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.

Comments

Torrent file?

[jsvesnik]

Where's the torrent file?

Re:Torrent file?

[brent_linux]

http://torrent.dulug.duke.edu/

Just the Binary ISOs

Re:Torrent file?

[JofCoRe]

thanx to an AC a few posts down:

http://torrent.dulug.duke.edu/

And more specifically:

severn-i386-disc1.iso.torrent
severn-i386-disc2.iso.torrent
severn-i386-disc3.iso.torrent

orAll severn Binary isos in one torrent directory

Theres torrent linx to the SRPMS there too.
Thanx AC!

Seven?

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't RedHat 7 get released already? I am so confused.

but but but..

[Anonymous Coward]

(heard all over Munich) "Ver ist Klippy?!"

Version numbering

[erlando]

With RedHat's latest sprint version wise (7.3->8.0->9.0) it's probably a safe bet to say that this release is going to be RedHat 10.0. Or maybe "RedHat X"? Roman numerals are popular this time of year.. ;o)

Re:Version numbering

[HiThere]

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.

Re:Version numbering

[buchanmilne]

but Mandrake is diverging more and more from the Red Hat model

You say that like it's a bad thing to have decent package management software (urpmi[e,i,q,f] and rpmdrake), multiple 3rd-party software "media" available (plf.zarb.org, jpackage.org), a sane library naming convention (so you can happily have two versions of the same library installed), solid community involvement (yes, some contributors who know their stuff maintain packages in the main distribution), and an open development process (the cooker distribution itself, the mailing lists, cvs, wiki).

Actually, with their recent announcement, it seems more like RH is converging on the Mandrake model ...

"...updated Evolution..."

[jvmatthe]

I didn't see anything in the notes about this (sorry if I missed it) but is this a GTK2 version? This is the last GTK1 app that I'm still using, and I'd love to upgrade if a GTK2 version is included in this install.

Re:"...updated Evolution..."

[Bernie]

Yes, it's GTK2--ironically Gimp is one of the last GTK1 users!

No Galeon?

[Erwos]

I see that they removed Galeon. How does Epiphany stack up to it right now?

I also like the option of a graphical boot... soothes the nerves of less-knowledgable people who will wonder why X, Y, or Z service is coming up.

Hopefully they'll add some more graphical configuration stuff for the system. I've always liked their style with it.

-Erwos

Re:No Galeon?

[Xpilot]

I also like the option of a graphical boot... soothes the nerves of less-knowledgable people who will wonder why X, Y, or Z service is coming up.

I've never understood why this is so. Even back in the day when I was a clueless newbie, I found those messages to be really cool. It was like the computer was doing...cool computery things, just like in the movies.

Re:No Galeon?

[tomstdenis]

Funny or not, same thing here.

Also keep in mind that things like VESA were still new and shiny when Linux first came about. So at best you would have a 640x480x16color bootup instead of text messages.

Might as well have them. What I find lacking are the joke messages with useless twirling /-\| thingies...

like

pruning IP lateral sensors.......done
establishing networking matrix...../ :-)

Just to throw people off. Plus it would be funny to see how many "IT experts" that "read about many things" will go about talking about it. "Yeah, well my Duron 4Ghz can establish the network matrix faster than your 200Mhz ARM box... hahaha!"

Tom

Re:No Galeon?

[chabotc]

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 ;-)

Re:No Galeon?

[4of12]

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.

How dare you steal from Redhat!

[SHEENmaster]

They offer you there software for free, but that's just not good enough for you. The only thing that keeps them going is the knowledge that each new release with cause /. to rape their connections and that of there mirrors. You would take that satisfaction away from them!?

I wonder if a checksummed p2p system like bittorrent will ever be merged with apt.

The meaning of Severn

[morcheeba]

I'm not sure if this is what they intended, but this picture comes up with google images... I'll just stick with 8, thank you.

Re:The meaning of Severn

[bohnsack]

I'll guess it's from Dam Simmons' Hyperion cantos.

9 was named "Shrike". This beta is "Severn". Both are characters from Hyperion.

In Hyperion, Joseph Severn was a cybrid reconstruction of the deceased 19th-century poet John Keats.

Re:The meaning of Severn

[Farley Mullet]

RedHat has an odd way of naming releases; the way I understand it is that each consecutive pair of release names has something in common, but (see here) for a good explanation). So for instance, "Pinstripe" followed "Zoot" (both kinds of suits), and "Guiness" followed "Pinstripe" (both British beers). So the last one was "Shrike" and this one is "Severn" which previous posters have noted are both characters in the "Hyperion" novels. Maybe the next one will be a river or a UFC guy.

What About Kernel 2.6.x?

[C0deJunkie]

Since the promising 2.6 is alredy in a test phase, I would wait a couple of week to avoid the infamous module-related issues to upgrade a 2.4 kernel.
Is it possible to have 2.6.x (or even 2.5.75) as an option for the installation? Of course I woluld like it.

Re:What About Kernel 2.6.x?

[Ktulu_03]

You can download the 2.6 test kernel and the related utilities here for rh9:

http://people.redhat.com/arjanv/2.5/

These files are also setup as an apt repository if you read the readme.txt file.

Not sure if they will work with the beta.

slight correction...

[eupheric]

From the release notes, it seems Severn uses GCC 3.2.3, not 3.3.

Re:slight correction...

[chabotc]

Incorrect. Like older redhat's did, it ships with two GCC compiler sets.

The GCC you see mentioned in the release notes is 'gcc32', the backward compatible compiler (used forinstance to compile the kernel and much of the compat-* packages).

The default compiler which is also used to compile the normal packages is gcc 3.3

Shame such an incorrect correction made it as story update

Why Severn?

[Fastfwd]

Anyone know why it's called Severn?

Just finished reading Hyperion and I was wondering if there might be a link with "Joseph Severn".

Re:Just so I know...

[Dachannien]

Lawful neutral? ;)

Re:Versions

[mahdi13]

The RH9 beta was also called 8.0.93 as this is 9.0.93

Standard release practice, we won't know if it's a 9.1 or 10 until they release it =)
Also they went RH8 to RH9 with no point release because there binary breakage in the packages (major system changes) which made lots of RH8 packages incompatable with the latest release

Re:Is it binary compatible with RH 9.0?

[pp]

Yes, should work just fine both ways

One issue that might affect some people is the exec-shield anti-stack overflow technology, which
most notably doesn't play will with wine and alsalib (latter might be fixed nowadays, alsalib used to use a gcc feature that made it place code on the stack).

You can easily disable it through /proc, or use a program called chstk to enable executable stacks for specific programs. It's not included in this beta, but you can grab it from
here

Redhat is HQ'ed in the south, you know (NC)

[drgroove]

I can just imagine the process of coming up w/ the new release name...

RH Dev Manager: "Hey y'all - how many lines-a-code did we find copied over from-a UNIX?"

RH Dev'er: "Urrmmm... looks like about severn er ait to me, hoss."

RH Dev Mng: "Well'um then, that there's the next ree-leease name then. Severn."

I found the nVidia drivers quite easy to install

[Vengeance]

RH9.0, nVidia .bin driver installer, it was foolproof and easy. A tainted kernel was a small price to pay, IMHO.

Oh, and a suggestion: Don't try running your system at default runlevel 5 when messing with the video. Use runlevel 3 and startx.

Laptop mode, yes!

[morcheeba]

At the end of the release notes is this gem:

The Red Hat Linux 9.0.93 kernel now includes support for laptop mode. When placed in laptop mode, the kernel batches disk I/O, allowing the disk drive to become idle long enough for the drive's power-saving features to take affect. This can result in significant increases in battery runtime.

Considering I used to do most of my development while on batteries, this is great! (Gotta love the dell 7000 with its 7 hour batteries!)

Doens't appear to have ALSA yet ...

[LizardKing]

Someone with the bandwidth to download this might be able to confirm this, but it appears that the beta doesn't come with ALSA. A shame for those of us who like RedHat, but want to use the latest MIDI apps "out of the box".

Chris

Free continues

[digitect]

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!

I can see the support calls now...

[jazman]

So what version of Red Hat are you using?
Severn.
Seven?
No, Severn.
You need 9.
I am using 9.
You said Seven!
No, I said Severn. Severn is a version of Nine.
Click.

What's the next version going to be called - Sicks? Hey chaps, here are some more great ideas for names: Fayiv, Fower, Thur-hee, Tahoo, Wun, Zilch, Miner Swan.

Re:I can see the support calls now...

[Chester K]

No, I said Severn. Severn is a version of Nine.

It's a marketing ploy, pure and simple. What geek wouldn't want to "beta test" Severn of Nine?

The end of RedHat as we know it

[pyrotic]

From the changelog:

With this release, the Red Hat Linux product is becoming the Red Hat Linux Project -- an openly-developed project designed by Red Hat, open for general participation, led by a meritocracy, following a set of project objectives.

Looks like the old setup of 2 boxed sets (personal and professional) is going, as is the x.0, x.1, x.2 release cycle. This means they can break binary compatibility with each release. Also means that despite the fact that RH officially stops supporting this relase afer 1 year, package maintainers will be responsible for their own bug-fixes, not RH. Check out the article on The Register for more info. Looking at the package list, it looks too bleeding edge (Apache 2.045, PHP 4.32) for server use. If you want to keep with Apache 1.3x, then your only choice is RHES. Goodbye RedHat, it was good while it lasted.

Re:The end of RedHat as we know it

[drinkypoo]

If you want to keep with Apache 1.3x, then your only choice is RHES. Goodbye RedHat, it was good while it lasted.

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.

Packaging

[treyb]

They should wrap it in a spandex-skinsuit theme, make it boot WINE by default, and call it release Severn of Nine.

Product --- Project ??

[mnemotronic]

From the release notes:

the Red Hat Linux product is becoming the Red Hat Linux Project.

Followed (here) by all kinds of softer,gentler "public forum" and "outside participation" words. I admittedly don't get out from under my bridge very often, but does this signify a fundamental shift in how RH is doing development? Are they becoming a not-for-profit?? Hey, I'm a microsoft masochist, and any kind of altruism just confuses me....

Epiphany sucks

[Ender Ryan]

Not to flame, but IMNSHO, Epiphany is a big step in the wrong direction. Galeon was doing great - the gtk2 version is very stable, has nice features, and is completely uncluttered and not in the least confusing. Epiphany has added some really weird bookmark functionality; it basically allows you to put bookmarks in many categories, which is nice in principle, but in practice it really slows down people who use bookmarks a lot. There is no bookmark toolbar functionality, and the bookmarks open in a separate window instead of having a nice quick menu... Bookmarks are a very simple thing, and the Epiphany crew is overengineering it to the extreme.

It's also still rife with bugs, eg. the toolbar does not work correctly using the "text beside icons" setting in GNOME.

Furthermore, it's been dumbed down to a point where it is below the level of complexity most casual web users want - excluding the confusing bookmark functionality. If you like using tabs, Epiphany has made a wreck of them. The options for opening new links in tabs, etc. have all been removed.

Frankly, I don't think they know WTF they're doing...

I invite anyone who knows more about Epiphany than me to correct anything that is factually incorrect.

pine gone?

[tmu]

Crap. The notes page points out several cool new packages (including acpid for power management and the dvd+rw tools for dvd mastering. But several important packages are falling by the wayside.

Among them:

pine (I've just finished, after 8 years or so) getting used to this thing after the migration from elm. Does this mean I finally have to use mutt?

tripwire. I know lots of people didn't actually use this, but it's really important and the fact that redhat integrated it really raised its visibility.

postgresql72. what's going on here? are they running a more recent version and simply removing the old one?

install PlanetCCRMA ... its worth it.

[Vitriolix]

while planetccrma might take you an hour or two to install and configure, its AWSOME... i love it. once its up and running its so much slicker than windows or macos for keeping your audio environment up to date.

bascially planetccrma is a multimedia distro on top of redhat (7.3, 8.0 or 9.0). it gives you a new kernel with alsa and the low latency + preemptive patches built in. plus it uses Apt-Rpm so installing and updating all those constantly developing linux audio apps is dead simple.

nando, the guy who puts it all together is really friendly and usually answers any install questions or program requests within a day.

I'm a total convert and this is actually letting move away from windows for my main audio performace OS.

here's the site