admin scheme with each new iteration of gnome. Why keep changing it?

    OK, rant over; thanks for bearing with me.

    --
    --- Often in error; never in doubt!
  20. Re:This must be an April Fool's article... by pcardoso · · Score: 5, Informative

    well, I used BitTorrent and in about 20 hours I had the ISOs burned to a cd... I'm connected via a 256Kb cable connection, so for the 1.7GB download that wasn't too much... At some point the transfer rate was going at the maximum possible (32KB/sec), although I got about 26/27 KB most of the time I cared to look at it...

    Bittorrent is amazing. Guess I'll give it more use from now on... I left the client running for a couple of hours after the download finished, but I had to stop it. My cable connection allows me a maximum of 1,5GB per month of upstream (and 5GB downsteam) traffic and it's the first frickin day of the month and I am already at 700mb! Well, at least during the time it took for the download some folks got some parts of their ISOs from me...

  21. Re:Is this really worth a 9.0? by ubernostrum · · Score: 3, Informative
    I have two words for you: binary compatibility. If the new release means things compiled for older releases will not work, then they bump the major version (i.e., 8 to 9). If not, they bump the minor version (i.e., 7.2 to 7.3).

    Red Hat 9 includes a new threads implementation that breaks compatibility, most notably with things like Java VMs and WINE. So, they bumped the major version.

    See this mailing list post by RH manager Matt Wilson for more on the reasoning behind the numbering.

  22. Linux for the masses by cenonce · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Everytime a story comes out on Red Hat, we get the "Red Hat is the MS of Linux" posts and the "F@ck Red Hat, roll your own with Gentoo" and the "Debian Rules" posts.

    First, I think Red Hat is far from the MS of Linux. I paid 60 bucks to be a part of RHN and I actually downloaded RH 8.0 without paying anything. Now, I will complain (as I did in a previous story) that it pisses me off that I pay that 60 bucks for "priority ISOs"and I am on my fifth try of downloading RH 9.0 disk 1, but that is a different issue.

    It was my understanding that the "goal" of the open source community was to get a "desktop Linux" up and running to compete with MS. Gentoo and Debian are way too complicated for that... I can install Debian and Slackware with difficulty (never had success with Gentoo). But I am a "regular user" with just enough gumption and knowledge to be dangerous to myself when it comes to Linux installs. Frankly, that is why I like Red Hat. I have never had an install problem and I always have a working "desktop computer" to use.

    Yeah, rolling your own kernel is great, I guess... I've never actually done it... I frankly don't have the time to sit down and figure it out. I count on solid, trouble free distros like Red Hat to get me a working Linux "desktop system" and then I'll compile Apache the way I want on my own (and I still have to do some planning to get it right). But, most desktop users are just fine and happy with the "easy install" of the system and the software they want (Apache, Open Office... whatever).

    If the community ever wants to get Linux out of the background for desktop computing, more time has to be spent on easy installs from ALL distro providers and easy (basically meaning, no command line) configurations. Rolling your own kernel and command line configs will always be be there for the hardcore geeks.

    1. Re:Linux for the masses by AELinuxGuy · · Score: 5, Insightful
      It was my understanding that the "goal" of the open source community was to get a "desktop Linux" up and running to compete with MS.

      It is a misunderstanding to say that the goal of the Open Source community is merely to produce a desktop software that competes with Microsoft Windows. If that were the case it would not even be worth bothering...if you want an alternative to Windows then go buy a Mac. Rather, the goal of the Open Source community is more along the lines of re-gaining control of the software that runs our lives. It is about freedom, it is about community, and it is about hacking for the fun of it. I don't disagree with what you are saying about the importance of a simple installation and maintenance for the desktop market...we've got a LONG way to go. Just do not lump the success of our reach into that market with the strides we are making in other areas (like the server market).

  23. THE REVIEW HAS BEEN UPDATED by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    I made several edits, and added a whole new section on devlabel.

    Please honor the copyright, and don't cut-n-paste the review into a /. post. I would like people to visit the web page.

    I'm OK with being Slashdotted, in fact everything is holding up fine here.

    Dax Kelson
    Guru Labs

  24. Re:Multiple network profiles! Yay! by _Upsilon_ · · Score: 3, Informative

    You should check out ifplugd. It's a daemon that automaticially configures your network device when a cable is plugged into it, and unconfigures it when the cable is unplugged.

    I don't believe it currently works with all network cards, but it does work on many of them (read, works fine in my laptop)

    http://www.stud.uni-hamburg.de/users/lennart/proje cts/ifplugd/
  25. A few first impresssions. by ChangeOnInstall · · Score: 3, Informative

    I used BitTorrent to get RH9, which worked smoothly when I let it run overnight on a cable modem.

    - Mozilla is up to v1.2.1 and supports AA fonts. Unforunately, Galeon is on 1.2.7 and does not.
    - Nautlius has no problems browsing SMB networks, just make sure your firewall settings are at or below "Medium" if you use RH's firewall tool.
    - Menu editing appears to be totally b0rked. I am so far unable to add items to the applications menu, neither by right clicking on the menu and then clicking "Add new item to this menu" nor by dragging launchers into the "Applications:///" view in Nautlius. Major disappointment here, I was really hoping this would be fixed in 9. With any luck, RH will make it a priority to fix it.
    - Java works fine (whew).
    - "Extras" menus are now submenus in each menu that contains "extra" programs. Much nicer layout IMHO.
    - "Security Level" firewall configurator no longer has option to add extra ports, which makes it quite worthless to those of us that require this feature. At least it remembers settings this time (the RH8 version did not).

    Overall it seems to be a fine product, runs as fast as RH8, just with a bit more polish.

    --
    What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)