Red Hat 7.3 Coming Along

EyesWideOpen writes "I just read a review of a beta version of Red Hat 7.3 (code named Skipjack) over at Linux Journal. It's not the most complete review (being a little KDE heavy and GNOME shy, as well as focusing mainly on the install and desktop components) but it's a decent read. From the article: '...if you are a desktop user like me and you like the latest software, you will be hard pressed to find a more complete and usable piece of software...'. If you're feeling adventurous you can download the latest beta from a Red Hat mirror site."

full text

[trollercoaster]

Red Hat 7.3 beta: A Product Review
Date: Monday, April 15, 2002
Topic: Product Reviews

New beta distribution includes many of the recent releases from KDE, XFree86, Mozilla and other projects, making it easy, stable and powerful on your desktop.

The Linux community has remained active, developing improved software, and the desktop environment also continues to improve. Both the KDE and GNOME projects have added functionality, improved performance and made the desktop environment more fun and usable. The XFree86 project has continued to improve hardware support. The overall appearance, quality and selection of fonts continues to improve.

Red Hat has been working to incorporate many of these improvements into their next release of software. While Red Hat is probably best known for their Linux server systems, their desktop systems have undergone considerable improvement. Their latest development effort, code named "Skipjack", incorporates a number of these improvements.

My personal interest in Skipjack arose mainly because this release includes a test version of KDE 2.99, which is really KDE 3.0 Release Candidate 3. I was so excited about this release because there have been claims of great performance improvements. In fact, the final version of KDE 3.0 was announced on April 3.

So, how well does Skipjack, Red Hat 7.3 Beta Release 2, meet my expectations? Very well, indeed.

I installed Red Hat 7.2 on my Dell Dimension 4100 desktop computer a few weeks ago. Then I ordered a copy of Skipjack from Tech Broker. The unsupported download release came in a five CD package. Tech Broker CDs usually cost $4 per CD, so ordering Red Hat's Skipjack test release from Tech Broker cost $20. (You can download Skipjack during the testing period from ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/beta/skipjack.) I decided to install Skipjack as an update to the 7.2 distribution to see how well that would work.

I was very impressed with the results. It took between 30 and 40 minutes to complete the installation. Most of that time was spent detecting the existing software and determining which packages needed to be upgraded. On my system, I used the Workstation configuration (Red Hat installations provide a choice of Workstation, Server or Custom package selections). In addition to the Workstation packaging category, I also selected the option to modify the selection group and install any other software that I'm interested in. (I tend to install extra text editors, web browsers, and e-mail programs; these are the tools that interest me most).

The installation was flawless. Every menu was clear and concise. Every screen provided an explanation of the choices to make, so it is not even necessary to read a manual in order to install the software (if you are at least somewhat familiar with software installations). The appearance of the Red Hat software installation program is familiar; if anything, the graphics, explanations on each screen and mechanics of performing the installation are more streamlined than ever.

For those who have not installed or upgraded Red Hat software in a while, GRUB is now the default boot loader, though LILO remains available. The default GRUB boot loader now offers optional password security. If the system you're using is located in a public place where you have a need to secure the system loading process, this is a much-needed improvement (though it does not address the issue of physical system security, nor does it prevent someone from booting the system from a floppy disk). Still, this touch is a good idea, and it's not found on many other Linux distributions.

What about the desktop? I mentioned that I was interested in trying out KDE. How well does it work? It is incredible! I'd heard that there might be as much as a 40% improvement in the overall memory usage and performance of KDE 3.0 over KDE 2.2.2. While I did not confirm those numbers, I can attest that the Skipjack implementation of KDE is both solid and fast.

The Konqueror file manager and web browser and the KMail e-mail application are two core KDE applications, and like the KDE infrastructure, they have undergone appearance, functionality and performance improvements. Konqueror has much improved JavaScript support, major improvements in DHTML capability and fast loading times, to the point that Konqueror is worth considering as my main web browser.

KMail is KDE's full-featured and user-friendly e-mail client and supports both the popular IMAP and POP3 mail standards. Users can have multiple accounts and multiple identities. (Previous versions allowed multiple accounts to a limited degree, allowing you to read from multiple POP3 and IMAP4 servers but not allowing you to send to multiple SMTP destinations). Its address book is based on the vCard address book standard and is shared with the rest of KDE.

I don't personally use all of the KDE applications and tools, but it bears mentioning that the Personal Information Management (PIM) tools provided in KDE have also undergone considerable improvement. The list of PIM components in the Skipjack implementation of KDE 3.0 include:

* KMail, the e-mail client
* KAddressBook, an address book viewer/frontend for the K Desktop Environment
* KOrganizer, the calendar and scheduling program for the K Desktop Environment
* KPilot, a replacement for the Palm Desktop software from Palm Inc, which makes your Palm/Palm Pilot/Visor computer capable of exchanging information with your Linux-powered computer
* Kandy, a tool to provide synchronization of phonebook, organizer and other data on your mobile phone with the data stored on the desktop
* KArm, a tool that tracks time spent on various tasks. It is useful for tracking hours to be billed to different clients or to find out what percentage of your day is spent playing Doom or reading Slashdot.
* KNotes, a small tool to scribble down some notes
* KAlarm, a quick way of setting up personal alarm/reminder messages. The messages pop up on the screen at the time you specify.

In addition to the core desktop functionality and PIM capabilities outlined above, KDE also has a growing office suite called KOffice.

The following parts of the KOffice suite are being developed:

* KWord, a frame-based word processor capable of professional standard documents
* KSpread, a powerful spreadsheet application
* KPresenter, a full-featured presentation program
* Kivio, a Visio-style flowcharting application
* Kontour,a vector drawing application
* Krita, a raster-based image manipulation program like The GIMP or Adobe Photoshop
* Kugar, a tool for generating business quality reports
* KChart, an integrated graph and chart drawing tool

I don't use the KOffice suite often, but I can tell you that KWord is quite capable of reading basic Word documents. Advanced features, such as embedding Active X controls, cannot be handled by the KOffice tools, but in fairness, few if any competing office suites can accurately render all of the features found in Microsoft's latest arsenal of office applications. IF you're looking for a functional office suite that is bundled with a system, however, this suite is worth a look.

So far, I've mentioned that Skipjack installs effortlessly, contains a new boot loader that works well and has security improvements, incorporates most of what will be found in the final KDE 3.0 desktop and runs well. What about the other features?

Another thing I use my system for frequently is web browsing. Red Hat delivers here, too. As part of the available software, Red Hat includes not only the browsers that are integral components of the desktop managers, it also includes recent releases of the Netscape and Mozilla suites. You can choose between the "old style" version 4 Netscape browser, Netscape Communicator 4.79 and the most current release of the Mozilla browser, 0.99. Both browsers have web browser and e-mail client components.

Speaking of browsers, I have to mention the Galeon Web browser, which is included in the Skipjack release as part of the GNOME desktop environment. While Galeon requires both Mozilla and GNOME libraries in order to function, other than the obvious disk overhead, Galeon is a very effective and efficient web browser. Skipjack comes with the newest and best version of Galeon I've seen yet, version 1.2.0. Galeon is arguably one of the leading standards compliant web browsers currently available. So Skipjack gets my nod for including a very up-to-date and usable version of Galeon.

What about GNOME, the default desktop environment included in Red Hat distributions? The Skipjack release, as far as I can tell, does not incorporate any upcoming test releases of GNOME software. The good news, however, is that the Nautilus File Manager, which is a core component of the overall GNOME, seems more stable than I've seen in the past. Perhaps this is because the image rendering engine used with Nautilus is the Gecko engine that's part of the latest release of Mozilla. Since Mozilla 0.99 comes with the Skipjack release, Nautilus benefits from recent, significant improvements in Mozilla's functionality and reliability.

I have not touched on any of the server features found in Red Hat; that is beyond the scope of this review. During the installation, however, I did notice that Red Hat has continued to work on integrity, security and stability issues, and it really shows. Whether Red Hat decides to produce this software as an incremental update to it's existing release and calls the next release 7.3, or if they decide to create a new major release, from my perspective as a desktop user this is without question their best release ever. Even in beta form, it is solid.

I wrote this article using the Gvim text editor. I wrote the first part of the article while running the desktop using KDE, and I wrote the second part using GNOME. I tried out Konqueror, Konsole, KWord, Vim/Gvim, Netscape, Mozilla, Galeon, Nautilus, GNU Emacs, XEmacs, NEdit and GNOME Terminal, and I experimented with the GRUB boot loader. During my testing (while admittedly not exhaustive but representative of the kinds of daily tasks I perform) I did not encounter a single application or system failure. There probably are still some bugs out there, but this is great beta software, among the best that I've ever seen from anyone.

Was it worthwhile to run this release? Absolutely. While Red Hat explicitly recommends not running beta software in a production environment, if you are a desktop user like me and you like the latest software, you will be hard pressed to find a more complete and usable piece of software (at least until the other vendors incorporate this software into their release).

Beta Cycle

[NewbieSpaz]

Skipjack is actually in its 2nd iteration, the first was also called Skipjack. If you do download it, make sure to use up2date, the RedHat Network's updating tool. It's a free registration for the beta channel.

Re:Why 7.3?

[NewbieSpaz]

7.3, if it is called that, doesn't break binary compatibility like the way jumping to the next x.0 release does. 8.0 will probably use gcc3 and other newer components, and it will break compatibility with the 7.x series...

Re:Downloading....

[popoutman]

Personally I love the mirror site http://mirror.ac.uk/ [mirror.ac.uk]
From where I connect to net (college connection to heanet to janet) this one just rocks for availability of mirrors, and speed of updates to the site. It should be the fastest site for anyone in Ireland or the UK.

http://www.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.redhat.com/pub/r edhat/linux/beta/skipjack/en/ [mirror.ac.uk]

Re:Is gcc still "2.96" ?

[NewbieSpaz]

read this: http://www.bero.org/gcc296.html [bero.org]
DiscaimerL Bero works for Redhat, so you might not believe him either... ;)

Re:Why 7.3?

[RunzWithScissors]

Red Hat wanted to release a new version of their product in Spring, but the features that the developers thought would be major enhancements would/could not be ready in time. So, instead of going to 8.0 (A major version number with very few new major features) Red Hat decided to go to 7.3. Most of the same features as the other 7.x line, of course, the latest versions of packages; with some minor new stuff. That's why 7.3 not 8.0. Not significant enough change in the distro to warrent a Major version change.

I've noticed lots of small things though. Mostly the fact that the latest packages fix a lot of the annoying, uh, undocumented features, of 7.2.

-Runz

Re:If you like the desktop...

[glwtta]

eh, I used to do exactly that (RedHat for servers, Mandrake for desktop, I use LFS for desktop now) and I can't say there that much of a difference. I'd say it's more of a personal taste thing, than "this distro is right for this applications, and this one for this!" - that's about as much FUD as that whole "linux isn't ready for the desktop" thing.

Incidently, something I really liked about Mandrake was that it allowed you to install with ReiserFS by default, something I would definitely appreciate on RedHat, when used for things like webservers and CVS servers (for file servers I'm just fine with ext3 though)

eh, just my .02

slashdotted, heres the cached copy on google

[tanveer1979]

hey
sites down already! Finally linuxjournal RIP!! searched for google cached copy.
its is this [216.239.35.100].
happy reading!

Re:stable compiler

[teg]

The beta (why did this hit slashdot now? It was released weeks ago...) contains the currently most stable version of gcc.

Re:7.3 Final?

[ZaMoose]

Beta release mailing list has gone rather "developer-silent" as of late, usually signalling the imminence of a release. Also, there have been two recent massive package upgrades to Skipjack 2 with little to no public note of such, which is another indicator of release imminence.

Official release calendars would suggest an early June release; circumstances being what they are (and according to some traffic on the beta release mailing list) a mid-May release might end up being the actual case.

Re:stable compiler

[teg]

kgcc (which hasn't been used for the compiler since RHL 7... the kernel has since had that bug fixed) is egcs 1.1.2. We don't use gcc 2.95.x - next compiler (next major series) will be whatever is best (features, stability) at the time (3.1.1, perhaps)

3 disks of sheer joy.....

[CDWert]

Well I touhgt I would DL and play with it.

So I , as I have done for years downloaded disk 1 and started to install, it asked for 2, I dl and burned it, put it in, and then, and this is a first, It asked for 3.

I can figure out for the life of me what the he** takes up 3 disks.

But if you are going to do anything other than a MINIMAL install do yourself a favor, download and burn all 3 Disks, you will need em.

Another thing I found interesting , albeit a pain since Ive never had a problem, is the CD integrity check, although you can bypass it.

Why dosent RedHat partner with Ximian and put the whole jobber together with the exchange connector and Ximian Gnome in a nice premium edition, hell I'd buy it....But then again I bought an Apple Lisa when they were new.....

Re:Downloading....

[popoutman]

sorry.. seems that the guys running mirror.ac.uk are a bit behind in the rsync schedule.. (still on 7.2.92).
Here is a resonably close mirror [ftp.free.fr] that has 7.2.93 on it.

Code name: Skipjack or Hampton?

[gaj]

I know that 7.3 has been called Skipjack all along during development, but I've recently been hearing the name Hampton thrown around. Anybody able to lend a clue here? Obviously not very important, but I'm amused by things like this.

Re:If you like the desktop...

[GrenDel Fuego]

The swapping problem is a kernel issue. If you don't mind compiling your own kernel, you can most likely solve the swapping issue, and then just choose your distribution based on the other features that it includes.

I would suggest trying either the later -ac releases which include the rmap vm system, or the stock kernel with the -aa patches.

Redhat 7.2 uses the older Rik Van Riel VM system (unless their later updates started using the newer rmap, but i don't believe so). I'm not sure about Mandrake, but it's probably using the stock kernel's VM system. Someone else may be able to provide more information about that though.

I've tried Mandrake a few times, and I've always found it very nice. However, I always ended up finding a few things that just didn't work the way I wanted them to which switched me back to Redhat.

Compiler is rock solid

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat for all practical purposes owns GCC since Cygnus is part of Red Hat.

I'm using GCC 2.96.85 under Red Hat and it is a very fine compiler, as good as any version of GCC which I've ever used. It compiles everything quite well, including the kernel. Try it, my friend. You will like it.

Re:Why 7.3?

[mczak]

"gcc 3.0, the current so-called "stable" release (released quite some time after Red Hat released gcc 2.96-RH), fixes some problems, but introduces many others - for example, gcc 3.0.1 can't compile KDE 2.2 correctly due to bugs in gcc 3.0.x's implementation in multiple inheritance in C++. Until another set of 3.0.x updates is released, I still claim 2.96 is the best hot grits compiler yet."

I don't agree here with you. While gcc 2.96 may still have some advantages over 3.0.x, todays gcc 3.1 is better in every way: generates faster code (at least if you believe the people running speccpu all day long), even more c++ compliant (and yes, it has those bugs fixed which prevents the correct compilation of artsd from kde). Of course you can say that 3.1 isn't a release version - but neither is 2.96, so that's not a valid objection. gcc "2.96" might be (though I still have my doubts) the best compiler shipped in a distribution, since no distribution (that I'm aware of) uses gcc-3.0.x or a developer version of 3.1.

Re:Code name: Skipjack or Hampton?

[MSG]

We've been told that Hampton was a code name used for an internal development tree, and is not expected to be the name of the final release (whatever the version number)

Re:desktop? server?

[Anonymous Coward]

"and not spend all the r&d time making it a better desktop"
What are you talking about? Seriously redhat has not made any serious efforts ever to make a better desktop. That is their trademark. I have been using Redhat since 5.0 and they have consistantly avoided going the route of Mandrake, Corel etc. If you have been using linux for any length of time, its obvious that they are not spending R&D on the desktop.
Redhat packages stock gnome and kde and thats it. They have made few gui apps over the years and I don't expect that to change. Your not for example never going to see a Mandrake style font importer on redhat.
Redhat simply does not make any money on the desktop. Their market is the enterprise server market period.

Re:what's the big deal with binary compatibility

[Hoonis]

There are usually glibc-XXX-compat.i386.rpm files that you can install alongside of the newer ones for backwards compatibility. They don't seem to get installed by any of the options unless you go in and pick individual packages or just do it post-install though. hunt in your various rpm dirs for *compat*, can be quite helpful!

Re:what's the big deal with binary compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Installing older glibc generally isn't needed --
glibc2.2.x (and the mislabeled mix of glibc CVS
head and 2.2.x branch RedHat ships in SkipJack)
is all the way backwatds compatible to glibc 2.0.0
(Module bugs, anyway)

Yes, you need a separate library for libc5, but it's
rarely needed now.

libstdc++ is an another issue -- Mandrake ships some of
the older versions, but having it only partly
solves the problem -- a KDE app compiled with gcc-2.95
wouldn't run with 2.96 no matter how many c++ libraries
one installs..

Install directly from the ISOs

[mnordstr]

I love this feature of the RedHat install. Since it's a beta, I don't want to waste 3 cds on it. No problem, I just downloaded the ISOs to another computer (with an NFS daemon), and installed it over the network. Just had to create a simple boot disk [redhat.com], and voila. This is a great and fast way to install the new RedHat if you don't neccessarily need it on CDs. And it is faster because my CD doesn't read as fast as my network can transfer.

Re:LSB

[HeUnique]

RedHat 7.3 is simply an update and it's binary compatible to all previous 7.x versions - so you cannot play with file locations and binaries to be fully LSB compliant on an updated version..

I guess they'll be LSB compliant on 8.0

Re:Great, I wish them luck...

[Baki]

As a long time FreeBSD user, being "forced" to run Linux because of some desktop issues (read, vmware3) I do NOT AGREE at all.

Everyone seems to be raving about how cool gentoo is, almost like FreeBSD; how the FreeBSD users formerly attracted to Slackware all run to Gentoo now. Well, I don't think so.

The FreeBSD ports system might have some technical similarities to Gentoo portage (which is even more advanced), but there is a huge and crucial difference:

Portage is instable, ports are broken all the time (just read the forum on gentoo.org); also in FreeBSD the ports are just an add-on, the base system is not ports-based, but is one monolithic (stable) block.

I still think that Slackware is the most FreeBSD-like Linux distro, even though it does not have a ports system. Because:
- it is stable
- it feels more like FreeBSD, because of little things such as simple init scripts (BSD based)
- the base system is not monolithic as in FreeBSD, but still installing the a,ap,d and l series provides you with a base that doesn't change all the time. Almost any slack installation has the same set of basic packages installed, it is much less a choose and pick than any other Linux distribution.

Portage looks nice and impressive the first day you use it, but becomes a nightmare after a few weeks useage (believe me, I was amazed at start and have used it some weeks). Everthing updates all the time, not all dependencies are caught and strange interactions between the ports begin to happen. Not one user of Gentoo has the same versions of packages installed together, because this depends on the (random) timestamps that you decide to run an 'emerge rsync'.

I think gentoo's approach is interesting, but it is not ready for prime time, it should be version 0.1, not 1.1(a).

No no, Slackware still is the greatest for the 'ultra power user', and shall remain so for a long time. Creating your own 'ports' is trivial, I wrote some scripts myself (and I think many slack users did) to create them easily. I like to figure out how to 'port' any package running on my machine myself, except for the packages of the only other person I trust (Patrick Volkerding) in this respect.

Re:True example

[Dehumanizer]

Why not just download the OpenLDAP SRPM from Red Hat, edit the .spec file so it uses Berkeley DB, then do an "rpm -ba openldap.spec", go drink a cup of coffee, and you get exactly what you want... in Red Hat's usual places... and as an RPM?

I usually do that.

Re:stable compiler

[guacamole]

Stop spreading FUD.

http://www.bero.org/gcc296.html [bero.org]

Re:Just a stupid question

[aulendil]

GNOME tends to start esd for sound. So open a terminal and do a ps ax and kill esd, or even easier do a "killall esd" and be set. A more elegant solution would be to open the GNOME control-panel and disable the sound server (esd).

Also, you can propably make arts (KDE) pipe the sound to esd, not sure about this one though...