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.

Comments

RedHat Enterprise Application Suite

[abcxyz]

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

Version 9... will the next version be called

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat Linu X ?

Red Hat 9 for Workstation

[mahdi13]

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...

Re:Red Hat 9 for Workstation

[bogie]

That's why you shouldn't prejudge something without using it.

Most people around here who give Red Hat crap haven't used it in years and know little about it. Its just easier to parrot stupid comments like "Red Hat is bloated" or "Red Hat is like M$" then to take the time to use it and learn about it.

Red Hat may sometimes do things "their own way", but so does every other distro. The difference is Red Hat, unlike say Gentoo, gets no slack(no pun intended) for changes they want to make. Everyone like to assume the worst and give them crap.

Stock Price

[BadBlood]

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.

Idiot's guide to NPTL

[Enry]

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.

Re:Idiot's guide to NPTL

[pyros]

Linux has long had inferior support for threading. (please don't let this start a flamewar, it's what I've read over and over and over). So large multi-threaded applications (like huge databases) ran better on solaris than linux. NPTL is a new threading library which improves Linux's threading support. The downside is that a bunch of stuff doesn't work with it yet. If you're having trouble with, for example, Java 1.3 apps, you can set the LD_ASSUME_KERNEL environment variable to "2.4.1" or "2.2.5" as a workaround.

Re:Idiot's guide to NPTL

[Zapman]

The Native Posix Threading Lib (IIRC) is something Ingo cooked up in addition to the O(1) scheduler, and a few other goodies. Previously, posix threads could only have a couple hundred threads going concurently on ANY hardware. It just couldn't scale past that.

With NPTL, Ingo on a dual proc box (granted, a nice one) was able to get 16,000 concurent threads going, and the IO system wasn't suffocated, the CPU's wern't useless, and you could still browse the web.

Granted, these threads wern't doing much, but they were alive, and switching in and out of context.

This means the foundation can scale to effectivly any size, and so long as the hardware can keep up, you'll be fine. You can now unleash your massivly multithreaded java apps (and what not. That's just the easiest example).

This doesn't help you if you need more than 4-8 CPU's on an intel platform, but it gets you a lot closer. If you want something that can parallelize that far, you really need something like Sun's e12k or e15k. IIRC, the DoD commissioned an e15k farm with a total of 4096 CPU's to model the first few nanoseconds of nuclear explosions. It had to be a single system image for various reasons, so don't go crying beowulf.

Red Hat CMS is OpenACS

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Red Hat CMS is OpenACS

[Grax]

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.

Red Hat purchased all of ArsDigita's assets and this project belongs entirely to them now.

OpenACS currently is a TCL/AOLServer based project that supports Oracle and PostgreSQL.

RedHat has made what looks like an effort to reduce confusion by renaming the "Red Hat Database" project as "PostgreSQL - Red Hat Edition" http://sources.redhat.com/rhdb/

using RSYNC to get ISO files

[stonebeat.org]

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.

Re:I'm running it

[pyros]

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)

Re:Bittorrent?

[draziw]

Go here: http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/download.html For the bittorent d/l - btw works fine with bittorrent++ too.

Dependencies.

[BHearsum]

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.

Re:Dependencies.

[pyros]

The problem you are facing is the thrid-party packages depending on other packages, rather than other files. The RPM format supports giving a dependency of /path/to/perl/module.pm instead of bobs-perl-package. If the apps are packaged conformant to the LSB (module.pm is in the standard location) then it doesn't matter if you installed it from source, freds-perl-package, or bobs-perl-package. So your thrid-party Eterm package was done incorrectly, which is what the article was referring to.

Interview?

[Milo Fungus]

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.

Re:Interview?

[JoeBuck]

The answers to almost all of those questions comes down to one single point, one that I'm sure that the Red Hat folks are tired of repeating: they are committed to a policy of pure open source/free software in the distro, period, and they won't include anything that will make them subject to patent licensing or the DMCA. That means they won't ship MP3, proprietary NVidia drivers, or DVD playback, or Microsoft fonts. However, you can get these all from the net if you want them. If your Nvidia driver crashes the kernel, then complaining to Red Hat is complaining to the wrong party: Red Hat can only see their source, NVidia can see all of the source.

Since the OSNews people have been around enough to already know these answers, since we had this same discussion when Red Hat 8 came out, it is rude and pointless of them to repeat the same questions. Are they hoping that, one day, Red Hat will wake up and say, "OK, we agree: open source was a stupid idea. We've negotiated licenses from all these folks, and now Red Hat X is a proprietary distro, but it plays MP3s and DVDs out of the box, and we support NVidia drivers. We've tweaked every pixel to match Eugenia's suggestions, too. But no more free ISO downloads, it costs $150, and there's a per-CPU license"?

And yes, I'm aware that some non-US-based distros made different decisions on some of these matters. Note, though, that not being based in the US, they don't need to worry as much about liability from bogus software patents. In the meantime, Red Hat users can install apt, then install MP3 and DVD playback support with a single line. Read all about it.

BitTorrent

[Enucite]

Help distribute the load.. use BitTorrent
When it's installed, click the following link to begin downloading: RedHat 9

Re:That's All Nice and Dandy, But...

[blind_abraxas]

Redhat's GUI installer isn't the greatest, in my experience.

Installing 8.0 and 9.0 in most scenarios I've dealt with weren't that difficult, and anaconda had no problem detecting the monitor and video to run the GUI install, but several times it just didn't work out. I've experienced snafus trying to install 8.0 on a brand new out of the box HP machine from CompUSA. Intel P4 2-something Ghz, 512MB ram, so on, so forth. The installer had some sort of issue with the monitor or video card. Since failure was not an option, I did it the hard (not really) way, and installed in text mode. No big deal, install went great, Xconfiguration was just fine.

Snafus happened with a Micron PC with an AMD Athlon something or other and an Nforce chipset with integrated what-have-yous. Installed in text mode, after that it was easy as pie. Unfortunately the machine was unstable (probably a faulty power supply), it developed a nasty habit of rebooting or freezing in the middle of navigating Apache.org (apparently when running windows previously similar behaviour was exhibited).

Moral of the story: If you want it bad enough to actually pay attention to what you're doing and the pretty install doesn't work, do what Windows can't, and text install. It's basically just as clean and smooth as the GUI, you just have to navigate with the keyboard a little more than with the mouse. No big loss. Xconfiguration and testing are carried off with no problems for the most part with no problems.

Beware, of course, if you have a POS monitor that's so old you can't even find the refresh rates in the specifications on the web. Xconfiguration is a bit more difficult there (so far I've had no luck) and you're SOL if you can't get past the no GUI install (Windows 98 had no problem installing and using the POS ancient Panasonic monitor).

One more thing: Install on a Dell P4 1.3 with 128MB RDRAM was fine, even upgrading from an existing Redhat 7.2 installation. Reconfiguring the video settings within Xwindows was nice and smooth in 9.0, while I did not have the time/inclination to figure the same out in 7.2. Bluecurve is nice though, for a windows manager.

Re:That's All Nice and Dandy, But...

[Brian Stretch]

It's a known bug in XFree86 4.3 when using DVI. Switch to your monitor's VGA port, install nVidia's current drivers, switch back to DVI. Or do a textmode install. I'm using RH9 with nVidia's drivers on my ViewSonic VG191b w/DVI now.

It is likely that other distributions using XFree 4.3 will have the same problem. I didn't have this problem with Red Hat 8 (XFree 4.2).

Be sure to pick up the "missing" RPMs on freshrpms.net when you're done.

I do wish nVidia would update their platform drivers. I had to build the nvnet driver for my nForce2 board the hard way rather than use their RPM. I'm using ALSA (thanks freshrpms!) for audio.

Re:I'm running it

[Arethan]

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.

Mirror (Europe)

[Yenya]

My mirror still have lots of free bandwidth (and is accessible also by IPv6).

This is probably the first release of RedHat Linux, which generates on my mirror less traffic, than a corresponding release of Mandrake Linux.

Re:Installing it on my third server

[Jungle guy]

Actually, you had a great incentive: Red Hat will pull the plug of security updates of RH 8 by the end of the year. Upgrading to RH 9 will give you 3 more months - in their new policy, Red Hat has stated that it will support "consumer" OS for 12 months. If you think it is not enough, you have to pay for the Enterprise Linux server. If you don't want to upgrade your computers so often, I suggest you moving away from plain RH - either to RH Enterprise or other distribution.

Re:That's All Nice and Dandy, But...

[FyRE666]

Funnily enough I think you'll find that Windows 2000 won't work spectacularly well with your hardware until you install nvidia's drivers either. Well, unless you think it's a good idea to run a Geforce 4 with the default 16 colour software drivers ;-)

As the previous poster said, once you've installed, THEN installed nvidia's drivers, you'll be able to switch to using the DVI output in linux.

OFFTOPIC - "rm -rf" hint

[belloc]

Regarding this command format:

rm -rf ~/.wine/wineserver*

I've found that in general I am much more at peace if I put the "-rf" part of that command after the directory, so that the command given above, for example, becomes

rm ~/.wine/wineserver* -rf

That way, you're protected against the (admittedly rather remote) possibility that you might somehow hit the ENTER key right after you've typed only part of the command, say,

rm -rf ~/

which would be something of a disaster, or at least an inconvenience (backup recovery time, etc.). Of course you can do tricks like aliasing the "rf" command to include a switch that prompts you before removal, like many distros do, but that sort of defeats the power of the "-f" switch for recursive removal.

If it helps only one person...

Belloc

Not exactly...

[sethadam1]

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.

great release

[brsmith4]

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.

Question 9 evaded

[Trogre]

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.

Re:Question 9 evaded

[JoeBuck]

For Red Hat to ship code equivalent to DeCSS in source form would be a DMCA violation, no question; courts have already so ruled. Since Ogle is GPL, Red Hat is forbidden from distributing binaries if they don't distribute source. Therefore Red Hat can't distribute Ogle, period.

The DMCA prohibits "trafficking", not use, so it's legal for an American to download and run Ogle, but if you give it to someone else, you might be risking a five-year jail term. Crazy, but until some court decides to toss the DMCA, that's what you're dealing with.

NTPL: Improved, but Not There Yet

[Doktor Memory]

For a good discussion of the various deficiencies of Linux's threading implementation, even with the introduction of NTPL, see here.