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New Red Hat Linux Beta: Severn
JofCoRe writes "Just got a message from the redhat watch list today, announcing the availability of a new beta, called "Severn". Some snippets from the announcement:
What's its development status?
"It doesn't seem too horrendously in flux. Difficult at this
moment to make a specific diagnosis."
Among other things, SEVERN has: a new graphical boot, GCC 3.3, an updated 2.4.21 kernel, updated Evolution and Mozilla,
More information about the beta can be found at rhl.redhat.com. And the Release notes are found here. Looks like they have it currently labeled as v9.0.93." Update: 07/21 15:11 GMT by H : It's 3.2.3 GCC, not 3.3, as I had above.
Yes but in the movies they do cool computery things except with lots of flashy graphics around it.
In my limited experience with RH9 they had covered most of the bases as far as GUI config stuff goes, but those frontends could definately be more intuitive and less prone to crashing. I'd actually rather see the current GUI config things mature a bit rather than adding more new ones.
"Windows Me offers tremendous reliability and stability improvements..." -- Paul Thurott
Maybe it's just the pressure for profitability, but I continue to be blown away at RedHat's committment to Free Software and community commitment. These guys have a huge share of the GNU/Linux commercial market and yet they continue to be as open as is possible for a for-profit company.
They have invested a ton of effort into software now distributed by most other distributions (GNOME, RPM, kernel development, graphics, etc.). I don't mean that there aren't others playing, too. But it seems every time I expect RedHat to start trying to greedily hawk their enviable position, they do just the opposite.
Thanks RedHat!
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
I think you put your finger right on the problem.. For people who are not intimidated it's 'cool' but for many others not understanding it is confusing and/or intimidating; They don't understand computers and prob. don't want to..
;-)
The graphical representation of the bootup info makes the user 'understand' more and makes it less intimidating.. Much like a GUI makes a computer easier to use then text mode programs
Yes. A new kernel version is a definite good reason for a whole version increment. But when they called it 9 instead of 9.0, I considered it a very bad sign. True, they were probably expecting the new kernel to be ready for 10, or, I rather hope, 10.0, but it seems like a statement of "We won't have any intermediate bug fix releases", and that bothers me.
OTOH, a lot is going to depend on what their new release style is. Assuming that everyone has a broadband connection and doesn't pay for bits downloaded is... optomistic at best. Perhaps they aren't interested in anyone else as a customer (if you can't pay for a broadband connection, you're unlikely to buy an Enterprise Edition), but they might consider that developers are also an important market for them. Not so much as a source of cash, but as a source of skills that make their product useful to enterprises. And many of them *don't* have broadband connections.
Well, there's Mandrake and CheapBytes, but Mandrake is diverging more and more from the Red Hat model (nothing deep, but the tools are different, some of the directories are different, etc.) OK. There's CheapBytes. But CheapBytes (etc.) has no particular brand loyalty to Red Hat. They will sell you whatever the hot distro is. And Red Hat has explicitly told them "Don't use our name." That's fair, but it cuts down on the advertising exposure.
Altogether, I think that they still need to make boxed sets. And that if they don't then they'll regret it. But this isn't the same thing as paying stores to carry it on their shelves. That's probably something of dubious value. Perhaps they should set up a JIT manual printing, disk burning and boxing shop. And only make as many as they have orders for. They'll need to ensure that what comes out is good quality, but there wouldn't be any excess (or not much). There's a company that was trying to get a JIT book printer into bookstores (distribution of the right to copy was a problem), so they might be glad for a sale. And CD burners aren't that hard to come by, especially if your forcast is that you won't need thousands of copies.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
it is confusing and/or intimidating;
So computers are going the way of automobiles.
In the old days, you'd have an oil pressure gauge and an oil temperature gauge and you'd be able to tell pretty quick not only if something was wrong, but have a good idea of exactly what was wrong. And you'd be able to fix it yourself.
But scary technical looking gauges on automobiles have gone away. Now, you'll get complicated behind-the-scenes Boolean evaluation from multiple sensors feeding into a microprocessor that results in a "Check Engine" light, which will mean that you'll take it into a specialist for precise diagnosis and repair. You probably won't repair it yourself.
The analogy continues.
My old Honda had a Check Engine light that would flip on going down steep hills for extended times (sounds suspiciously like the sensor was in the back of the oilpan, eh?) but would reset if I turned the car off and restarted it. And guess what most people do to their Windows computers start displaying "Check Engine" lights? You got it - power cycle!]
I'm one of the people that likes the more detailed diagnostics, even if they give a scary impression of a high performance race car about to explode to the casual user (My God - look at those packet collisions!)
Let distro makers hide those messages behind clouds or penguins, but make it real easy to see those diagnostics and you'll get a lot more backyard mechanics improving the vehicle.
As a piece of advice for distro makers that hide behind soothing graphical "Check Engine" lights: make sure your system readily handles sudden, abrupt power cycling at any time, but especially after encountering other problems.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
I think you're close but not totally on the mark. Evil looking command prompt messages (that I like) should definatly be optional (probably off by default as well) but there needs to be some sort of feedback. The worst thing I can say about the first couple cars I drove was the lack of status. All I had was "idiot lights". You know, the light comes on saying "Hey dude, you're out of oil" right around the time your engine screaches to a halt. The car I have now (an integra) has simple status gages. I couldn't tell you what the oil temp is, but I can tell you if it's really weird that the car is running hot (Honda's tend to be pretty solid temperature wise).
One of the worst things that can happen to computing started with Windows 95. A dumb ass screen where you have an animation at the bottom to tell you if your computer is frozen. That tells you nothing! Apple got it right with a friendly looking status screen coupled with some messages that say what's going on. A person may not know what sendmail is, but if it stops there you have something to go on.
Or, if you actually know something about Unix, you can download and install Apache 1.x.
I'm pretty tired of so-called Systems Administrators who can't seem to actually do anything on their own. If it doesn't come in a RPM, they can't manage to install it. If you're not one of those people, quit your whining about how Apache 1 doesn't come with Redhate, and go download the source and build it yourself. For the only moderately lazy, there's always apacheconf.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Apache 1.x is so solid and does exactly what I need. I have no reason to upgrade. If RH wants to package Apache 2 thats fine. I don't need them to take care of all of my files.
I use RH because I don't want to worry about keeping tabs on if there is a new version [insert-system-binary-here].