Mastering Red Hat Linux 9

Dan Clough writes "Mastering Red Hat Linux 9 is a huge, very complete guide to Red Hat Linux 9. It's over 900 pages, and includes the "Publisher's Edition" of RH9 on 2 CDs. It is written in a style which should accommodate Linux newcomers and more experienced users alike. There are a lot of examples, code snippets, and screenshots throughout the book. In fact, sometimes the abundance of these tend to make the material a little long to wade through. Experts should have no trouble skipping over the sections they don't need, though." Read on for the rest of Dan's review. Mastering Red Hat Linux 9 author Michael Jang pages 942 publisher Sybex rating 8 of 10 reviewer Dan Clough ISBN 078214179X summary Good summary for operating a Linux system; though it uses Red Hat, it's not Red Hat-dependent.

The book starts out with an introduction to Linux, and has a good chapter on preparing to install, including hardware checklists. This is followed by a very detailed step-by-step explanation of installing Red Hat, both locally and via network. A nice part of this is a troubleshooting chapter for solving installation problems. Part Two explains the basics of using the command line, how filesystems work in Linux, and using the shell for various tasks.

Part Three includes chapters for administering users and groups on your new system, and how the RPM software package management process works. Other chapters in this part explain the bootup process and how to configure it, various ways to perform system backups, and other common administration tasks such as cron jobs and logs. Especially useful should be Chapter 12 which explains how to update/compile your own kernel. There are very good examples of the myriad kernel options, mostly by using the xconfig utility.

The next several chapters go over how to configure and use the X Window display system, including good examples from the XF86Config file. This is followed by detailed explanations of configuring and using the Gnome and KDE desktop environments. The KDE discussion is very good, considering Red Hat is more known for its use of Gnome as the default desktop. Chapter 18 introduces many of the more commonly used graphical applications in Linux, such as OpenOffice.org, Gnome Office, and the KOffice suite. Chapter 19 should be very handy for Linux/RH new users, as it outlines the Red Hat graphical configuration utilities which allow customization of the desktop look-and-feel and other system preferences.

Chapters 20-22 cover basic Linux networking. The first part of this section gives a very understandable primer on TCP/IP and network terminology. This is followed up by excellent discussions on how to setup and manage networking on your Linux computer, including security recommendations and firewall/masquerading methods. Once you've got your network running safely, there are additional chapters which cover topics such as remote access and xinetd services, and various server applications installation and operation. These include DNS, DHCP, CUPS printing operations, FTP servers (and clients), NFS and NIS, and mail servers (sendmail). Some of these services are probably more than most home users would need, and the sendmail operation in particular is a little difficult to understand.

Chapter 29 (Using Samba) will probably be a great help for people desiring to integrate a Linux system with existing Windows computers on a network. It offers an excellent tutorial on how to share files and resources across the LAN, and includes an explanation of the SWAT configuration utility which greatly simplifies initial setup for newcomers. The final chapter in the book explains how to install and setup a basic webserver using the Apache software. The appendix of the book is a relatively short section called the Linux Command Reference. There is some handy information in this, although it seems to be organized somewhat haphazardly. The book's index, on the other hand, seems to be very complete.

Overall, I found this book to be a very useful reference tool. It is basic enough for most beginners to get all the help they need, and has a good amount of usable knowledge for more advanced Linux users. One thing I realized is that much of the information here is not necessarily Red Hat-specific, so it can be helpful to users of other Linux distributions as well.

You can purchase Mastering Red Hat Linux 9 from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

RedHat is off the user linux market. All your skills are belong to us. Should've pursued MCSE or a degree from ITT Tech.

Re:Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

How can a first post, be redundant, when it actually has content? Surely, nobody before him said, "RedHat is off the user linux market" Troll, sure, but Redundant? wtf are you smoking?

Re:Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's redundant in terms of all Slashdot posts during the past few weeks.

eol

[chef_raekwon]

good thing this book came out before the End of Life for Redhat 9, in 5 months.

(yeah, I guess this is a troll)

Re:eol

[Rinikusu]

I was going to post something similar, but then realized that at the very least, someone may get something out of it. Basically, the publishers/writers can get an idea of what they got right and what they can work on for the next Mastering (Fedora?) book. The biggest problem facing publishers is similar to the dilemna that RedHat was facing: RH spent all the time getting a distro out, then working on the documentation, and by the time everything was out, the distro looked dated by the overwhelming numbers of "new releases" in the software they distributed. Compound that with the latency involved in writing a big book on that distro rendered "obsolete" within a month or two when a new version of that distro is released. Such is life on the bleeding edge. (and for note, it's not just Linux.. Something I found interesting was that Real World Bryce 4 came out just shortly before Bryce 5 and still hasn't been updated...)

Re:eol

[Zak3056]

good thing this book came out before the End of Life for Redhat 9, in 5 months.

(yeah, I guess this is a troll)

Don't feel too bad--my first thought on seeing this was that the next Slashdot book review would be "Mastering Windows NT."

Re:eol

[diersing]

Great timing indeed.

Cept that all this nonsense from Dan was posted on Amazon on Nov 5 , scroll down to the reviews section. I'll give him partial credit since he didn't copy and paste from another reviewer.

Re:eol

[Anonymous Coward]

RedHat is dying

Re:eol

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know which one to buy. Mastering Caldera or Mastering Red Hat 9.

Re:eol

[freeze128]

It might be a troll, but at least it's not redundant....

Re:eol

[spencerogden]

Regardless of the quality of the review, what's wrong with him writing the review, and posting it several places? What difference does it make?

Re:eol

[marquis_de_Carabas]

Do note that, according to the B&N page, the book was published in May 2003.

Re:eol

[diersing]

I don't know, when you read the paper or turn on the NEWS, do you want something fresh or something that was copy and pasted from another source and is 5 days old.

I want slashdot to be both technical and timely. I like /., but recently I'm reading several stories a day I've already seen @ news.com.com or The Register, it gets frustrating to know your rereading the same story/article/review.

Re:eol

[EverDense]

Don't feel too bad--my first thought on seeing this was that the next Slashdot book review would be "Mastering Windows NT."

They have a book for that?

...and too think all these years, I've been stumbling in the dark.

Re:eol

[Chicane-UK]

Was going to say the same thing. And no, I wouldn't say this is a troll.

What a waste of time this book is, really. I still can't get over Red Hat eol'ing RH9 in 5 months :(

Re:eol

[walt-sjc]

But I think you miss the point of /.

The whole POINT is to refer to other news, and then get something you DON'T get at those news sites: community reaction, alternative viewpoints, comments on taco's rear entrance, etc.

Re:eol

[diersing]

Understood and I get that, but we're talking about a book review, hardly a hotbed for discussion and debate. We're talking about a book report that was published on Amazon (and prolly others) last week, the author is the one to submit it to /. not a reader who thought it was a topic worth discussion, the book report is about a product that is no longer readily available from the source and that support (we're not talking new support, we're talking ANY support as the RHN) will longer be assessable.

I do appreciate your point though. I just wish the community reaction, viewpoints and taco's cornhole where more timely.

Re:eol

[IM6100]

Well, there are a couple of pretty darn good O'Reilly and Assoc. books on Windows NT...

Re:eol

[Anonymous Coward]

Commanding Taco.

The next book will be lighter

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Mastering Red Hat Linux 9 is a huge, very complete guide to Red Hat Linux 9

"Mastering Red Hat Linux 10" will be a thin, very complete leaflet to Red Hat Linux 10 that will have "Switch to Debian now!" written on it in big blood-red letters.

Re:The next book will be lighter

[Anonymous Coward]

"Mastering Red Hat Linux 10" will be a thin, very complete leaflet to Red Hat Linux 10 that will have "Switch to Debian now!" written on it in big blood-red letters.

Debian? I'll go switch to NetBSD before I go to Debian. NetBSD is more up to date.

Re:The next book will be lighter

[weycrest]

Not neccessarily. RHEL3 is based on 9 and RedHat also distribute upgraded packages for RHEL3 in the (convenient) form of source RPMS. A server running RHEL3 could create binary RPMS's to keep
a RH9 box running beyond its "sell by date." Same applies to RH 7.2 which is based on RHEL 2.1 and will still be supported after December 2003

Read the Red Hat Enterprise Rebuild Mini Howto:

http://www2.uibk.ac.at/zid/software/unix/linux/r he l-rebuild.htm

Re:The next book will be lighter

[kitzilla]

More likely, a quote from Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik telling the reader to "master" Windows instead.

great timing

[heff]

it's too bad that this book was published at the same time that red hat announced the end of it's rh9/consumer linux support.

Re:great timing

[DarkBlackFox]

Perhaps, though, this is the point. If Red Hat will no longer support it's consumer products, it's nice to see others take up the cause and continue to push linux further into the desktop market, or at least, provide valuable information Red Hat won't concerning such matters.

Re:great timing

[diersing]

True if they were dropping support but keeping the product, but RH is dropping both.

RHL is the Dodo bird distro, why create a support book for a product that has a rapidly dimishing half life?

Those that use it in production/business environments will migrate to use the latest and greatest applications before too long and there are incentives for them to goto RHEL sooner rather then later (SCO type discounting if you get in now, on the ground floor ).

As far as RH and it's commitment to desktop/home user/free user, please see Fedora (which they will NOT support, its completely community driven).

Re:great timing

[pyros]

which they will NOT support, its completely community driven

Not entirely accurate, but the sentiment is right. Red Hat won't be paying their employees to backport patches and host them on RHN. Community volunteers are being given a framework to have take over maintenance of packages, and even have their pacakges included as official packages. I anticipate it will be a fair balance between RHL and Debian. You get the community support and package maintenance, combined with a supported framework for third party repositories. But you still get a corporation paying people to develop core pieces. I guess maybe GNOME itself would be a good example. Red Hat has a handful of core GNOME developers on staff, but GNOME also has volunteer developers as official project contributors.

Why not rebrand?

[Limburgher]

Mastering Fedora Core 0. I mean, hey, get people used to the idea.

Re:Why not rebrand?

[sharkey]

Mastering Fedora Core 0. I mean, hey, get people used to the idea.

Yep, start with the *NIX version of the BSOD: core dump!!!

Great timing...

[jargoone]

Man, sucks to be the author. Put months of time into your book, then have the vendor pull support.

Of course there is another side: since there won't be version 10, this will always be the book on the latest and greatest version of Red Hat Linux!

Re:Great timing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, he had it coming. Writing/printing these 1000+ page computer os textbooks is an excercise in frivolous deforestation in the first place. Things like this should be covered in on-line documentation. Even if Red Hat had continued support for 9 for another six months or a year, the book would not exactly have become a classic.

Re:Great timing...

[jargoone]

In general, I agree, for tech-related books as a whole, not just OS ones. I use them occasionally, but it's ones I know well like the Camel.

I always see people with these nice shiny collections of books. Funny how they're always sitting on the shelves.

Re:Great timing...

[Anonymous Coward]

These books generally have a short lifetime. Go to a Borders or B&N and check the computer section. They're probably still selling books about RH7, Office 98 and 2k, Windows NT, and Solaris 8. As you've observed, at least in this case you know you're getting the latest version no matter how long it's been sitting on the shelf.

Re:Great timing...

[k12linux]

Put months of time into your book, then have the vendor pull support.

Considering that RH announced their new EOL policy many months ago I doubt he was seriously surprised.

I really wonder how this is going to affect RH's RHN service income though. Quite a few non-profs and schools used it to keep servers up to date. The same orgs aren't likely to replace all RH Linux servers with RHE servers... and without that, not much reason to buy RHN subs anymore.

RH9 is the consumer version, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Step one: Install a version of Microsoft Windows, since Linux is not ready for your desktop yet.

This has been a Red Hat approved statement(tm)

The problem

[Anonymous Coward]

with this entire series is that they're very unwieldy and come with a 'orrible binding...the pages usually separate out within 3-4 months.

Re:The problem

[iggymanz]

that's ok, that's about the length of time it takes for a RedHat distro to become obsolete. I'm trying out Mandrake now, RedHat isn't the same company it was from 5 years ago to 6 months ago.

another one that might be helpful

[Anonymous Coward]

Also see Teach Yourself Red Hat Linux 9 from sams... I'm using it right now to try Linux out for the first time and it's pretty easy to follow so far.

Bad timing

[deanj]

This book really has bad timing for the author, considering that RH 9 will discontinue maintenance in April 2004.

Re:Bad timing

[Lord Graga]

Just because a OS gets older it doesn't mean that nobody will use it!

Some of us are too lazy to switch ;)

Redhat Linux 9 ?

[bobaferret]

Seems kinda pointless now that RHL has been discontinued?

What's Red Hat Linux?

[joestar]

Oh sorry - yes it will still exist for 5 months :)

Re:What's Red Hat Linux?

[October_30th]

Did you really think that the volunatary subscriber base kept RedHat afloat? No. They made it from the red to black by selling out per-CPU licenses for their enterprise edition.

Re:What's Red Hat Linux?

[joestar]

> They made it from the red to black by selling out
> per-CPU licenses for their enterprise edition.

Next step is per-user license.

Next from this author...

[-jaded-]

"The Complete Guide to Microsoft NT4 Internet Services" and "Push Technology: The Future of Content Distribution".

It must suck to publish and have the product EOLed within six months.

Re:Next from this author...

[IM6100]

It's the same as it is for any book on a software product where they put the version number in the title.

On the other hand, probably my favorite and well-thumbed book on Unix is 'Introducing the UNIX System' by McGilton and Morgan, published by Byte Books in 1983. For someone who wants to learn the core of Unix by the 'old way' (lots of little tools all piped together to do big things) a book like that, even one of that vintage, is best. Learn how to write /bin/sh scripts first, and nroff, and tee, ed, ex, vi, ar, make, etc. etc.

Re:Next from this author...

[sharkey]

"Push Technology: The Future of Content Distribution".

The Future is Today!

Unfortunate Title

[Ridgelift]

Even though the content of this book is relevant and probably useful, the title should have been change to reflect more the Mandrake/Fedora Linux distributions. The fact that Red Hat will now be synonymous with their expensive Red Hat Enterprise edition, this will probably limit the audience and sale of this book.

Re:Unfortunate Title

[bogie]

This is way it has always been with Publishing when it comes to opensource. I've yet to read ANY book on a specific opensource project that wasn't out of date by the time it was published. This book was obviously in the making and probably done well before Red Hat made its intentions clear. IF they knew what they know now 5 months ago maybe they could have done something but as it stands I'm sure it was just too late to change anything.

The same problem awaits anyone writing a book about Fedora. How to you plan to write a book on an OS that changes every 6 months? The saving grace is that Red Hat's Enterprise linue is a lot more stable and thus their will be applicable books coming over for years to come.

Timing doesn't really matter I guess ...

[Space cowboy]

...given that Fedora is going to be based around Redhat 9, I suppose the (rather poor :-) timing isn't an issue.

I wonder how many others (than me) are seriously considering moving to debian now that RH9 isn't a 'hold-your-hands' upgradable system (assuming you buy RH update :-)

Simon.

Re:Timing doesn't really matter I guess ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally use Mandrake and have been since Caldera quit being a linux company. At work we use RedHat only, they refuse to use anything else, but I'm doing my damn best to get things switched to Mandrake now that RedHat is doing this.

Re:Timing doesn't really matter I guess ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong... If you run Fedora you will never ever ever have to buy a subscription to RHN, and you will get updates via the up2date, per usual, just you use the Fedora repositories. If you can't handle this then you will def. not be able to handle debian.

Re:Timing doesn't really matter I guess ...

[lone_marauder]

I wimped out and went to Mandrake after the Bluecurve fiasco. After what happened to Red Hat, however, I do plan on diversifying my Linux knowledge base. Who knows what will happen if Mandrake goes tits-up or gets assimilated? My goals are to become proficient in Debian and Gentoo.

May God have mercy on my soul.

Re:Timing doesn't really matter I guess ...

[muckdog]

True, but you will also have to upgrade the OS to the next Fedora Core version every 3-6 months in order to get those security updates. I think this ranks higher on the pain in the ass meter than debian.

Re:Timing doesn't really matter I guess ...

[Jagasian]

Wrong, the Fedora Legacy Project will backport security patches.

Re:Timing doesn't really matter I guess ...

[kitzilla]

> I wonder how many others (than me) are seriously considering moving to debian now that RH9 isn't a 'hold-your-hands' upgradable system (assuming you buy RH update :-) They'll find plenty of hand-holding with SUSE and Mandrake.

Re:Timing doesn't really matter I guess ...

[Nailer]

I wonder how many others (than me) are seriously considering moving to debian now that RH9 isn't a 'hold-your-hands' upgradable system (assuming you buy RH update :-)

Not many, and those that don't will likely come back when they relize exactly how much bullshit Slashdot has put out about Fedora. I upgraded from Red Hat 9 to Fedora 1 last night. Pop in CD. Click upgrade. Same as any other Red Hat upgrade.

Re:Timing doesn't really matter I guess ...

[HuguesT]

You can upgrade from RH9 to FC1 in the exact same way you would have upgraded from RH8 to RH9. The installer for FC1 finds out you have RH9 (or any previous version, at least from RH7.x) and upgrades the relevant packages. End of story.

Then you have an apt-enabled (and yum-enabled) system that looks and feel like a RH machine. If you know RH it's a time saver. If you liked RH before you might still like FC1, it feels exactly the same.

But as you learn apt/yum more and more, you might be pulled towards the Debian end of things, it depends on how well the Fedora community handles the variety and consistency of packages.

I think there is room for a middle-of-the road distribution that is easy to install, looks reasonably good, comes with a reasonable selection of packages on a relatively small set of CDs (3 is really a maximum) and is fully updatable and upgradable. FC could well fit that nice, but then again it might fail horribly. RH had this crutial critical mass of people who knew and trusted them. Will that translate to FC? not sure.

The good things RH did appart from the looks (which is a matter of taste) was 1- the kernel support (thanks to Alan Cox sterling work. Remember the 2.4.10+ bad days with horrible VM performance? none of that with the RH kernels) and 2- the security focus and the updates: timely and easy. Will Fedora continue on that trend?

I installed FC1 last night on my home machine, I'm keeping RH9 at work, we'll see.

The problem with Debian is that you really have to know what you are doing when you maintain that distribution and you have to actively remember to look for what needs to be updated. That little RH icon in your folder and the email reminders that keep telling you when (and why) you need to update your distribution is what made such a huge difference for me and my co-workers.

Good.

[H8X55]

Plenty of folks complaining or pointing the finger that Red Hat will be pulling the plug on RH9 this spring. In my opinion there's even more reason to go buy this book, if you plan on sticking w/ RH9. Why not have a 900 page bible on the OS you plan on sticking with? I know I know, gentoo gentoo gentoo, but in the meantime us newbies can contniue using RH and at least have one decent source to turn to.

Re:Good.

[mustangsal]

I can give you a 1000 page RedHat Bible.... Now where's that photo copier...

hmm, I don't understand big Unix books

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

What's wrong with apropos, man and info (well, and google)? They're free, take less space in the shelf and they're always current. The only paper book you need to use those is a Unix for Dummies book, if you're new to Unix, just to get started.

Re:hmm, I don't understand big Unix books

[tuffy]

I get plenty of use out of this big Unix book. In general, online docs like man pages or Google are nice when your machine is working fine and you have a good idea of what you're looking for. But having a nice book on a subject is handy when those conditions don't apply.

Re:hmm, I don't understand big Unix books

[Anonymous Coward]

They're free, take less space in the shelf and they're always current

You've got to be kidding me. Man pages are notoriously out-of-date on many systems.

Re:hmm, I don't understand big Unix books

[Anonymous Coward]

info? info isn't even a suitable replacement for cat.

Re:hmm, I don't understand big Unix books

[Anonymous Coward]

What? You mean everything that comes out of GNU isn't the be all and end all of software, ever, until the heat death of the universe ocurs? Well now you've shattered my cosy world view.

Seriously though, info is a pile of shit and GNU should be ashamed that they purposly neglect a standard, perfectly usable, well understood documentation format in favour of their own non-standard peice of crap. If it was Microsoft trying those sorts of tactics Slashbots would be all over them.

Re:hmm, I don't understand big Unix books

[October_30th]

GNU should be ashamed that they purposly neglect a standard, perfectly usable, well understood documentation format

Just out of interest, does anyone know why GNU is still hanging on to info?

Re:hmm, I don't understand big Unix books

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't give you an answer, but I would like to bitch about man pages that simply tell you to use 'info' to get help.

Re:hmm, I don't understand big Unix books

[gentoo_moo]

Good point. I don't have any dummy books (never liked them) but got hooked on Running Linux by O'Reilly and Assoc. when I first got attracted to Linux and now I keep a current copy of it nearby for reference.

Re:hmm, I don't understand big Unix books

[mike77]

What's wrong with apropos, man and info...they're always current.

man tar
.
.
the en_US locale) should be used both to create the archive and to extract files from the archive.

Last change: 28 Jan 1998 12

Maybe not as current as we'd like?

Re:hmm, I don't understand big Unix books

[sqlrob]

Worse is when you run info and get the exact same text as on the man page, up to and including "use info"

Re:hmm, I don't understand big Unix books

[flok]

Last change: 28 Jan 1998 12

Maybe not as current as we'd like?

Maybe nothing has changed since then?

Re:hmm, I don't understand big Unix books

[walt-sjc]

Maybe because when there isn't an info version you get the man file?

I hate info, almost as much as apps that only have bad HTML docs in 400 little screen-sized files.

Re:hmm, I don't understand big Unix books

[Arker]

Try man info.

Re:hmm, I don't understand big Unix books

[k8to]

Offtopic, but... Summer of this year seems alright.

jrodman@Skonnos:~> man info
Reformatting info(1), please wait...
INFO(1) User Commands INFO(1<)

NAME
info - read Info documents
[...]
General Public License. For more information about these matters, see
the files named COPYING.

info 4.6 June 2003 INFO(1)

1. Different comment

[NorwBlue]

nahhh...... same as everyone else.... to bad RH is pulling the plug.....

... and?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like every other 'Mastering Redhat' books out there, but with more pictures.

My question

[bahamat]

Given recent events, does the author now wish he had written Mastering Debian GNU/Linux? I know I sure do.

Is it very long before...

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux books get charged a sales tax and a SCO tax?

Also look for....

[redhat421]

Mastering Windows 3.11 from the same author. :)

Re:Also look for....

[owlstead]

Since it takes only one instruction code to stop Windows 3.11 dead (loop to itself e.g.) Mastering Win3.11 could really be a short book....

The author seems to have affection with defunct operating systems :)

Re:Also look for....

[sharkey]

Chapter 4: Leaves On My Monitor. or Speechless, just, spee-WOW!

the review is a troll.

[garcia]

It is written in a style which should accommodate Linux newcomers and more experienced users alike.

We all know that this is the big RED flag. Anytime a review says this, it is time to move along.

Re:the review is a troll.

[sorrowsdream]

I don't see why this should be any indication of the quality of a book. Some of my favorite books have been "newbie" books because they can be referred to quickly.

Why not just upgrade?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not upgrade? I guess many of you guys are really Windows users and thus thinks that upgrading is a pain that breaks the system totally.

It is not.

Most package based Linux distros are really, really simple to upgrade. I've gone from Red Hat 7.0 and upwards through all releases, and now to Fedora Core 1.

Just grab fedora-release-n-n.rpm (where "n" is the version. (The name used to be redhat-release-n-n.rpm)). Install "rpm -Uvh fedora-release-n-n.rpm". Run apt-get, yum or up2date (you have to have proper sources.list, but you already do, right?) and you're all set.
New version installed.

I do this every time a new release comes out on my main work station and I've never had any real problems. Just look for .rpmsave/.rpmnew config-files in case something does not work as expected.

You won't have to reboot a gazillion times during the upgrade, nor do you have to install incremental updates or any other of the nonsense that some of you may be used to with MS's products. The upgrade just replaces some (usually many) old packages with newer versions.

It's as simple as that. You won't be looking back.

Re:Why not just upgrade?

[Lord Graga]

I was pointing to a change to a newer distro, but thanks for pointing it out for me.
BTW, Windows isn't really a pain in the ass to update. You just press a few buttons, waits, reboots, and there you go! It's a question about taste ;)

Re:Why not just upgrade?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read again. I'm talking about _upgrading_. Updating Linux is a matter of pressing a button or two and you're done. No reboots unless you upgrade the kernel. This has been the case with most distros for a long time now.

Upgrading Windows is a whole other issue. Try upgrading Win95, 98, Me or NT to XP and you'll see what I mean. Sure it can be done, but the mess you'll end up with is rather unmanageable.
Try upgrading a few times (say from 95->98->XP) and you're neck deep in it, or worse.

Where's the foot?

[Mr. Neutron]

Seriously, this review belongs in the "It's funny, laugh" department.

Although the impending RHL EOL is not all that "funny" to me....

Re:Where's the foot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now "that" is "fucking" funny!

RHCE books?

[rootnl]

I am/was busy studying for RHCE, I started out with RHL8, at that point only RHL7 books were available. In due time, RH9 was released and I found myself running 2 versions behind plus Red Hat is very proud of the fact that they switch their exams quickly after a new product release. This was one of the books that I was looking at to use as a study guide as it came highly recommended. Pity about the switch Red Hat has made.At this point in time there are no study books available for RHEL and you might as well forget about RH9.

Re:RHCE books?

[DickieRay]

This book isn't out yet, but maybe it would help:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/07 82 142826/002-3519432-2309646#product-details

Re:RHCE books?

[Erisian Pope]

If you know RHL, you know RHEL. Same goes for Fedora. Hell, if all you know is SuSE or Debian you could still do pretty well so long as you know where to look for the config files. Samba, Sendmail, Postfix, Apache, Grub etc... if you know it, you can pass. Also keep in mind the RHCE materials haven't switched over for RHEL yet. It will soon, but there are issues regarding how to distribute RHEL to the students in the RHCE courses.

Re:RHCE books?

[Anonymous Coward]

And to add to this post, from someone else who has taken the exam, if you paw through the RH9 test there is nothing to change for RHEL... it's not like there is a single screenshot of 9 in the whole book. Learn the services, learn the admin, learn the setup files for debugging and you are set.

Re:RHCE books?

[CaptainAx]

The RHCE test is going to be on RedHat Enterprise Linux now. I'm sure all the 2004 RH300 classes will be RHEL. The instructor mentioned it when I was in RHCE training last month.

Bonus Chapter

[Anonymous Coward]

Episode 3: Revenge of Redhat

Unknown to the Linux Masters, Senator Redhat makes a secret deal with Microsoft to bring doom and destruction to Linux. As the plan unfolds, the masters realize that they have been betrayed by redhat, but it was too late.

Microsoft's apprentice, SCO, seeks out the linux masters. SCO battles it out with linux, the fight looking unfavorable to sco. Then FreeBSD steps in and knocks the piss out of both of them.

Rumored to be the most powerfulest unix in the universe, The Little D.Mon Master proceeds to show who is the master of unix to sco and linux.

After the fight, the one left standing is D.Mon. D.Mon now angry that a little unknown linux master named Gentoo claimed to be a BSD Like and uber fast and all powerful.

The Freebsd master chuckled, and showed Gentoo masters a little document showing that there is actually a performance loss if one does "-03" compared to regular "-O". The gentoo master refused the truth, but couldnt fight due to emerge not functioning correctly. Instead, the gentoo master was busy trying to get its nvidia drivers working, and recovering from the crasy of "oh darn, -O3 made my system unusable"

FreeBSD took pitty on gentoo, and decided to give gentoo a copy of 4.9 and a nifty handbook, that explains everything, and what a true master unix behaves like.

Now Redhat, responded to the threat of FreeBSD, it incorportated a new weapon called "RHEL". RHEL has a deadly weapon called of "I can run linux apps". Freebsd chuckled, as it said "so can I, but even faster"

Redhat starts to cry, and shows it's new apprentice.. Fedora. Fedora, if you didnt know, is a redheaded stepchild, that was born out of "lets dumped the user".

Meanwhile.... Novel, the old master of File Services, is chuckling....

(continue the story)

Re:Bonus Chapter

[Anonymous Coward]

Then FreeBSD steps in and knocks the piss out of both of them.

Give it up. Don't you know that BSD is dead?

Re:Bonus Chapter

[Anonymous Coward]

Masters windows, Suse, redhat and fedora laughed at FreeBSD for his fonts were ugly and he had pocket protectors for when their pixels spilled out the sides (oh no, their not leaking, it's just they are jagged).

Then the handsome OSX, FreeBSD's disciple entered, promising a new land of honey and milk to all. He was so handsome people started to follow him and became beautiful too.

But a few remained, asking how much did that plastic surgery cost! Luckily they stayed in the land of microsoft, where there was only a software monopoly, rather than a software AND hardware monopoly. The last that was heard of the OSX followers was that they were living in a zen garden with steve jobs in japan and released nerve gas on a small convention of ugly people then drank kool-aid before the authorities could catch them. However, cult leader Jobs is still at large.

FreeBSD dies from having it's developers stolen by OSX and killed with kool-aid.

Windows implodes for obvious reasons and GNU/Linux takes over as the computing platform of choice.

Richard Stallman is praised by the people and elected president, overturns copyright laws with his hot-chick EFF lawyer wife.

and then.....Richard Stallman wakes from his wet dream.

Re:Bonus Chapter

[Anonymous Coward]

How could you forget about the "SCO kool-aid" that Darl mentioned?

Move to Slackware

[Mr. Neutron]

I wonder how many others (than me) are seriously considering moving to debian

Installed Slack 9.1 on all my boxen over the weekend. Well, ok, my wife did a lot of the installs. Slack is up to Kernel 2.4.22 and Gnome 2.4 out of the box. Check it out!

Re:Move to Slackware

[micaiah]

"Well, ok, my wife did a lot of the installs." Ok, now I am jealous. :-)

Re:Move to Slackware

[micaiah]

"Installed Slack 9.1 on all my boxen over the weekend. Well, ok, my wife did a lot of the installs."

Ok, now I am jealous. :-)

Re:Move to Slackware

[big_groo]

Don't forget Dropline Gnome! I did an install 2 nights ago, and boy is it sweet!

Swaret is now included in Slack 9.1. swaret --update, swaret --upgrade. Done.

Re:Move to Slackware

[Mrs. Neutron]

Jealous about which? That his wife (yes, that's me) did all the work, or that he has a wife in the first place?

Cowpoke

[Anonymous Coward]

Having my up2date cut off in December (I have RH 8.0) and no upgrade path makes me feel like I'm in a wild west town where the sheriff up'n left us - and the bandits are a-circlin'.

The internet is filled with way too many goofballs writing worms and exploits for Linux and Windoze systems. I need a Linux OS that has an updater, and one that knows how to do a seamless upgrade from RedHat 8.0. I'll PAY $$$!

Re:Cowpoke

[Anonymous Coward]

Fedora Core has a seamless upgrade from RH 8.0, and you get free updates through the new version of up2date (no need to fill out all those surveys).

Re:Cowpoke

[avery]

Have a look at Gentoo. The Portage system will keep you up to date and is easy to use. Of course, you're probably used to RPMs with RedHat...

Re:Cowpoke

[brdweb]

I am sick and tired of all the FUD around slashdot about this. You can use up2date RIGHT NOW to upgrade from 8 to 9. I remotely upgraded three of my boxes from 7.3 to 9 using ssh and up2date. Now for the big newsflash for all you /. readers. Fedora IS redhat! What is so hard to figure out? Fedore core 1 was just released which is essentially RH 10 if you want to look at it in those terms. And you can again, just use up2date, to upgrade to the newest release. As a matter of fact, up2date now supports apt and yum repositories as well. Debian is fine, I run it on one of my systems, but I prefer RH. And now up2date actually has as much functionality as apt for debian. Sorry for the bit of a rant cowpoke, but you DO have an upgrade path. It's just that far too many people around these parts don't want to listen to the real information.

call me crazy...

[supercooled32]

Experts should have no trouble skipping over the sections they don't need, though

well thats a nice feature but won't that soon be the entire book??

I guess

[DeltaSigma]

Isn't Sarge supposed to be the new stable next month? If so, I'm moving to Debian.

Headless Server?

[gandy909]

I wonder how this book rates with NON GUI subjects. Of the last several books I looked at on RH8, not a single one touched on command line stuff more than an occasional teaser here or there. When you are using one as a headless server, not only no monitor, but X not even installed, all these GUI centric books don't help one iota. It seems like either the authors don't have a clue as to how to administer one via the keyboard, or they just choose to take the 'easy' way to a quick buck.

Re:Headless Server?

[PPGMD]

It doesn't cover it too well IMO. It's a descent book, but no where near the best on this subject.

Source code?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the book come with source code? Or an offer for source code?

cross-vendor compatiability

[pyros]

Not quite on-topic with the book review, but relevant to the comments discussing life-cycle. If I've observed anything out of the transition from Red Hat Linux to Fedora, which is nowhere near done, it's that a common standard like the LSB and FHS combined with package managet agnostic repository header information is becoming essential. While waiting for FC to come out I installed Debian unstable, and was quickly reminded that the reason I liked Red Hat in the first place was for the awesome config tools. I actually had to get on irc to figure out not only how to configure my USB mouse but also how to get my IDE controller working! Move forward a couple of weeks and FC is out and installed side-by-side with Debian unstable. I hate having to do so much extra legwork to get ntfs and mp3 support. When LSB/FHS compliance are so strong between the major vendors that an app packaged for Debian can be installed on Red Hat and Red Hat's config tools can see/configure it, or Red Hat's config tools can be installed on Debian and produce config files that Debian will be aware of, there will be rejoicing in the streets. RedHat adding yuma dn apt support to up2date is a huge step. Yum is part of the Fedora Core, and apt is on the way, I believe. But having the tool agnostic repo header info will make it all moot. You setup your package repo and magically apt, yum, and up2date can all process dependencies. What a glorious day it will be.

I wish had this book for my Linux install

[scumbucket]

About two weeks ago I decided to try and install Linux on my old K6-2 450mhz machine gathering dust in the basement.
A friend of mine gave me a few cd's that had something called 'Mandrake' on it.

He said "This is supposed to be the most user-friendly 'distro' out there. Give it a try."

So with trepidation about wiping out my beloved win98se install on the old machine, I jumped right in.

On firing up the install disk, the Man-drake installer asked me if I wanted to remove the win98se partition
that already existed. After pondering this for several minutes I though, 'what the hell, I can always
reinstall it!' So I let it fly.

After what seemed like 45 minutes of swapping cd's in-and-out of the drive, the man-drake (isn't that some sort of bird?)
installer ask me what I wanted to use this linux machine for. So many choices! games, office, mail server,
web server, about 2 dozen choices flooded my screen. This is madness! So after carefully considerating my options
I decided to choose them all! I would be a Linux power-user to end all linux power-users!

So after this decision was made I waited. And waited. And waited. During this I started to wonder. My Windows XP
Home intallation on my other Peecee didn't ask me thse kind of questions, and it easily has the all the abilities
that man-drake advertised to have. After all, I paid for WinXP Home. Sigh, I guess this it the price one pays
for being part of the linux elite.

Approximately 50 mintues later I get another prompt from the man-drake installer asking me what kind of GUI I wanted
to use, KDE or GNOME. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me! I selected both and let it fly.

After only about 20 mintues this time it appeared the install was completed. The mandrake installer told me it
was going to reboot and then I would revel in Linux goodness. I waited with baited breath while the reboot
churned away, eagerly waiting the opportuntity to use the KDE/GNOME interface. Page after page of command line
stuff flew by my screen, seeming to get faster and faster as the time of my linux deliverance approached. Then,
the screen flashed black (kinda like those scenes from the movie Wargames). I gasped and was presented with
something like this:

bsh: blah/blah/blah/ ____

What the hell was this? Wasn't this man-drake linux supposed to be user friendly? Instead of the friendly
confines of a WinXP like GUI instead I was given an ugly DOS like prompt, which looked supiciously like
the TRS-80 system I first learned BASIC on in high school. Is this all the farther the great open-source
movement has progressed?

After serveral minutes of sobbing and knashing of teeth, I came to a decision. All the linux fags out there
were not going to defeat me! They were not going to cry "Bend over WinXP boy, you're going to take linux OUR
WAY and like it!".

I quickly found my old musty copy of 'Unix in a Nutshell' from my college days and got to work. In a few hours
I found out how to start the KDE GUI. This made life so much easier. After several days I was able to get the
machine's 14.4 internal modem working with man-drake and connected to the internet, using a browser called
Mozilla. Where oh where were the glorious pop-ups that appeared as I was surfing porn sites? Those bastards!

After several more days I was starting to feel somewhat comfortable. Using something called Gimp to manipulate
my growing collection of adult images was becoming a habit. And because I was ashamed to let my friends and
neighbors know I was using a gasp! free operating system like mandrake, I kept the pee-cee in the basement. Now
my girlfriend things the sounds emanating from below are me just woodworking or lifting weights. I guess linux has
freed me after all!

Re:I wish had this book for my Linux install

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a windows person without much knowledge, and I always suspected this was the truth about linux gnu whatever i downloaded gimp 2 say this is even close to photoshop is a joke same thing opera - it just is not as good as IE
the analogy i always use is, what if ford said we have introduced a feature: every day befoe u start your car, u have to set the timing and ignition... isnt it great that u have control over your car system ?
Most of us need to write letters, and run spreadhseets, adn make powerpoints, and we really dont care if we paid 300 bucks,I dont care, after all, i paid for the hardware, and the elecricit and the backup media..I'm sorry, can someone tell me why I would want linux ? so what if i cant modify my system - I think people who "need " open source so they can modify their systems are not actually working

Re:I wish had this book for my Linux install

[LnxAddct]

Umm....this person had one bad experience. And you have been fed too much microsoft FUD. SUSE and RedHat are both far easier to install and can do much much more then windows ever could. Linux is also a server, ever try installing a windows server and setting it up? Ha good luck, not to mention the hour it takes to boot. Linux can be a desktop and a server and can do anything you need to do. And if you are willing to spend money then your in excellent shape. Most windows apps that you 'need' to use can run on linux, although the free alternatives are usually better. Many apps in linux are better, and more stable and secure. Not to mention, with things like apt, you update/upgrade everything on ur system, not just your microsoft lock-in monopoly stuff. This is all I have time to write, but I could go on and on. Linux really is better, don't be scared to try it out. Just because its free doesnt mean its bad. A few years ago I swore by windows, but Linux has proven its self time and time again to me and I haven't needed Windows since then. In case your wondering, yes I do everything you stated (the letters, powerpoint,etc...) easily, plus alot more on Linux.

good thing there's Fedora Legacy

[Vitriolix]

which will continue keeping redhat 7.3 and redhat 9 up to date with all current security patches so you can happily continue to run machine on those distros far into the future... why troll???

mod up please

[Anonymous Coward]

thank you.

Red Hat Story set straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Try apt, yum or the new apt/yum-enabled up2date and upgrade to the latest version. The Fedora packages are GPG-signed so you'll know that the proper stuff will be installed on you machine.

Or download the Fedora ISOs, burn, boot and select "upgrade" on the first screen.

Contrary to popular slashdot-belief, there _is_ an upgrade path. Most people here are just misinformed or too ignorant to actually read the facts before posting. IMHO Red Hat is doing The Right Thing (tm) by splitting off the consumer version into Fedora.

The reason Red Hat bashing is so popular is because they are the largest distro. It comes with the job, really. Some people can't stand the fact that another Linux distribution is bigger than theirs so they blow it off on Slashdot.
Ignore the trolls here and start reading a couple of mailinglists and you'll soon notice that there is perfectly sound reason behind Red Hats actions.

Don't forget that Red Hat is a MAJOR contributor to Linux and other Open Source projects, without them we'd probably be in a lot worse condition than we are now.

(Of course there are many other contributors too, this is no flame bait so don't get all worked up now you guys that prefer other distros than RH/Fedora. We're all benefiting from each others work, that's what makes Open Source so great).

Re:Red Hat Story set straight

[FatherOfONe]

First let me say I was a RedHat fan, but I don't think Fedora is this guys solution.

Yes he might get updates with up2date, but his product will NOT be supported in any way from RedHat. The purpose of Fedora appears to be to get the latest "somewhat stable" software to the masses and let them bang on it to find bugs. Then RedHat will take the best of breed of that software and incorporate it in to ES.

My advice to the guy is to buy RedHat ES for $300 and plan on paying RedHat $300 a year for the rest of that servers life. He could do that or switch to a different distro.

Re:Red Hat Story set straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I'm the original cowpoke. I don't blame you for the rant, I really didn't know there was an upgrade path with Fedora from RH8.0. It's not ignorance out of laziness though, I read the website and I don't recall that being mentioned. I may just go with Fedora sometime around Feb then...

I know a little bit of UNIX from college, and I am using that limited knowledge and some moxie to run my JSP site on RH7.0 and then 8.0. I do NOT spend a lot of time on it. I NEVER intend to become a kernel hacker. I bought RedHat because I knew there was a horde of paid nerds backing me up. I saw that up2date thing and I was sold.

When you talk about apt-get and yum, and I think, "Is this guy smoking something? What kind of nonsense is he talking about?" I really, honestly don't care about the feature set of my updater except that it works real good all the time. I've never read up on yum ... but I'm reluctant to because the name sounds, well, kindof gay. Up2date works great for me, thank you. It only screwed up once (disabled telnet!), and some nice folks on usenet gave me some good properties file mojo and got me going again.

Anyhow, like that other dude said, I think there's still some problems with Fedora. Chiefly, I'm not getting paid support for the Fedora, which really sucks. I'm WAY too far out of the loop to go with a handrolled Linux solution, I'd be hacked in no time!

RedHat was the most stable, affordable, least techie, AND supported Linux I could find. It's been serving 24/7 on my home DSL for over 3 years, and I only reboot after each up2date. My process is simple, and it works great! When I hear about gentoo or these other builds I kindof shudder because I get the sense that if I go with them I'll have to become a real live sysadmin and actually tend to my site on a regular basis.

I just researched RHAT's stock, and they've been losing lotsa money for years now. I hope they can make their business work for them going forward. Maybe my Redhat Linux will return someday.

Cheers,
Davester

no.... but the trolls are sure getting krusty

[Anonymous Coward]

running out of stuff to troll about? sucka.

Re:no.... but the trolls are sure getting krusty

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, need something new, haven't been any bsd posts lately

Would you really like to "support" yourself?

[Kjella]

In my opinion there's even more reason to go buy this book, if you plan on sticking w/ RH9. Why not have a 900 page bible on the OS you plan on sticking with?

The primary reason I liked RHL was the security errata and patching, either through upgrades or backports. Once it it EOL'd, that is gone. What point is there then? I certainly don't want to micromanage every package myself, then I'd much rather go with Debian, Fedora or some other free distro where there's at least some level of coordination.

Kjella

Re:Would you really like to "support" yourself?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Fedora is heavily based on RHL I guess the book could come in handy. It's not like Fedora is a totally different creature (although it's already way better than RH9, but so was RH9 compared to RH8 and so on).

Fedora has upgrades and coordination, just not maintenance at the same level/length guaranteed by Red Hat for their Enterprise line.

Enterprise stuff is fine and dandy for servers and companies without much in-house Linux knowledge. Fedora will be a much faster evolving creature that I think will satisfy a lot of user's needs. The open repositories will take care of your security patching needs as before, you just don't have to pay for RHN. Same as Debian, Gentoo and a lot ot other distros, just with a much broader user base.

Re:Would you really like to "support" yourself?

[Mryll]

Is up2date dead in Fedora or no? I thought I had heard somethng about it being loosened up to work with apt-get on the back end - ? I thought we were looking at a situation where fairly automagic updating would be possible, just that the packages wouldn't be vetted by RH.

Re:Would you really like to "support" yourself?

[Anonymous Coward]

up2date now has apt and yum support.
Just add the proper lines in /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources and you're all set.

Support go Byebye

[Kamic]

First off FSCK you:) I've been using redhat for awhile and dont understand why they'd kill support for 9, 10 is totally different and are forcing people to upgrade, which is about $180 per copy. What advance in price does that have vs windows...

Re:Support go Byebye

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at http://fedora.redhat.com which is actually Redhat 10 but will now onwards release with different name. Redhat is going commercial with Redhat brand name, Free version still be available as 'Fedora Core' which is currently coming out from Redhat FTP servers.

Re:Support go Byebye

[Kamic]

Fedora, 10, same difference, the next upgrade. and in the corp. world, everything has a price

Why Bother?

[Pepebuho]

Too Late, now I need the Mastering Fedora FC 1 Book

Fedora Legacy will likely support 8.0

[Anonymous Coward]

Check the Fedora Legacy project mailing list. Those people are discussing how to handle the support for legacy versions of RH and Fedora. Many people have requested for support for 8.0 and it seems likely that it will be supported. 9 will certainly be supported past April, and updating from 8.0 to 9 may be easy (if glibc is your applications friend).

What alternative distributions are most like RH8?

[mobosplash]

I have a couple of commercial programs that are supported on RH 7.3 or RH 8. Without support for these versions what distributions are most like them? I did try installing on RH 9 and it didn't work so "not supported on" means more than they won't answer the call.

900 pages?

[pimpinmonk]

I'm sorry. But isn't there a problem with a 900 page guide to an operating system? This isn't even advanced server. This is RH9 desktop. This is why I stopped using Linux on my desktop. It took me way more time to learn how to set something up, try to set it up, troubleshoot, and find the dirty hacks than to actually do what I was trying to do. Yes, it ran faster than windows and philosophically better, but I just didn't have time in my life!

So in regards to linux being ready for the prime-time desktop, well I think that it's still a hobbyist's OS. The day when you can plug stuff in and it all just *works* properly will be great. I know Lycoris and Lindows are working toward this, but doesn't it seem like they're just layering wrappers upon wrappers on top of the fundamentally unelegant backend? Take USB keys for example. You need to have SCSI compiled to use them. Why???

Sorry for the rant. But I see many posts making fun of 900 pages, and many posts making fun of RH not being ready for the desktop, but if you look at things from a realistic perspective, it's just *not ready* for mainstream. RH is not an idealistic company. They are reealistic, want to make money, and are succeeding at it, so I'd tend to think they know what they're talking about. Maybe linux is ready for tightly controlled office settings where you have homogenous hardware, set it up so it all works dandy, don't touch it and pray it doesn't break down, but it's not good where you have people with many diverse needs from their computers.

Mod me down, burn me at the stake, but this really is a personal reaction to all the "+5 Funny" posts on this page.

Re:900 pages?

[tuffy]

I'm sorry. But isn't there a problem with a 900 page guide to an operating system? This isn't even advanced server. This is RH9 desktop.

Here's a 1,296 page book about Windows XP. Does that mean Windows XP is too complicated for the average user and isn't suitable for the desktop? Using the page count of a book devoted to an operating system as an excuse to blast its user friendliness is idiotic.

Re:900 pages?

[WNight]

Who cares if Linux uses SCSI for USB Keys? Your distro, assuming it was released in the last two years or so, should come with support for USB Keys pre-compiled. You plug the key in and the auto-mounter makes it appear on the desktop. At least in Mandrake...

If you can't read the docs and figure out what you need (assuming it's not obvious because USB keys tend to be /dev/sdX) why are you recompiling your kernel? Windows users don't complain that the system won't work if you delete the registry, so why do they complain that Linux won't work if you open a command-line, CD into an obscure directory, and issue a series of instructions to cause your kernel to be recompiled?

What is this? It's like saying your car sucks because when you add a nitrous kit it's easy to screw up the mods.

Re:900 pages?

[fdisk3hs]

Sir, you need to be enlightened. Read the Unix Hater's Handbook. Unix will never be simple. It is a never ending pit of shame and self loathing. Chastise yourself before the One True OS. Hate yourself for not understanding how to use the code snippet in the man page. Stab yourself in the thigh with an X-acto knife when you cannot get functions to pass pointers correctly. And never try to fix the problems in the BUGS section of the man page! The BUGS have been there since 1978, and they are features. Seriously, you will break Unix if you try to fix the bugs. Every program *depends* on those bugs to run... er... feed themselves to the linker...

Unix is worthy of all pages ever manufactured from pulp. Hit yourself between the eyes with the 900 pages! Again!

Buy twelve year old hardware just to run Unix on it! DO IT NOW! Try to make modern software run on original SunOS! The GNU people that dropped support are *weak*! They don't understand their Master.

Keep changing jobs until they let you put Unix on all of their Windows servers! They don't understand. You must do the bidding of your Master. Don't use Nero Burning ROM! Use cdrecord, and sacrifice many cd's to Unix, the One True OS.

Install Unix on every computer you touch. You can just sneak on Zipslack, no one will ever know. But you will. And so will Unix.

Keep typing fgrep in a Windows CMD shell. It will always error, but keep typing it.

Buy as much hardware as you can, and install Unix on it over and over, in as many ways and combinations as you can. Saturate the T1s with every version of every distribution you can find. Keep trying to get Minix to boot. Do incessant CVS checkouts. Clog your mail server with mailing lists. Get time and date stamped commentary on every typo fix to the source!

Hit yourself with the 900 pages again!

Re:900 pages?

[Ratfactor]

[funny stuff snipped]
Unix is worthy of all pages ever manufactured from pulp. Hit yourself between the eyes with the 900 pages! Again!
[more funny stuff snipped]

I just want you to know that this is the funniest thing I've read yet today.

Re:900 pages?

[Rinikusu]

The difference is: You don't need a manual to figure out stuff under Windows XP. Linux, on the other hand, is a maze of man pages, info pages, --help, etc. Generally speaking, if you want to do something in Windows XP, the intuitive way is how you do it. Same goes for Mac OS. With Linux, you're hoping that the developer thinks like you do...

Re:900 pages?

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead, have Windows installed on your system. Try to load a program. It works. Try to load another. It works. Try to run the previous program. It doesn't work. Remove both programs. System no longer works. Lie to system administrator - say you didn't do anything other than use the word processor, and hope he can't check the system logs.

Much better system, at least for someone who'd rather flail himself with a book than read one.

Re:900 pages?

[TheNetAvenger]

Instead, have Windows installed on your system. Try to load a program. It works. Try to load another. It works. Try to run the previous program. It doesn't work. Remove both programs. System no longer works.

Man, it must really suck to still be using Windows 3.0 or Windows/386.

I truly feel for you...

Re:900 pages?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm sorry. But isn't there a problem with a 900 page guide to an operating system? This isn't even advanced server."

It's an OS PLUS a s***load of desktop and server apps. What's amazimg is that it can all be covered in just 900 pages.

Re:900 pages?

[Kynde]

Maybe linux is ready for tightly controlled office settings where you have homogenous hardware, set it up so it all works dandy, don't touch it and pray it doesn't break down, but it's not good where you have people with many diverse needs from their computers.

You tend to forget _the_ use it's been ready for years, for those of us that do not just use the computer in their work, but whoose work is the computer. Power users.

I agree it not being ready for everybody, but it is ready for our desktops. Wether it'll be one day ready for aunt Tillie, quite frankly I don't care.

I mean, sure I sound like typical blowhearted linux zealot, but seriously, I don't go whining to Guns&Ammo saying "Who on earth needs some $5000 scope and all sorts of dangles for this and that when all I need is just a base ball bat in close range".

Re:900 pages?

[Nailer]

This isn't even advanced server. This is RH9 desktop.

Red Hat 9 includes a server install and a large variety of server apps. The only things it lacks are clustering and a bigmem kernel.

Take USB keys for example. You need to have SCSI compiled to use them. Why???

You need to have SCSI compiled to use them under Windows too. Neither Red Hat 9 nor Windows ask you to compile SCSI to use your USB key.

Otherwise thanks for the second intelligent post I've read in this entire thread.

Re:900 pages?

[IntergalacticWalrus]

The Unix Haters book is very, very old, it dates before Linux, and should only be considered an historic purpose document now. But then again, seeing as you judge the state of Linux on the number of pages a Red Hat book has, I'm not expecting you to be a very rationnal person.

Re:900 pages?

[HuguesT]

No no, I've had this experience with win2k too, but I blame it on poor installers, not really on Microsoft. Usually the only cure is an O/S reinstall though - A lot of windows users swear this is a good thing to do from time to time, but I'm not so sure.
I don't know if things are better with winXP.

Re:900 pages?

[TheNetAvenger]

No no, I've had this experience with win2k too, but I blame it on poor installers, not really on Microsoft. Usually the only cure is an O/S reinstall though - A lot of windows users swear this is a good thing to do from time to time, but I'm not so sure.
I don't know if things are better with winXP.

Well, XP, things are better, but...

You will find novice techs that recommend an OS reinstall once a year to clean out the system. When in fact, this is one of the stupidest things to recommend from an experienced consultant.

Even with a poor installer, there are almost NO instances where an experience tech or service shop cannot just fix the problem and remove any offending software or spyware.

Additionally, back to XP... XP has this nifty feature called "System Restore" which allows you to change the OS back to a previous working state a day, or several days before. And it works miracles, unlike the first incarnate of "System Restore" in WinME which sucked.

Additionally, XP not only is good about protecting the OS files and registry from bad applications and installers, it also forces the system to create a restore point everytime a driver is changed, just in case it is the wrong or buggy driver, so the system is ALWAYS recoverable from any type of installation.

Microsoft also recognized that one of the biggest problems with the Win9x core OSes is that they allowed too much flexibility in User software installations that did not enforce security.

It wasn't that the OS base code of Win9x was buggy, but the software that users installed often caused system instability. Hence Win2k and WinXP work very hard to remove this threat, and do so without having to notify or worry the user, the software just works(even if written poorly) in XP...

(XP can even detect bad calls in realtime of a running application and correct the call without disrupting the application or allowing it cause harm to other applications or the OS)

Why do I champion MS's OSes in this regard?

Becuase these are feature models that the Open Source world and other OS architects should be considering and benefiting from.

Take Care,
TheNetAvenger

Re:900 pages?

[fdisk3hs]

You probably laugh at car accidents too. Beware, it could happen to YOU.

Is there a cure? Please tell me there is! HELP.

Ok, must go back to doing Unix stuff now.

-Lincoln

Red Hat "X"..?

[Dasigner]

There's a book, Red Hat Linux X: The Complete Reference DVD Edition (no refid ;-), listed on amazon.com supposedly to be released December 3. Despite the cover, one of the authors' homepages (Haddad) just has "Red Hat Linux" and a November 2003 release, so I guess they're fixing or have fixed it.

Who cares, RedHat 9 is dead.

[josevnz]

Saddly this book is focused on a product that has only 5 months of life.

I expect to see books focusing on the Enterprise version soon tough. Hopefully they will talk about the advanced features of the ES family of RedHat and not on the stuff you can find for free on the Linux Documentation project, for example.

Re:Support go Byebye. FALSE.

[Anonymous Coward]

No. You are misinformed.
Fedora Core 1 is the next release, there is no "10".
Fedora Core 1 is not "totally different".
It won't cost you a dime to upgrade to Fedora.
It's free as in beer and as in speech.
Nobody is forcing anyone to do anything.

If you do not want to upgrade, there are repositories that carry updated packages for really old Red Hat versions (check out Dag Wieer's repo for example, he even has 6.2 packages, GPG-signed and everything, http://dag.wieers.com/apt/ )

"What's wrong with apropos, man and info"

[metamatic]

Well, for starters RedHat and SuSE don't document half their stuff. Try typing man yast2 on a SuSE system, or man redhat-config-network on a RedHat system.

you better shut up

[Anonymous Coward]

or her 500,000 children are going to kick you fucking ass... i mean fscking

Mastering RH9 as simple Desktop for Mom

[wardk]

I am writing this from Redhat 9. I use this box for one simple task. Web browsing. that's it. I did a simple user install, haven't tried anything my mom or other general users could not do.

In order to properly navigate the internet from this RedHat 9 box, I need only mozilla and just one extra program...terminal.

terminal is for killing hung mozilla sessions, I have to do this daily.

ready for desktop? depends on your definition of "ready". I know my mom would have no idea how to handle a stuck browser. I can imagine the phone call...ok, open a terminal session..click the red hat, then click system tools...then click terminal... ...now at the mom@fubarLinux Mom] prompt type ps -u mom, see the name mozilla-bin? no? ok click the scroll bar up....see it? yes! (whew) what is the number on the far left of that line...5465, ok now type kill 5465. ok, now click the netscape icon again. ok, talk to you again tomorrow.

if mozilla can stand tall though this paragraph I may actually be able to po

Re:Mastering RH9 as simple Desktop for Mom

[paulbd]

% killall mozilla

or

% killall mozilla-bin

ymmv. mozilla has never hung on me since about 1.0.3

Re:Mastering RH9 as simple Desktop for Mom

[swordgeek]

Hmm. Which version of Mozilla are you using?

While I don't use Linux for the desktop, I use the 1.4 and 1.5 releases of mozilla on various machines (Windows 98/2000/NT/XP, Solaris 8/9) and find them rock solid stable. Prior to 1.4, I was killing mozilla daily.

Now I have to ask--does Linux (RH or other) have a 'pkill' command? If so, then killing a hung process on Linux is no worse than through task manager on Windows. Not that this alone will make it ready for the desktop though.

Re:Mastering RH9 as simple Desktop for Mom

[im a fucking coward]

I've run into the same problem, this has something to do with nautilus+mozzila.

To solve it, and upgrade most of the stuff on the boxen more or less automagically:
http://freshrpms.net/apt/

Download and install apt-get for Redhat.

Now, as root:
#apt-get update ...This will take a few minutes depending on your internet connection speed...
#apt-get upgrade mozilla ...Maybe 50 apps will be downloaded, so this takes a little while...
Enter 'Y' to accept the install.

After about 20 minutes, you should be able to run Mozilla without any further problems, and all of your packages will have been upgraded.

Re:Mastering RH9 as simple Desktop for Mom

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla is a good application built on a foundation of rotten code. It's slowly being fixed. Newer versions are generally better than the old ones, but there are still problems, particularly with the Javascript implementation.

As the previous responders have suggested, upgrading may make your life easier.

Re:Mastering RH9 as simple Desktop for Mom

[BenjyD]

Ctrl-Alt-Esc, click on the application that's hung. Generally works for me, IIRC. Not that I've had an application (outside of beta-builds) that's crashed on me in a while.

Re:Mastering RH9 as simple Desktop for Mom

[Anonymous Coward]

Try xps. It is a nice graphical process manager.

That reminds me of back when Netscape 4.XX was common. Several dock applets were available that specialized in killing Netscape. When the browser would freeze, one would simply click on the applet to kill Netcape.

Honestly, however, I find mozilla to be very stable.

MODS: Don't waste your points on this stuff

[zapp]

One of the general rules of moderating, if I remember, is to try to mod up more than you mod down. This guy does have a point. It might not be one you agree with, but some people (myself included) find online resources much more useful than 1000pg books.

I'm sure you can find something better to do with your mod points than mark people as troll :)

It Should be Titled

[Boyceterous]

RedHat - Babylon IX Our last, best chance for support

900 pages...per version??!

[swordgeek]

This is really really silly.

A 900 page book on Unix and Unix-like OSes (Linux, etc.) is probably about right. Hell, Nemeth and co. managed to fit four OSes into a book about that sized.

Now a 900 page book on a single version of a single distribution of Linux is crazy overkill! Have they copied the man pages (oops--info shitty pages) verbatim, or is Linux (between distros and also between versions within a distro) so badly unstandardised and non-static that it needs a book this big, per version/distro/OS?

Re:900 pages...per version??!

[im a fucking coward]

I've perused the 'volume' and you're correct, it is a bit of overkill. But it goes into a huge number of apps that the average user/admin may not be interested in immediately, like pptpd, PHP, etc. but they may find useful as they expand their expertise in the OS.

Also, much of the information would apply to RH 8, or even 7, so it's not really that the information covered is only applicable to RH 9, or even just to RedHat. I imagine that almost any distribution which starts most of the server processes @ init 3 and is capable of using RPM would find a lot of useful information here.

Re:900 pages...per version??!

[IM6100]

I haven't looked, but probably this is one of those books chock full of screen shots of gui tools. You know, with views of each stage along the way and what big friendly button to click, etc. etc.

There's an old rule of thumb about screen shots. If they take up more than ~10% of the total pages, get a better book.

Question about KDE. Gurus thank you!

[Anonymous Coward]

I setup KDE just the way I like it with the plastik theme, and now I want that theme to be the default desktop for every user I create from now on. How do I set it so it does it automatically?

I think it may have something to do with the /etc/skel directory, but I can't figure out how to make my theme and panel size choises default for every user I create. It is a burden to change the desktop for 300 users manually. I searched google but no luck. :-( Any gurus care to help?

Thank you gurus. Much love :-)

Switch to Slackware

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, RH was the worst distro choice I made. Three CD install and then nothing worked except their very nice autoupdate, which is just a demo. No sound, could not properly configure the video. I figure, hey I will try my good friend SLackware and lo and behold, it just works. Feh to Red Hat

Doesn't anyone THINK anymore?

[ScottGant]

I mean, come on. People are making it seem like Redhat is dead or that they're abandoning the product. Like if you install RH9 it's a dead product.

Do we have to spell it out for the ones that choose not to think? RH9 is not dead. If you install it, the upgrades are going through Fedora now. I know this because I "upgraded" to Fedora from RH-9 on one box.

OR you can choose to go the Enterprise route.

Freedom of choice baby!

Why are some people missing this?

Re:Doesn't anyone THINK anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we THINK none of the choices are satisfactory.

Re:Doesn't anyone THINK anymore?

[Vellmont]

RH9 is a dead product now with the release of Fedora. RH is going to drop support of 9 in April 2004. The key word in your statement about Fedora is upGRADE, not update. Unless I'm mistaken, Fedora is only providing a method to upgrade RH9 to Fedora Core 1.

The usefullness of RH9 is that that's what Redhat Enterprise Linux 3.0 is based on. So the book isn't completely worthless, and it's a good start for the writer/publisher to write a book about RHE 3.0. RHE is a long release and supported product (12-18 months between releases, and 5 years of paid updates after release). This makes the documentation for it far more usefull.

Re:Doesn't anyone THINK anymore?

[Arker]

Or we can master it by formatting and re-installing slack. That's how I mastered RH.

No flamebaiting intended, though I know some will take it that way, but really. I'm not the best person to ask about this, as RH alienated me from the start... but presumably there are some people out there that actually liked their product, and RH is going out of their way to make sure that everyone understands that Fedora will not be the same. It sounds like RH-attempts-debian, which is fine I suppose, but I have a feeling the folks that like it will like debian even more.

Re:Doesn't anyone THINK anymore?

[jc42]

People are making it seem like Redhat is dead ...

This isn't just a joke. My wife, who works in a Windows-only medical org (yeah; I know ;-) came home a few days ago asking if I'd heard that RedHat was going out of business. It seems that the people she works with had spent a lot of time discussing this, and were glad that they'd stuck with microsoft so they wouldn't have such a disaster hitting them.

She uses a Mac at home. Lately, she's been taking it to work a lot. She seems to enjoy the looks of greed and envy on the faces of her coworkers. She put together a slide show of photos from our recent vacation, using iPhoto, and her other digital-camera toting friends are all suitably impressed by how slick it looks.

But they now feel sorry for those poor folks who were suckered into buying RedHat. They'll probably be puzzled a year or two from now when they hear that RH is still in business. But they won't worry about it too much, since it'll be below their radar.

OTOH, maybe their management will see through this particular bit of FUD and will suddenly announce a conversion program ...

Will probably work for most recent RH's, ....

[Jerry]

including future versions of Fedora.

Besides the usual Microsofties using the story to blast Linux (which is probably the ONLY reason they frequent /.), and the clowns who can't get work as a standup comedian, the rest of the comments seem on target: Most of what you learn running about any version of Linux will help you when you run other versions.

This could be a VERY good thing

[Gorignak]

The way I look at it is, with the lack of constantly revising the kernel, maybe now they will come out with some standards, an API toolkit, and support for hardware made in the last five years. Yes, that's not completely true about the hardware, but have you tried to install any version of Linux on a new machine and had all the devices work right out of the box. I have access to a large variety of laptops, most of them being Toshiba models, with some Dell, Hitachi, and Compaqs. I gave up after trying to install on 12 different models of laptops. All of them had some problem with graphics, sound, chipsets, controllers, or network interfaces. The manufacturers refer you to the parts makers, the parts makers refer you to XFree or some other linux group, and the linux groups refer you to the manufacturers. It's seems like noone cares if it doesn't work on your machine, you should get a different machine. I've actually been told to write my own drivers if I wanted it to work. Hmmm, Microsoft has never asked me to write drivers before, but of course, they actually work with the parts makers and equipment manufacturers.

Re:This could be a VERY good thing

[im a fucking coward]

Wow, you're kidding right? On the Toshiba Laptop's, it's understandable that if Toshiba isn't interested in developing Linux drivers, there isn't going to be a quick solution to the problem, but I've just installed RH 9 on the latest Dell & Compaq workstations and servers, and not only did RH 9 find all the HW and load all the drivers for the video, NIC, etc., but the IDE RAID drivers were there too. I did have to install the RAID utils, but they worked 'out of the box'. Unfortunately, Win2k supported almost nothing, 2003 did better, but I still had to install the NIC, video, and RAID utils separately. Until Linux becomes a major player on the desktop, (at least %15) don't expect the drivers to be there for laptops. I know it sucks because to anyone used to *nix's, it's massively more useful, but unless the manufacturer specifically advertises Linux compatibility, it's not to be expected.

Re:This could be a VERY good thing

[Gorignak]

Sorry I ranted. It's more a problem with the XFree side of Linux. Unfortunately, I don't think they can keep up with the plethora of hardware out there, and there isn't an alternative (that I know of). Every version of Linux I've ever seen runs the same XFree. I agree with you on the "Until Linux becomes a major player on the desktop" part, they will never get there without a good standard API toolkit and a much more robust XFree.

same price and free shipping

[zontroll]

Referral Link: Amazon has this book for the same price as bn and with free shipping

hear hear

[Anonymous Coward]

but dont expect reasonable thinking around here, this is slashdot. its SO COOL to slam redhat.

Mastering RedHat Linux 9

[ndavidg]

Here's how:

Go to http://www.suse.com . Splurge $35 on Suse 9. Put the sticker on your windshield.

Install Suse 9. Keep your NTFS, as you can resize, mount and read/write without additional software. Log in to Suse. Type Alt+F2. Type "yast2".

That's all you need to configure hardware, software, networking, and windows shares.

Re:MOD THE PARENT REDUNDANT!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, if there were only a way to mod this up as funny without losing the moderation which makes it so...

Or....

[logical1010]

...maybe any book nearing 1000 pages on any OS is probably a regurgitation of man pages, info pages, docs, and in Windows' case, those oh so information rich "help" files. Although I haven't (obviously) read either book, they're probably like most other "computer books". They have some usefull tidbits, with a hell of a lot of filler.

Thanks, but unless I'm taking a course on the OS/language/app/suite/platform/or whatever the hell else these "authors" think is worth a 1000 page book on, I'll stick to my "tried and true problem solving methodology."(tm)

Linux:

1) --help, 2) man, 3) How Tos, 4) Google, 5) IRC, 6) send an email to that majordomo guy, 7) Give up and install something else. 8) Repeat.

Windows:

1) Download it again, 2) Run it,...shit! 3) Download it again, 4) Run it,...fuck! 5) Ask roommate if he's ever had x problem...nope. 6) Give up. Go out, have fun, get drunk, get lucky. Forget about your computer.

Buy a book on it? Spend money for something that's definitely not going to enlighten me with one candela worth of recent info? Not.

Someone in these comments asked "Why write a book on something that will be obsolete in 5 months."

The answer is probably "cause we'll make some money on it (or at least break even) And the author'll get his name on slashdot."

Re:Or....

[pimpinmonk]

Windows: 1) Download it again, 2) Run it,...shit! 3) Download it again, 4) Run it,...fuck! 5) Ask roommate if he's ever had x problem...nope. 6) Give up. Go out, have fun, get drunk, get lucky. Forget about your computer.

That sounds like a much better deal than the Linux way to me...

Re:Or....

[DavittJPotter]

First off, I run Mandrake Linux 9.1 and Windows XP on my main computer, Mandrake 9.2rc2 on a dev station, and RedHat 9 on my firewall computer. Anyway. Your experience is *not* typical for Windows machines, no matter how much the Slashdot FUD engine is churning.

If you're having that many Windows problems, I would suspect incompetence on the part of the user or system administrator. Windows has the same options. User manuals, help files, tech support, web support all exist for Windows programs as well.

Yes, Linux is *sometimes* easier to fix if you fuck up the world. Yes, sometimes the best answer for a Windows problem is "fuck it, rebuild it" rather than dick with it for 6-7 hours because your client doesn't care why - they just need a working computer now, and they borked up the image with some random program they downloaded (yes, I know about how Windows lets anyone install... that's a related tangent, but not the thrust here).

If you're having that many problems with Windows, I would be presumptuous that you may have a great many unknown/offbeat programs installed, or that you've installed/uninstalled many times, leaving cruft in the registry. Yeah, all things that should WORK - but don't. :(

Anyway. Your comparison should be fair, not a regurgitation of the FUD you've read here.

Re:What alternative distributions are most like RH

[cgh4be]

The big difference between RH8 and RH9 is native posix threads library support (NPTL). This breaks some of the binaries from commercial vendors like Oracle and IBM. Usually you can work around this by setting an environment variable:

export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5

Good Luck!

blah

[Anonymous Coward]

I fail to understand exactly why this is here. RH will no longer support v9 at mid next year....so why would I want to spend any money on something like this? I mean, those poor fools who haven't migrated to another distro have less than a year to do so now. I, for one, moved to gentoo as soon as they announced end of life. Not that I disagree with EOL, but I could see the writting on the wall. If you watch "public" companies you can see the patterns of how they treat their customers. Redhat is no longer really in the trenches with us....they are up there with the huge corperations now. Watch your back...they might very well stick a knife in it when you're not paying attention.

Fedora fixed this.

[amorsen]

I haven't had to kill Epiphany in a long time, but with Fedora, the desktop keeps track of whether the application reacts to a close window request. If nothing happens, a prompt will appear, asking whether to kill the application. It works very nicely.

Fedora is logically Red Hat 10

[Nailer]

So this is no different from a Red Hat 8 book. It covers most of Fedora Core apart from the new features, including the new up2date client with um and apt support, GUI bootup, screen res switching tool, OpenOffice 1.1.

That said, I can appreciate that it must indeed suck for the author now that Fedora is having regular 6 month stable releases.

you are mistaken

[Vitriolix]

fedora legacy will provide updates to redhat 7.3 and 9. http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/terminology.h tml

Re:you are mistaken

[DA-MAN]

I've wondered about that too!!

But then again, you have to wonder how long they will provide updates. Fedora's release cycle is four to six months, with 2-3 months of updates after that. I just wonder how long Fedora will continue updates for the older RedHat's.

Re:you are mistaken

[Vitriolix]

its a good question, but since its a community effort now i imagine that it will continue to be supported as long as there is still a large demand.

Re:you are mistaken

[DA-MAN]

So what you are saying is, yeah we'll work on fixes as long as the community creating the fixes feels like it.

Most linux users aren't in the dev community and can't create their own fixes, yet they are the ones that create the demand.

Dear troll

[Nailer]

Please explain how one Open Source project (Fedora) is some how "dumping the user" whereas another (FreeBSD) isn't.

Amazon.com entry...

[Nailer]

"Mastering Red Hat Linux 10" will be a thin, very complete leaflet to Red Hat Linux 10 that will have "Switch to Debian now!" written on it in big blood-red letters.


People who brought this book also purchased "How to be a rabid Slashdot Debian zealot in 24 hours for dumb idiots visually in full color"

Yeah, all you got to do is reinstall everything...

[Ominous Armed Cow]

That's Smart. Wake up. RH just gut shot the argument that open source is immune to vendor lock in. They deserve more scorn than SCO, because they've made everyone who advocated them for business look like idiots.

TCO on RedHat vs. XP as of EOL?

[Ominous Armed Cow]

This isn't about your bedroom box. Fedora is being marketed as a toy that gets updated every few months with no updates for previous releases, only fixes going forward. It's the enterprise product customers who are really getting screwed.

This is about tens of thousands of installs at thousands of *businesses* which *must* be carried out in the next few months in conjunction with a tripling of licensing fees, or a massive migration to a new system (fat chance).

Gee, I'm sure those CIO's who advocated linux are going to look really smart when their RHE implementations require bare metal installs and now cost 3 to 6 times what they did when the deal was struck. Wow, linux is looking much cheaper now doesn't it? What do you suppose the TCO on that prospect looks like?

Let's review:
RedHat is forcing a migration to a new subscription system which is substantially more expensive than its old one. Hmmm, why does this sound so familiar? What happened to a certain famous monopoly which tried the same thing a few months ago? Oh that's right, the customers bolted to... wait for it... Linux (namely RedHat).

But wait-- RedHat's not a monopoly... where's the monopoly power? isn't that like showing up at a gun fight with a pen knife? Oops.

Yeah, they're some real fucking geniuses over there at RH. Watch the pretty company implode.

Re:TCO on RedHat vs. XP as of EOL?

[ScottGant]

How are the Enterprise product customers being screwed? Red Hat Enterprise isn't going anywhere. THAT will be the Red Hat when people talk about Red Hat.

Also, the Enterprise licensing fees are tripling? I didn't hear this. Is this true? If it is, then yes, they're being screwed. But the customers CAN bolt...to another Linux distribution.

Also, Fedora is hardly a toy. And it's not really being marketed since it's not being sold.

But you're pissed...and sometimes it's hard to reason with a pissed person.

They never really made it into the black...

[Ominous Armed Cow]

and I doubt they ever will. pro forma profits aren't real, they're pro forma. RedHat made it into the backroom on the recommendations of the people they just royally fucked over. I don't know why people here can't see that it is the RHEL customers who *really* got screwed with this deal.

no, you dont.

[Vitriolix]

what kind of crack are you smoking to get such an idea?

RH 9 horrors!

[Grummet]

gee, I wonder if they tell you any of this stuff in the book:

1) If you are using pppoe as your internet connection then if you use the redhat version of rp-pppoe that comes with the install you are most likely screwed if you have no previous Linux and/or redhat experience. Why? Because those friendly redhat re-programmers really did a nice job on the setup script.
There is this really *LOVELY* bit in the ifcfg-ppp0 (in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts after you run the adsl-setup in /etc/ppp) file where whoever was responsible for the code that makes the file reversed two important variables (timeout and interval!)
so there is tons of fun to be had while it connects for 20 seconds and reconnects for 20 seconds and re ...

2) Redhat added this "feature" where if there is no default route (DHCP or a set one) then you get to see that address that microsoft likes to set for you too: 169.254.0.0 Man, that floored me the first time it popped up during the debugging of (1) (looked at route -n)
(see http://linux.dbw.org/notes/static-routes.txt)

SO, if you are like me and decided to put redhat 9 on the machine that connects you the rest of the world (which is what most home users are going to do as they usually don't have 4 or 5 computers like some of us *grin*) and you have a pppoe connection - well! - redhat NICELY adds the 169.254 as your default route to whatever NIC has an address SO that after that when ppp0 comes up and tries to set the default route to itself the routing tabled stays wonked OR ppp0 simply does not come up.

It took three days of free time (i.e. normally sleep time) for me to take care of all of that and I work with servers ALL the time.

So:
1) I can see why redhat might say that Linux is not ready for the desktop. It ain't if they can't handle stuff like internet connections. Then again, maybe they were confusing Redhat with Linux. (cause, shit, if I did this on Slack or Deb I would have used the original stuff from roaring penguin!)

2) I hope that this book is aptly titled because there sure as hell better be a section explaining everything I found above. Otherwise the word in the title - "Mastering" - is suspect.

- Jeff -

'man man' and some dusty volumes... (off-topic)

[j.leidner]

I just love my old 5-volume set of HP-UX 9.05 man-pages from the early nineties... :-P

Together with the online man(1) command and O'Reilly's UNIX Power Tools and Essential System Administration, that's about what you need. If you don't want to buy read the latter, get your system administrator to do it, which even saves you loads of time...

not quite

[Vitriolix]

no, i would imagine that the Fedora Linux Project will be supporting 7.3 and 9 as long as they think its helpful, which of course depends on how many people continue to use them.

Re:not quite

[DA-MAN]

If they were doing this "as long as they think its helpful", then why would they put a policy to release a new distro every 4 - 6 mo and eol each one shortly after...

Get my drift? It's all about resource and time. They aren't even doing RedHat 8.0 and I'm sure there are a lot of people using RedHat 8.0. That's helpful but they aren't doing it!

There is no way of knowing how long Fedora will continue to release updates.

Re:not quite

[Vitriolix]

well, the fact that fedora plans to continue support for *7.3* should give you an idea of their idea of longevity. i doubt significant numbers of people are running redhat 8, which is why they arent supporting it.