RedHat 7.3 beta (skipjack) is out

Just saw in Red Hat's FTP's - Redhat 7.3 (codename:skipjack) is available for download. There aren't lots of changes there, but you'll find that RedHat 7.3 comes with KDE 3.0 (rc3 is on this beta), you'll need to remove the Ximian Gnome before upgrade, and in general - read the release notes before testing this release. As always, don't try it on your main Linux partition, and use the mirrors. Annoucment is here (thanks to Linux Weekly News)

Re:X.3 ??

[dytin]

Actually, in the release notes, it says that this distribution is not 7.3, but actually 7.2.92

Re:size=ease of use

[WildBeast]

Sure but RedHat's market isn't the desktop. It's all about the server side for them. If RedHat was targeting the desktop, there CEO wouldn't have said that Linux will not make it on the desktop.

You want a desktop distribution? Try Mandrake. A little bloated but pretty good.

Will the essentials be fixed?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if the basic tools are OK in this distribution. I've had to recompile stuff from RH6.2 to 7.2 because there has been so much broken in 7.x.

Take grep for example - don't you think this is essential? Try this:

Put some test text with scandinavic letters into text file, and try to grep it:
grep -i "[Ä]" test.txt

Hey presto - core dump. (At least this was the case with RH71)

grep -i "[dhjklmnprstv][aeiouyÄÖ][dhjklmnprstv]ai" test.txt

And nothing happens even if you would have text that doesn't match.

I can live with it, but it makes one rather pissed when trying to do some scripting.

And lets not forget the dhcpd, which simply doesn't seem to fire up correctly when started for one network interface in machine where there is many. Luckily dhcpd from rh62 works like charm.

Where is CUPS?

[lessthan0]

I stopped using Red Hat circa 7.1 because of their very broken print system. I checked the CHANGELOG and found no reference to CUPS. Why the hell don't they start including CUPS like every other major distro? It is the best print system out there for *nix IMHO.

Oh well, life is good with SuSE so that's where I'll stay.

gcc3?

[nd]

Anyone else notice that there are no longer gcc3 packages included (as with RH 7.2, although it was optional).

Skipjack includes only an updated version of 2.96.

Re:Will the essentials be fixed?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the man page:

BUGS
Email bug reports to [e-mail]. Be sure to
include the word "grep" somewhere in the "Subject:" field.

Large repetition counts in the {m,n} construct may cause
grep to use lots of memory. In addition, certain other
obscure regular expressions require exponential time and
space, and may cause grep to run out of memory.

Backreferences are very slow, and may require exponential
time.

Have you mailed in your bugs?
Or better still - try to fix it yourself.

Re:Where is CUPS?

[nconway]

From the release notes linked to in the article:

Currently, Red Hat Linux offers Sendmail and Postfix as two Mail Transport Agent (MTA) alternatives. For print daemon alternatives, the choices are LPRng and CUPS. The configurations for LPRng and CUPS are completely separate. If you switch from one printing system to another, you will have to reconfigure your printers.

Re:Where is CUPS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh. Cups is there. Maybe not default, but the rpms are available:

cups-1.1.14-10.i386.rpm [redhat.com]

cups-devel-1.1.14-10.i386.rpm [redhat.com]

cups-drivers-1.1-0.20020313.1.i386.rpm [redhat.com]

cups-drivers-hpijs-1.1-0.20020313.1.i386.rpm [redhat.com]

cups-drivers-pnm2ppa-1.1-0.20020313.1.i386.rpm [redhat.com]

cups-libs-1.1.14-10.i386.rpm [redhat.com]

Re:Linuxconf

[bolmyn]

I wonder if anybody still cares for browsing through second CD of RH 7.x?
Linuxconf is alive and kicking and in spite of some comments
it hardly breaks anything. Install gnome-linuxconf and
you have quite a nice GUI admin interface.

But hey, webmin is great too! :-)

Re:X.3 ??

[bero-rh]

First of all, the article is bogus, we don't preannounce releases, the next release might be called 7.3, 8.0, 15.1, Linux XP or anything else.

Second, there's no strict rule on how many versions of a major release we do.
The major number is determined by changes in binary compatibility, so it will usually be increased when switching to a major new glibc or a binary incompatible gcc.

Re:Will the essentials be fixed?

[bero-rh]

I can't reproduce this on any of our boxes, including 7.1, 7.2 and current beta installations.

A backtrace submitted to Bugzilla [redhat.com] helps getting things fixed - how are we supposed to fix something we don't even know breaks for you? (Chances are this is a very weird local setup problem)

Re:How to remove Ximian Gnome ?

[matze235]

rpm -qa|grep ximian|rpm -e --force --nodeps didn't test it..

Re:How do I upgrade?

[bero-rh]

You boot in normal install mode and then select "Upgrade" when it prompts you for installation type.

The choice has been moved from the boot loader to the {T,G}UI.

Re:Distro size

[HeUnique]

it's actually 3 ISO's - the 3rd is half CD.

The rest ISO's are source code for the distribution.

Re:Distro size

[bero-rh]

The 4th and 5th CDs are source RPMs, so if you just want to give it a test run without looking at the code, you won't need them.

Re:X.X.XX ??

[bero-rh]

Usually, X.X is a release, and X.X.XX is a beta.

Re:I can't help but wonder...

[bero-rh]

It isn't.
It doesn't work the "Oh, we need to push a new release out of the door, let's call the current rawhide a beta!" way.

There is a QA cycle even for beta releases to make sure people who aren't asking for it (by using rawhide) aren't getting completely broken stuff.

Re:No Webmin!

[bero-rh]

What they should include instead is Webmin

Not in the base OS.
Webmin is a nice, user friendly tool, but it's code is horrible (at least to people who don't breathe perl instead of air ;) ) and we usually don't ship stuff we can't support well.

Webmin is included on the almost-unsupported extra CD found in European boxes (bandwidth is very expensive in most European countries, so including another CD with stuff you could just download makes sense in the European box).

Re:old Gnome included

[bero-rh]

Knowing RedHat, I would expect them to put the development version [of gnome 2.0] in the final release

That's certainly not going to happen. We don't do major upgrades to an important part of the distribution after a beta, and if you compare any beta versions of RHL with their subsequent release version, you'll notice we never did.

Re:KDE 3.0 rc3

[thue]

on Mandrakeforum [mandrakeforum.com] tom says: Update Mar 20, 2002: It looks like KDE 3.0 RC2 is not included in Mandrake Linux 8.2. My apologies for any confusion my contrary statement in this article might have caused.

Re:Should delay 8.0

[Micah]

The things you mention don't have much to do with whether or not they upgrade the major number.

I agree it's good they're (apparently) doing a point release instead of 8.0, but for different reasons:

* GCC 3.1 isn't yet ready, but will be within a few months
* ditto glibc 2.3

Had they released 8.0 with the current gcc 2.96 and glibc 2.2, we'd likely be stuck with them for another couple years!

As it is, an 8.0 with those things, along with a new binary compatibility standard that should LAST a while, should be out this summer or early fall. It's win-win.

As for what you mentioned, KDE 3.0 *is* in this release. They upgraded from KDE 1.x to 2.x in Red Hat 7.1, so they can do that kind of thing in minor releases. Same with Mozilla and Gnome. Major releases are only for binary compatibility changes.

Re:Yes I know.

[bero-rh]

Try do that with Redhat

You need only one floppy to do a Red Hat ftp install. 8)

Get the image
here [redhat.com], boot it, and point the installer at ftp.redhat.com /pub/redhat/linux/beta/skipjack/en/ os/i386/

Re:Should delay 8.0

[bero-rh]

Unless some miracle happens and KDE 3.0 is delayed by several weeks even though it works,
the released version will have KDE 3.0 final.

A beta release doesn't mean we don't upgrade anything... It just (usually) means we won't do any major upgrades (if KDE 2.2.2 were in the beta, seeing 3.0 in the final would be extremely unlikely).

Re:gcc3?

[bero-rh]

The gcc3 packages are likely to return for the final, once a final decision on 3.0.4 vs 3.1 has been made.

Re:Where is CUPS?

[bero-rh]

Are there any concrete benefits [of CUPS]?

Yes. Off the top of my head:

• Support IPP (Internet Printing Protocol) -> autodetection of network printers
• Support for PPD files -> better out-of-the-box support for many printers
• Support for tray selection and other advanced features LPRng supports only through ugly hacks
• Unified way for applications to get a list of available printers etc (libcups) - with lpr/LPRng, every application needs to write its own printcap parser
• Better supported by KDE

Re:What about zlib

[bero-rh]

Sure, the zlib stuff has been fixed in *whatever the release will be called*.

Re:How is their KDE 3 compiled?

[bero-rh]

Support for Cups?

Yes

Kamera support seems to be compiled in

It is. If you have the equipment, please give it a try.
I've done the port of Kamera from the gphoto 2.0beta3 API to the gphoto 2.0final API, and I don't have the hardware to run any tests other than the Microsoftish "it compiles, therefore it works".

What about cdparanoia/lame and ogg bindings for the
AudioCD IOSlave?

cdparanoia and ogg are built in, lame isn't because it's illegal (patent issues - if you want the support in, write to your government explaining why software patents are evil).

Re:What? No ISOs on RHN? Grrr.....

[bero-rh]

You misunderstood me. This is a beta for *whatever the next release will be called* (look at the official announcement. We don't preannounce version numbers.)

Re:working 2.4 kernel?

[bero-rh]

The kernel is 2.4.18+patches, so if 2.4.x started to work for you in 2.4.15, you should be ok.

We haven't had any problems with the 2.4.9 errata kernel for 7.2, though.

Re:working 2.4 kernel?

[the eric conspiracy]

Hmmm - we are running a server rack with Dell 2550 poweredges, Compaq DM360 + DM 370 a HP LH with internal RAID and a EMC Celera supplying 2TB of NFS mounts on RH 7.2/ 2.4.9 without a burp.

Dod you just download a vanilla 2.4 kernel, or did you use something from RedHat? The -ac series is generally more stable than the stuff you get from kernel.org.

Re:Where is CUPS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. PPD are a standard.

Re:What? No ISOs on RHN? Grrr.....

[turnerjh]

Due to popular demand, Skipjack ISOs are also available on Red Hat Network, just as other ISOs are (ie, subject to the same restrictions, meaning Paid Basic service or higher).

The URL is:
https://rhn.redhat.com/network/channel/download_is os.pxt [redhat.com]

Sorry for the delay, folks. Enjoy the beta!

The next official release of Red Hat Linux will also be made available vial the above page on the day of release, under the same terms.

Re:gcc 3.x

[johnnyb]

I don't understand what this 'binary incompatibility' is. Does this mean .solibs will need to be replaced?

*********

You are thinking C, but this is mostly in regard to C++. C++ does really nasty things to class/function/method names when it compiles. And, on top of that, there's no standard for it. Thus, in almost every release, GCC breaks binary C++ compatibility. I don't see why anyone even tries to dynamically link C++ - just statically link all C++ parts. However, others disagree.

Re:Does Debian do source tarballs?

[victwenty]

I agree completely. Can dpkg do anything like the "tar+spec" for source packages? It would be nice if people could distribute a single tarball and keep the RPM, DPKG, and hand-compile fans all happy.

Yes, it's contained in a debian directory under the top level which contains several files which together are the equivilant to an rpm spec. With that in place, you just run "dpkg-buildpackage -r fakeroot" (assuming you aren't root, which you generally shouldn't be for this) from the top level directory. In fact, if you "apt-get source package", you get a tarball of the debian version of the source, ready to package.

Re:6.2 was the last clean release (for me, at leas

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Agreed, and its a big deal to numerical types who use athlons. Our chem. dept. put together a cluster of dual 1.2 ghz athlon boards. Ran a test case using sandia labs MPQC (Massively Parallel Quantum Computing, GPLed by the way :-), comparing it to results from the prof.s single cpu 800 mhz athlon. The 800 mhz athlon kicked ass on the dual 1.2 ghz, until we researched the problems with later gcc and athlons, downloaded an older compiler, and recompiled MPQC. Then it rocked! Interested people might google for ATLAS (or take the ATLAS link after googling LAPACK).

The post I am replying to will destroy your system

[Nailer]

This will delete any important system components installed / updated by Ximian, and is likely to break your system. Please moderate it down if possible.

The simplest way to use 7.2.92 is to upgrade, then reinstall Ximian GNOME like it says.

If you did want to get rid of Ximian GNOME, do it with apt-get, avaliable from freshrpms.net. This will make sure your system is always in a working state during the deinstallation process

Re:Open Office: it'd be great to include it.

[bero-rh]

OpenOffice will be included when it's ready.
This means among other things that it must build without relying on proprietary crap like Sun JDK, and the resulting binaries must work.

We're trying to get it to build with gcj for the Java parts, but that doesn't work yet. No promises or estimates.