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Red Hat Releases Version 6.1
RaymondInFinland writes "Red Hat 6.1 appeared on ftp.redhat.com Only a i386 version but the
release also comes as an ISO image. " Its not supposed to be official for a bit yet, and my guess is that it'll be pretty rocky
downloading for a bit, but it is there.
f tp://ftp.ou.edu/mirrors/linux/redhat/redhat-6.1/i3 86/doc/rhinst/figs/cd-rom-gui/
The trick is that any mirror of the actual distro. (an not just the iso file) will have this directory of images of the installer. They are from the installation manual.
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
(Disclaimer: I've had most of my Linux experience with RedHat, so most of my comments about my usage apply to that.)
I've seen a lot of talk about "make a server-only distribution." That's something I've been thinking about a lot lately.
Today, pretty much every Linux distribution uses the same "super duty" philosophy: put every package known to man on the user's computer, start the same set of services, and there you go. Instant server. Instant workstation. Instant anything, Instant everything.
This is troubling to me. I know that for my server installation, I don't WANT X, I don't want Netscape, I don't want GNOME or KDE or any of that other client-oriented, workstation stuff installed. It just wastes space sitting on my hard drive. However, Redhat's server install is the biggest of the 3 options, throwing EVERYTHING on the drive, leaving me with perhaps 300 megabytes of crap I just don't need. I even deselected X, and I still got some of the X11 packages installed!
So why don't distribution makers make server oriented distributions and workstation oriented ones, keeping the 2 separate? Simple. Linux users are stubborn people, perhaps the most stubborn of any in the industry. CUPS comes out, and there is lots of talk about how the current system works fine, we don't need a new system. Berlin is in development, but a mere mention of that brings up the X zealots, ready to kill anyting anywhere close to being modern. About the only thing Linux users will upgrade for is the kernel, and only because it's chic to run Linus' latest and greatest. The current set of Linux users is a rather small subset of all the types of users out there. Mom doesn't need Apache, wu-ftpd, or nfs. Mom just needs StarOffice, X, GNOME/KDE/wtahever, and Netscape. Why force it on her?
The fact is, separating workstations and servers makes a whole lot of sense. A lot of the security holes you see in servers come from client-oriented apps (Some of the GNOME bugs come to mind.) Similarly, for machines that only run workstation stuff, server stuff causes problems (wu-ftpd is an excellent example here). Why install stuff that won't be used?
I wish distribution makers would realize this. The world doesn't need 50 distributions that can do it all; how about one that does one thing really, really well? It seems to me that it would make a lot more sense.
Just think about it...a lean distribution, optimized to do what it does well. Now that would be something.
Not really. I mean this *is* a .1 release. nothing major. Basically this is just a "service pack" release, or as our arch enemy at Redmond calls it, the "Second Edition".
i would have hoped redhat 6.1 would have waited until Xfree86 4 or something a lil more worth the version # change would have come out..Yes, but Linux 2.4 and Xfree86 4 are pretty radical changes. Don't you think that should get a version 7 number? That won't be for a few months yet anyways. Certainly way to long to wait to upgrade something that was released even longer ago.
-Brent--
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As for this release just being an update, that if for the most part true. The main focus of this release was the introduction of the graphical installer. This is and excellent installer, easier than previous Redhat installs and far easier than other Linux distros and Windows installers. (My roommate did extensive testing of it in lorax) Kudos to Matt Wilson for his excellent work.
As for the announcement of this on /. before it was officially released by Redhat, I think a huge mistake was made. /. often warns that downloads may be rocky for awhile when it reports on a new distro release or a new kernel, but part of the reason that this is true is that the mirrors don't have time to get it before /. users start pounding it. I think many of us dislike the "first post" mentality that clouds useful discussion on /. and we should be fed up with /. following the same model for news when doing so is inappropriate.
--
Gregory J. Barlow
fight bloat. use blackbox.
Gregory J. Barlow
fight bloat. use blackbox.
I really wish Red Hat would open up their development process a bit. Or, at least tell us some of their plans. I realize they don't like to pre-announce features and be accused of vaporware, but it would be nice to know what their thinking is in terms of when packages get updated and when they don't. Or when/why major version numbers increase.
I also know Red Hat is trying to strattle the line between stability for servers and functionality for users, so maybe it's time for two development tracks? One that has a smaller, with a core set of sever-type packages and an server-centric installer. This distribution would get the current treatment of quarterly, well tested updates, and emergency security patches.
But then there should also be a second distribution that is more of a "rolling release" system that maybe gets a bi-weekly set of updates. I think this second distribution is needed to keep up with the active development in the area of user applications.
Both packages would have a lot of overlap, in fact the RPMS should generally usable on either distribution. But for example, we don't need GIMP and the latest version of XBill on servers, but it might be nice to have newer version of GNOME for the desktop distribution since there is such a big difference in the software in four months.
I realize this may not be the ideal way of doing things, but we need to keep two things in mind:
1) Linux is still under heavy development on the client end. In one month, Linux has gnoe from completely unusable on my brand new laptop to almost fully functional thanks to new releases of software. We need this kind of functinoality in the biggest distribution.
2) Microsoft has shown what kind of a mess you can get into when you try to maintain everything from the consumer-level system all the way up to the highets end server-level systems all in one bundle. You get a compromise that doesn't work well for either.
So, at least for another couple years while Linux is in such constant development, wouldn't it make sense to treat Linux distributions a bit differently?
But: They left their FTP servers open for public downloads of the RH6.1, which does not make sense for me (they have a separate host rh-mirror.redhat.com for mirrors downloading).
Does anybody have an explanation for this?
-Yenya
-Yenya
--
While Linux is larger than Emacs, at least Linux has the excuse that it has to be. --Linus
I've been beating pretty hard on the 6.1 beta (lorax) since it's release.
:) :)
To say that at first there weren't any bugs would be a lie of course, but I've seen _great_ leaps ahead over the course of it. At the beginning, it took some work to get it to work.
But, through lots of beta testing, and lots of late night hacking by Matt Wilson, it's now to the point that it's the easiest installer I've seen. Much easier than Caldera's graphical, in large part, because it gives you a lot more freedom in the install. The GUI install works for CDROM installs, NFS installs, and (untested, but should work I believe) hard drive installs. If the GUI installer doesn't work for you (or you don't want it even), never fear. There's still a text-based installer for low-ram machines, and ftp or http installs.
Other nice neat things in 6.1 (for those wondering)
- kudzu: kudzu does hardware detection and will start the appropriate configuration tool. Very neat
- an interactive startup option (disable-able) ala choose what you want to start during startup for Windows 9x and DOS; so for when you screw up your sendmail config, you can still start without taking ages
- up2date: service to give access to a priority server upon registration and then will give you the new rpms in updates and give you the opportunity to install them, just download them, few other options
- fsck has a progress bar
- rp3: an easy-to-use ppp configuration tool. I haven't actually completely tested this one being on ethernet and all, but it appeared to work
- XFree 3.3.5, 2.2.12, GNOME 1.0.40 stuff (newest when it mastered...), KDE 1.1.2, glibc 2.1.2
Think that's most of the good interesting stuff. As I said, it's shaping up to be _really_ solid from what I can tell.
--
Jeremy Katz