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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?
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.
Help distribute the load.. use BitTorrent
When it's installed, click the following link to begin downloading: RedHat 9
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.
one two three four five ?!! That's the combination on my luggage!
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.
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
If it helps only one person...
Belloc
I got more rhymes than Jamaica got Mangoes.
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