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Red Hat Linux 9 Release And Interview
Gentu writes "Red Hat Linux 9 has been released to the official mirrors, brace for impact! Additionally, OSNews features an interview with Red Hat Linux's manager, Matt Wilson and they discuss everything from mp3/dvd playback, to Randr, dependancy policies and more." Also on the Red Hat front, DdJ writes "So, I noticed that Red Hat's stock price jumped up a bit this morning, and checked the news to find out why. It turns out they've released a new portal product and a new CMS product. Both appear to be based on Java/Tomcat, which would mean it's not Zope-based or Zend-based. But, they're supposedly open source. Anyone have any further info on this stuff yet?" Update: 04/08 05:24 GMT by T : Don't forget that the new Red Hat release is available through BitTorrent, too.
Here's a quote from an article that indicates that the source code is include with the two products:
"Red Hat promised that its CMS solution could get a company up to speed with content management in as little as two months. The J2EE-compliant software will be delivered with source code included, and provides a workflow-based engine for managing content on the intranet, extranet and Internet settings."
The article doesn't discuss whether it is Tomcat based or not, but did grow froma product acquired by RedHat from Ars Digita around 15 months ago. It will be initially available on Red Hat Linux, IBM AIX and Sun Solaris. (News from the AIIM Conference in MA.)
-- Rick
Red Hat Linu X ?
I've been using RH 9 on my laptop and Home PC for the last couple of days and if you don't mind the minor problems of no mp3 or DVD playback out-of-the-box and the new threading (and glibc 2.3.2) really causing problems with Wine...it's a great release. Much more refined then the 8 release (and the menus make more since to use)
To get around the Wine problem you need to "export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5 " and "rm -rf ~/.wine/wineserver*" The Wineserver has been resolved with WineHQ's CVS and the other branches are picking up now. The threading problems with the kernel might take some time...
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
The entire market is up today, so I would not base any increases in RedHat's price soley on a product release. As of closing, RedHat's price increase is not statistically significant when compared to the rest of the market.
Praying for the end of your wide-awake nightmare.
Can someone speaking relatively technical* explain what is so cool about NPTL?
*as in, I'm not a coder, but am an experienced sys admin.
IIRC, Red Hat CMS is a branded version of Ars Digita's OpenACS. Probably worth a look, as it seems to be less dependent on Tcl these days (though I'm still a Zopist).
They also offer "Red Hat Database", which is essentially PostgreSQL. (It takes a bit of digging to figure this out.)
It's unfortunate (to me, at least) that Red Hat insists on "polluting the namespace" by branding recognized open-source projects in this way. Are they really adding enough distinctive value to these products to justify distinction, and the resulting confusion?
So what, because it's not Zope based, it can't be open source? I don't follow your flippant remark at the end.
Too bad I couldn't get the bloody thing to work. I was finally convinced on giving Red Hat Linux a try, so I went so far as to buy a Red Hat Network subscription last week just so I could go ahead and download and burn Red Hat 9. Once that was done, I went ahead and started installing Red Hat 9. Once it reached the part fairly early on where the GUI installer was to take over, my monitor went blank, and it displayed an error message saying the video signal was out of range. I rebooted, and tried installing again, only to have the same thing happen all over again. No screen, no sound, no nothing. It was like my computer wasn't even on, but it was.
So I said, "Screw this," and went back and re-installed LindowsOS 3 instead, which, irony of all ironies, worked. I had video, I had sound, I had everything. Kinda ironic that the Linux distribution everyone loves to hate, Lindows, worked right out of the box when Red Hat 9 failed miserably. And there's nothing really special about my computer either... it's an AMD XP 2000+, 1 gigabyte of DDR-333 RAM, MSI nVidia GeForce 4 Ti 4200 video card with 64 megabytes of DDR Video RAM, SoundBlaster Audigy Platinum sound card, two 80 gigabyte Western Digital IDE hard drives, and an 18" Sony LCD monitor.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
I am upgrading my servers to 9.0 since last week. So far it has been very smooth. On RH 8.0 I had problems with dual CPU Compaq Proliants 3000. Seemed like during the install the RH 8.0 disabled the 2nd CPU on these particular servers. RH 9.0 does seem to have aany problems.
I just use the core OS files, and then compile everything from source code. So for me there is not much incentive to go form 8.0 to 9.0. I moved just because of the Compaq Proliant issues.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Yay another Redhat update. Reading the article I can't seen any reason to upgrade apart from the normal updated packages. However it is nice to see RedHat at least following a sensible, if slightly unpopular, route with regards to pantents such as MP3
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I am faithful RedHat Network subscriber. However last week I had lots of trouble downloading the ISO files. I think RedHat should allowing RSYNing to d/l ISO images. CURL and WGET are not good as RSYNC.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
There's nothing illegal about it. What would be illegal is if the persion hosting them made changes but kept all the trademarked stuff (mostly logos). If you don't modify them then it's legal. If you do modify them, just take out the trademarked stuff (make it obvious that they aren't the official RH distributed isos) and it's still legal. :)
I'd have to say that the menu organization and the theme configuration alone make it much better then 8.0. Instead of one "Extras" group on the menu, each group has it's own "More Applications" menu. (That might not be a correct quote, but you get the idea). I can now install icon themes and completely change the look/feel using the Theme app from the preferences menu. (RH 8 didn't seem to have an easy way to change the icon theme, so the menus always used the BlueCurve icons)
Go here: http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/download.html For the bittorent d/l - btw works fine with bittorrent++ too.
The article states that "if application writers followed the guidelines provided by the LSB, you would not have dependency problems".
I don't see how any guidelines would change the fact that the non-RH RPMs are based on older libraries, (or newer, as the case may be). That is by far the biggest problem.
Example:
I wanted Eterm on my RH8.0 install, couldn't find any RH packages for it, so I tried a generic one. It depended on some Perl modules, no big deal. I grab those -- one module depended on an old version of Perl (it would only accept that version).
The only solution to this is for the RH packages maintainers to make RPMs for _everything_, which of course isn't possible. But that's part of the reason Debian has less of a problem with that, sid has about 8500 packages last time I checked, a LOT more than any version of RH.
Which brings us to another problem. All the RPM distros I've seen have big version differences in all their 'releases'. Which makes it hard for developers to release packages for the distro. They need one for 7.x, 8.x, etc.
What was up with that interviewer? The interviewer was either being a little too confrontational or just had an overall lack of tact.
Some Examples:
- Don't you think leaving out the mp3 codec makes it less convienient [for the user] and less functionality only reduces the prospect of a pulling force for more users? Is there any way around this limitation of Red Hat Linux 9 for future releases?
- Why was there no RandR GUI tool shipped with Red Hat 9?
- Why is Red Hat Linux 9 still uses ext3 while more feature-rich filesystems like ReiserFS and XFS are out and about?
- Why isn't Red Hat working together with NVidia to resolve kernel crashes and bugs?
- Modern desktop/workstation OSes buy the needed licenses (e.g. Apple, QNX, BeIA) and they even create their own DVD applications (closed source). How about including DVD playback support on a future Red Hat Linux? And what about licensing Microsoft's Web Fonts too?
- Currently, no matter how I turn it, downloading RPMs from the web can create many dependancy problems most of the time.
Where did they learn their interviewing skills? This is terrible. "Why don't you do blah and blah? Your software doesn't do blah. I always have problems with blah. Blah blah blah." I was very impressed with Matt's answers, though. He didn't get mad and say, "Well, why don't you fork the project then?!!" He just cordially and politely explained the concepts of open source and their development efforts. Nice work.I plan on upgrading simply to see the differences and provide feedback in hopes of making the next version even better.
You are right that if someone has a stable working system that it isn't necessarily the best idea to upgrade just for the smell of it.
On the surface there are nice subtle improvements like:
-A new and better working hourglass (I don't remember it looking that way)
-MUCH improved menu arrangement (it was kind of confusing
-One stop Reboot/Shutdown options on GUI login
-Slightly better look (first impression)
-Of course there are many updated packages
In theory this is a major version revision because of binary compatibility (as I understand it). I practice it feels like incremental improvement so far. I will have to hold off my final judgement until I use 9 on my 8.0 system for a perfect comparison.
Help distribute the load.. use BitTorrent
When it's installed, click the following link to begin downloading: RedHat 9
It is a bit confusing.
As I understand it, NPTL is part of glibc 2.3.x and has nothing really to do with the kernel. The other part of increasing the speed of Linux threads is the O(1) scheduler in the 2.5.x kernel. In a real world, you'll need both but either one will help the situation.
With both, Linux should scale very well as long as the hardware is up to it.
I like RH putting NPTL threads, hopefully it'll force people to get good threading code in so when we get the new scheduler we can run MT apps like there is no tomorrow.
Uh, that is "statisticially significant".
actually, i have a reason for you. ;)
Prism2 support.
I have a DWL-650 (2nd gen), based on the prism2. I had used wlan-ng in redhat 7.2(or was it 3?), but gave up on wlan-ng as it was pretty lame on the configuration side, and too much of a bitch to implement. (Kernel recompiles necessary, ripping out all the original pcmcia support and replacing it, etc) However, RedHat 9 supports my dwl-650 right out of the box... er... bitorrent acquired iso burned to cheap cdr media...
So there you go. Good reason right there. I used to have to run XP to use my wireless card, now I don't. Yay for me.
Oh, and gnome 2.2 is actually cleaner than 2.0. Expecially the fact that meta themes are now officially implemented, and the new menu system isn't as freaky as that funk ass "Extras" submenu.
As usual, your mileage may vary, but all in all I'm quite happy with RH9. If I wasn't dirt ass broke, I'd probably go out and buy it just to have real media.
This is probably the first release of RedHat Linux, which generates on my mirror less traffic, than a corresponding release of Mandrake Linux.
-Yenya
--
While Linux is larger than Emacs, at least Linux has the excuse that it has to be. --Linus
Careful, as already pointed out, there's nothing illegal about it - corporates can't make laws fortunately, it is however perhaps slightly immoral, they want people to pay for that priviledge :)
If it helps only one person...
Belloc
I got more rhymes than Jamaica got Mangoes.
said "buy-buy" to RH last ye
Which means you liked it so much you bought it twice, I gather?
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
I can tell you that: "I noticed that Red Hat's stock price jumped up a bit" is meaningless in terms of attributing it to "Redhat in the News." Redhat stock goes up and down like a rubber ball in a game of jacks. For every shift in price that seems attributable to some news, there are 20 days a month where it shifts based on the vagaries of the market. Be careful of attributing changes in price reflecting news about a company with a low priced stock like this. Its all over the map and wil be for some time I'm afraid. just my .02
jeff
You need to read more carefully. You're right about the GPL, the software can be distributed, but not under the name Red Hat by you.
If you look carefully, you'll see that you can't use the name Red Hat to distribute the CDs. Instead, you can advertise it as "a prominent Linux distribution R.H." or "a distribution that rhymes with Dead Cat" or, as many like to call it, "Pink Tie."
You can distribute the CDs all you'd like, you just can't use their company name, which is NOT GPL'ed.
I have been playing with some of the new features in redhat 9, one of those features being that CD burning deal built into nautilus. That is a really cool feature, drop-n-drag files and click burn. I also like the additional eye-candy with the custom mouse cursors. They have greatly improved the menu system so you don't have that gay extras menu anymore. The greatest added feature of all is the increase in performance. On both of my dells, performance has increased at least 4 fold with regards to the UI. A suggestion to you all who bitch about dependency hell: download apt-rpm for RedHat 9. Its at http://shrike.freshrpms.net. Then, apt get update && apt-get install synaptic. Synaptic is a bad ass front end for n00bs who want a nice point-n-click gui for apt. Once installed, you can quit bitching about your mp3 support and lack of a dvd player since all those packages are located on the freshrpm's apt repository.
9. Modern desktop/workstation OSes buy the needed licenses (e.g. Apple, QNX, BeIA) and they even create their own DVD applications (closed source). How about including DVD playback support on a future Red Hat Linux? And what about licensing Microsoft's Web Fonts too? Is Red Hat open regarding licensing technologies and services from other sources?
Matt Wilson: We will not include technology that prevents Red Hat Linux from being freely distributed. Including software that places these kinds of restrictions on our community of users does not help drive Open Source software.
This evades the question of DVD playback.
No license is required to play DVDs on a linux computer. DVD players such as Ogle and Xine are GPL.
And no, it is not a violation of the DMCA to employ DeCSS to watch media you have purchased or rented on hardware that you own.
No matter, these programs can always be added post-install.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
No, what you've linked to are Customer Relationship Management software packages, not Content Management Software. Worlds of difference!
If you are new to linux, then I will recommend Mandrake 9.1. It is the best distribution in my opinion as far as hardware support, performance and usability is concerned
I've been a long time mostly happy Debian user.
However I just made a decision to move to RH9 for my workstation, while leaving my server on Debian stable.
I tried upgrading to Debian sid, and I had all kinds of hassles and problems. I had to recompile my kernel many times to get the latest ALSA and NVIDIA drivers to work. And then, Gnome for some strange reason ran painfully slow, like it would take visibly long time to open a nautilus window. And in general I thought it was a bit too flaky for my taste. Somehow I believe it's possible to get all the latest stable versions and still have a stable distro! But Debian sid isn't it for me.
And then I hear RH has apt now too?!! Ok, I just had to give it a try. I now have a functioning RH9. What do I think? Let's see: flawless and brainless NVIDIA driver installation -- check; very, very nice bluecurve theme (man I love it, and I wish other distros would adopt it!) -- check; very smooth, stable, and *fast* Gnome desktop -- check; used apt-get from freshrpms.net to get ALSA and some other extra packages -- it's not as nice as Debian (i got some flaky complains about some missing signatures and such) -- check.
So far I had few problems: biggest annoyance is that RPM hung solid a few times. Namely it hangs in a way that I can't even use control-\ to kill it! I can kill -9 it, but then I have to *reboot* to get it unstuck. When i strace it, I notice that the last command it runs when it hangs is "futex". Anyway, it's definitely embarassing for Red Hat to have a flaw like that, but it happens rarely enough that I can overlook it.
Overall I am very pleased with RH9 and I plan to use it for a while. I'm also an official RHN subscriber too! Good work Red Hat!
ArsDigita never made "Open"ACS. ArsDigita created ACS as an open source toolkit supporting the Oracle database. The OpenACS project came about when ArsDigita decided to make their Java project which is what has become Redhat CCM.
This is true. In fact, ArsDigita's new VC-installed managers decided the original ACS, written in TCL, wasn't buzzword-compliant enough, so they had the whole thing rewritten in Java. But in fact the Java version was never really finished when ArsDigita went under.
Red Hat purchased all of ArsDigita's assets and this project belongs entirely to them now.
Yeah, right. More like Redhat, out of the goodness of their hearts, gave jobs to a few ArsDigita programmers, and allowed them to continue working on ACS/Java, now called CCM. This also let ArsDigita's management save face, by allowing them to say they "sold the remaining assets" to Redhat. In fact, there was nothing left. ArsDigita had been run completely into the ground.
CCM did/does have promise. Its development has continued, albeit slowly, by both Redhat and some third party developers. I believe it's also open source, as is the Postgres variant it works with. One implementation that's been around awhile is the Aplaws project, a portal/intranet app for governments and municipalities in the UK.
For a good discussion of the various deficiencies of Linux's threading implementation, even with the introduction of NTPL, see here.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
This incredibly clever and original attempt at referencing OS X certainly deserved to be modded all the way up to +5 Funny. Because, it is just that funny. Just like all the Windows 3.11 reference jokes whenever something reaches 3.0. Never gets old, and required much forethought before conceptualizing into words.
"Sufferin' succotash."
That's why I think they're skipping 8.x and on to 9.. at this rate they can unveil RedHat 10 on Oct 31, the 10th anniversary of the "Halloween" release, the first RedHat distro.
Brace for marketing impact...
In theory, yes, but in practice you just throw cheap hardware at the problem and be done with it. The benefits of a comprehensive, scalable, cohesive yet decoupled Java architecture outweighs the incremental speed reduction. It's the same argument that poor old C++ had to go through when the MASM luddites came knocking at it's doors, torches lit and well in hand... ;-)