Red Hat 8.0 Released 778
I_am_Rambi writes "RedHat has released their latest OS, 8.0. Here is Red Hat's ftp site for download and some mirrors. If you need help there's a Howto." Jeet81 adds: "Red Hat is out with a new release, Red Hat 8.0. Looks like Red Hat is moving towards the windows XP style using its new Bluecurve graphical interface (the new default email client 'Ximian Evolution' looks a lot like MS Outlook)." So what's the verdict on Null or Bluecurve or whatever it's called? Good idea, bad idea?
FP! (Score:4, Insightful)
Look like windows? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's two questions there (Score:5, Insightful)
The second question is: did Red Hat pull it off well. I think we will have to wait a few months to guage how successful it has been. Ximian's Gnome2-based system will almost certianly be out soon, and I think a good measure of how usable Red Hat's desktop is will be how many people plunk Ximian down over it.
Re:F**ck redhat (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Isn't this two days old? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahem... (Score:2, Insightful)
Excuse me... might you mean the OS X style Bluecurve graphical interface? Lets be honest here.. if it wasn't for Aqua.. The Luna derivative would probably never have been...and consequent derivatives.
Re:Distribution of resources (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Upgrading from 7.3 status (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the correct behavior for an upgrade. It would really suck if an OS upgrade wiped out your existing configs and preferrences, wouldn't it?
Suppose you had a server with a couple hundred users on it. Over the weekend you upgrade the OS and it resets everyone's desktops and configs. Would you like to be in the support chair on Monday morning?
You guys still use HTTP to get this? P2P! (Score:5, Insightful)
-David
Re:Look like windows? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is -exactly- what will win customers over, because customers aren't people like me and (potentially) you; customers are people like my boss, his boss, and so on up the line, that look at Linux as a cheap server alternative when we don't want to buy Windows 2000 Server. We, on the other hand, are Linux geeks, who will use Linux and most likely turn off the looks-like-Windows part anyway. =)
I could probably install RH8 on desktops where I work and use it as an alternative to Windows with a minor change or two (the ability to browse SMB shares would be a must). So, in my view, looking and feeling like Windows is critical, because people don't want to have to learn new tricks when they can just as easily buy Windows.
meisenst
Re:You guys still use HTTP to get this? P2P! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:null or bluecurve (Score:5, Insightful)
How exactly is the behavior you are complaining about -- inaccuracies in headline and submitter comments and delayed coverage of old news -- atypical for Slashdot? One might argue that they are very much old hat for regular readers.
More to the point, you're wrong about many of the 'issues' you raise. Point two, that it is called (null) instead of null, is just being pedantic, and I am quite skeptical regarding its accuracy.
If one were inclined to pick nits, one might observe that the theme is Bluecurve, not "Blue Curve", but I'm feeling generous and so I'll let it pass.
And finally, in case you missed it, there was a story about Red Hat 8.0 on Monday, when it was released. I have no idea why there's another one, but the story was reported as news when it actually was news, and here it is again.
One of the joys of Slashdot is that over the days and months and years, you see familiar stories reappear and can recapture the joy you felt when reading them initially. The main page is like an endless parade of friendly faces, each one smiling and saying, "It's been a while. Take a break, read me again, let's catch up."
I have always believed that this happens because the editors firmly believe, like Faulkner before them, that there are truly no new stories. In the vast span of human existence, tales of greed and altruism, life and death, nobility and depravity, wonder and Red Hat point releases, have all been played out countless times in the same familiar manner. Only the faces change. To my mind this is a very humanistic sentiment, and I cherish those editors who recognize this fundamental truth of our existence.
Kudos to you, Slashdot staff!
Re:RH8... the good, the bad, the ugly.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The included kernel is by no means a stock 2.4.18. There's a ton of patches and tweaks applied (all available separeately in the kernel SRPMs'). For example the system clock ticks 5 times faster than the stock one, giving much better responsiveness in for example X (see the release notes on for more information). Large parts of Alan Cox's ac-kernel tree is part of the RH kernel (Alan is employed by RH you know). I know of no distribution that would ship a stock kernel.
Apache 2.0+PHP problem is a show stopper for me. Wiped the machine and installed Mandrake 9.0. Sad since 8 is very slick. Hats off (pun intended) to Redhat for a great release. I may come back to it if I can get the PHP stuff resolved.
All recent version of PHP have deprecated the REGISTER_GLOBALS option (and good riddance!). This is most likely what is causing your problems, poorly written scripts will no longer run on recent PHP's.
this release made me switch to mandrake (Score:1, Insightful)
Used the beta and now the 8.0 release (Score:5, Insightful)
I had the beta release null installed on a box last week that I had tried too.
Anyway, as for 8.0,
likes:
- the interface. switching between KDE and GNOME doesn't cause others looking at the desktop to be totally mystified. they both look similar, and it's been a long time coming that Redhat should've done this.
- mozilla. it's come a long way, and its turning into quite a browser.
- it installed nicely on all but one box - it didn't recognize the soundcard on a dell optiplex gx1p. running sndconfig manually after the install fixed that right up.
dislikes:
- no direct way to mount a win32 share from the desktop. Yes, I can start Konq and smb://somemachine, but can I right-click and mount it? Nope.
- no 'run' interface like win32. sorry, but I can window-key-R and type \\machine\sharename
and I'm there. Can't do that with RH.
- xmms has mp3 play-ability removed. Fine, goto http://psyche.freshrpms.net/ [freshrpms.net] and grab the rpm so it can play mp3's.
- dvd playback (mpg, avi, etc) - again, gotta go get more rpm's from freshrpms because default redhat8 doesn't have the capability.
Now, I realize that before the latest Win32 OS's came out, you had to go get an mp3 player. And most people, even though Windows XP can play them out of the box now, they probably go get winamp. (I do). So can I really bitch about redhat not playing mp3's out of the box?
Sure I can. In my opinion, Redhat could atleast buy the license to include this stuff, so that if I purchase the boxed set, and install it, that would have the capability built in. I can understand they don't want to pay for the people who are downloading the iso's for free.
I also came to the realization that even though all the apps have the same look and feel, running KDE apps under GNOME, or vise versa, doesn't always play nicely. Example: I like Kmail (specifically because of the filters, and it acts like Eudora). Anyway, I ran it under GNOME. It tried to view a jpg attachment someone sent by clicking on it, and it didn't happen. Switched to KDE (which I normally use 99% of the time) went to kmail, clicked on the attachment... bingo, it came right up.
Yes, there's probably a fix for this. But I'm sorry, I'm getting tired of having to tinker to get each linux box to act uniformally all the time. Between the two here at work, the 2 at home, and the dual boot laptop, it can take a lot of time tinkering with things to get them to work. Hopefully, w/ each release of redhat this will become less and less of an issue.
Anyway, just my $.02....
tf23
Re:RedHat is like Microsoft (Score:2, Insightful)
Just use *ANY* commercial non-RedHat distribution. SuSE works like a charm, as does Mandrake. You get into a nice KDE-interface and then you can choose with one click if you would like KDE to be just KDE or imitate Windows, MacOS or classical Unix GUIs.
So there you have your newbie-compatible settings (Windows-like) but you are still going to keep advanced users (KDE-defaults), you even have settings for Mac-Linux converts and old Unix-users. This is in stock-KDE, available for a long time already.
Just because RedHat is ignoring solutions, doesn't mean they don't exist.
Which was exactly the point of my post.
Re:RH8... the good, the bad, the ugly.... (Score:1, Insightful)
migrating (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:But there must be limits (Score:2, Insightful)
Most of the other changes RedHat made to the KD interface I can sort of overlook, it's mostly icons and themes and whatnot. But some things should be off limits out of respect for the people doing all the work.
If this is truly the way people feel, then it contradicts KDE's stated goal, which is to provide a contemporary user interface to average people.
To put things into perspective, let me quote something from KDE's page:
"When it comes to stability, scalability and openness there is no competition to UNIX. However, the lack of an easy to use contemporary desktop environment for UNIX has prevented UNIX from finding its way onto the desktops of the typical computer user in offices and homes."
Now, of course ask different people how deliver a UNIX system to the average user, and you'll probably get different answers as seen here. However, all involved parties here have a common goal: to bring Unix to the average user. KDE's doing their thing, Gnome doing theirs, and Redhat's doing theirs. All parties need to give up the ego and consider the user, something which I think Redhat has done and others need to do. Since KDE and Gnome inconsistencies haven't disappeared on their own, Redhat has to deal with them.
It isn't about making the KDE or Gnome camp happy, it's about bringing Unix to the average user, where silly politics and egos get in the way.
In my opinion, there should be one desktop environment for regular users and one for advanced users. That way regular users all get the same interface, and us advanced users still have the option of 1000 + 1 guis.
Re:RH 8 on nvidia? (Score:4, Insightful)
Troc
Re:at 5 cds... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Screenshots... (Score:5, Insightful)
- preferences, *and*
- server settings, *and*
- system tools, *and*
- system settings, *and*
- control center, *and*
- configure panel.
And you think it should be immediately obvious from these items, that appear in a completely unsorted and ungrouped menu, what they mean and what the distinction is? I must admit the theme looks surprisingly friendly (if not soft), but seriously, this is painful, if not patently absurd.
Is it really necessary to make a difference between Preferences, System Settings, and a Control Center? Between System Settings and Server Settings? And is there any reason why all these should live outside the Control Center? Is there any reason at all to have a Control
Make up your mind I'd say. If you *desparately* want to supply more than one configuration item, reduce it to 'Personal Preferences' and 'System Settings', a distinction which at least has some meaning for people who already know that different people can use the computer each in their own way, but that some people may control the computer's overall behaviour as well.
The mixing of verbs and nouns in the same list is also horribly confusing. The submenus should get their own group and the rest should be *verbs*, if you want to give the user any feel of predictability at all (*Launch* Control Center. *Get* Help. *Open* Home folder). Or go the other way, with an implicit Start, Launch or Open everywhere, but then please be consistent and call 'Find Files' the 'Search Tool'.
Come on guys, I'm also a C programmer instead of a UI designer, but is it really so hard to avoid making a mess? No wonder even geeks are switching to Macs these days.
Re:Debian (Score:2, Insightful)
Ever heard of mirrors???
the ease of use of windows ?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe it's because I spent so many hours of my youth at a VT52.
Maybe it's because I was happy with my Apple ][ and C64 (and as recently as Sunday was playing Seven Cities of Gold on Vice64 and enjoying it.)
Maybe it's because I always kept at least one CLI open on my Amiga desktop.
Maybe it's because I've spent so many years writing applications with simple user interfaces for rapid data access and update.
Maybe it's just me and I've become a curmudgeon and should just move off to the side and keep to myself, aside from the occasional utterance about 'youts dese days.'
Every time I get a new PC or new version of Microsoft I spend hours figuing out how to get it to stop doing annoying default behavior and trying to figure out where sh!t is, and frequently pissed off becuase there's only one way to get at something and it's buried (i.e. you have to know where to look.)
I've never considered Microsoft's implementations of anything to be best in class. More often myself and coworkers have simply given up on shaping applications and interfaces to work to our advantage, because someone who knows better than us, has taken that decision power.
If RH is mimicking Microsoft, I sure as heck hope they don't mimic them all the way, two cruddy interfaces for two different products isn't any kind of improvement in my book.
Re:This post is redundant (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, dig your panties out of your ass and understand that waiting a couple of days for the servers to get the new release is a Good Thing.
Re:Look like windows? (Score:5, Insightful)
But "intuitive" can also mean "simple enough to be obvious." My girlfriend uses iPhoto to download photos from her digital camera, color-correct them, crop them, post them to the web, and order prints of the ones she really likes. She has never been taught how to do these things. She's not a computer expert. She just sat down, clicked the iPhoto icon in the dock, and figured it out. That is how I define intuitive.
Intuitive is over rated way to much, how functional something is normally is a direct relation to how "easy to pick up" it is.
Sometimes. But it doesn't have to be. Not by a long shot.
Re:Yay... (Score:2, Insightful)
The more discs there are, the less likely people are to download it and the more likely they are to buy the box. RedHat can make some money this way. You see, they are a corporation and they are supposed to make profit.
Re:Debian (Score:3, Insightful)
Not.
Re:Yay... (Score:4, Insightful)
At least they are following the GPL. A distressing number of people are distributing Linux and GNU binaries without worrying about their obligation to either provide matching source at the same time, or to include a written offer, good for three years, to provide source later.