Red Hat 8.0 For KDE Users (And Newbies) 435
pantropik writes "OSNews has been giving quite a bit of bandwidth to Red Hat's newest offering lately. This article, which generated quite a bit of controversy in the comments section, detailed a new user's 'frustrations' with the new release. The latest article, written by yours truly, is rather lengthy, explaining such things as adding 3D drivers, missing MP3 functionality, DVD decoding, using APT with RHL, and customizing Red Hat's modified KDE. At the end, I wrap up with my impression -- as a simple user -- of this 'crippled' KDE implementation. Of course, you can also check out this story, which takes a look at RH 8.0 from 'Joe and Jane User's' perspective."
Taiwan Ceases to exist, according to RedHat. (Score:0, Interesting)
Slowness (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe the guy turned up the specicial effects knob all the way? I dunno, either way the guy did use a slow machine in the review (500mhz celeron). But I am typing on a p233 mmx right now running FreeBSD/KDE3.0 and it is incredibly fast. (Except Mozilla basically refuses to run on this machine, waaaayy slow. Mozilla runs slower than the Java apps I run on this machine (IDEA, TCC, etc)).
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:An OS for all occasions... (Score:1, Interesting)
The point is that Red Hat has specifically touted this version as more newbie-friendly. It's perfectly reasonable for a new user to call them on it if their experience differs. I'm only going by what the article says though, I can't try RH8 myself because I can't install it [redhat.com].
(And before anyone says Linux doesn't need non-technical users, remember that the more grandmothers, etc. who use Linux, the harder (politically speaking) it will be to outlaw it with crazy DRM laws. If Linux is driven underground, sure, maybe a few geeks will still be able to use it, but good luck getting drivers for your spiffy new GeForce 20-HyperMegaWormhole Platinum Edition.)
Some thoughts and specific user experience items (Score:4, Interesting)
There are a few things that initially annoy me, but these are relatively minor and I'm sure they'll be addressed in the next point releases
1. The lack of MP3 support in XMMS is retarded. Supposedly, they were going to provide an alternate XMMS plugin that would at least inform the user about MP3 support, but somehow that didn't make its way into the final release. So, try to initially play an MP3... doesn't work, no information about *why*. (not a problem for me, because I just went and compiled up my own xmms, but for an average joe, this would be a problem).
2. I'm sick of Mozilla being included in these distros without any plugins! For christs sake, at least throw some java in there by default!!
3. Logged into gnome as a regular user, there should be some way to supply a root password into Nautilus to be able to manage files in restricted folders, such as
4. Some bugs... don't leave any non-gnome apps open when you log out, such as xmms or gkrellm. If you do, when you log back in, your session will be f*cked and for some odd reason, you won't be able to log out. The fix (if this happens to you) is to go to one of the many setup menus and find the "sessions" admin app, and clear the non-gnome apps from the current session and save. Then, you'll be able to log out and return to normal.
5. FIRSTBOOT!! There's a daemon that runs on the first boot, and it uses X. Sometimes, at least in VMWARE, X fails to load for firstboot, and hence, it gets skipped. Without going through the firstboot process, certain parts of the distro get broken, such as the hostname, and thus, gnome runs like crap with hostname problems.
6. Too many setup menus!! There are just too many menus for configuring the system. Seems kinda redundant, and silly to have to search through multiple menus to locate a single app because the user can't remember whether the item is in "preferences" or "system settings".
7. Get rid of the "extras" menu... just move those apps to their appropriate menu items. For example, the x-chat IRC client is located in the "extras menu" beneath "internet"... well, it should be in the real "internet" menu.
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Thats it from the complaint dept. Otherwise, even as an experienced linux user (and a CLI oriented programmer at that), I find the RH80 gui environment to be extremely nice to usem, wihtout many annoyances.
Re:An OS for all occasions... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have an old 233 mHz Dell kicking around. It runs the most blessedly stable Win95 install you could hope for, courtesy of 2 intentional drive-wipes right after purchase. It is my general backup computer. I've played around with Linux, and having put Mandrakes 7.2, 8.2, and 9.0, and Lycoris Amethyst on, I can safely say that none of them 'just worked' (so far, only Mandrake 7.2 worked with my sound card without a hassle). I was thinking about RH as the next test distro, but no longer.
Anyway, the point is that OS X seems like a great system. I would love to run it. But I'm not going to go out and drop $1000 on new hardware from Mr. Jobs. I have hardware. I want to get away from running Windows on it for purposes other than games. Linux made much of its name by supporting older systems. It shouldn't be too much to ask that it 'just works' on these systems.
Re:I feel for the writer (Score:2, Interesting)
Well I hate to be one of those "it works fine for me" types, but... it works fine for me on my p3 700 thinkpad with 256 meg ram. Not a powerhouse, and I tell you, beOS ran much much faster.
For a little reference, seeing BeOS was a sinking ship, I knew I had to find a new development platform. So I tried several distros, before settling down. Redhat, consistently (version 6.2, 7.0 and I think 7.1 or something) was slow as molassas. I tried SuSE, and it hauled a** relatively speaking. So I moved over to SuSE for about a year, before trying slack 8, which became my favorite. Slack made my "meager" p3 run like BeOS used to, and was so well designed, layed out, and documented that I didn't need YaST just to change my default runlevel.
Then, I found gentoo, but frankly gentoo isn't noticeably faster than slack. The only reason I'm sticking with gentoo is that its init system is the most utterly beautiful system I've ever worked with. And, because my work, which required under slack about 20 minutes to build after a "make distclean" builds now in about 7 to 10 minutes, which is a very nice thing.
So, what I'm getting at is that yes, mainstream linux is bloated. Sure. But I'm sure you can either turn off a lot of the nastiness redhat defaults to, or you can install a lighter system.
That's why we have options and competition people. Stop bitching.
Oh, and one more thing -- I do run kde, and on a well tuned system it hauls like a bat out of hell. You don't need to sacrifice functionality for performance. And yes, BeOS was fast, but BeOS didn't do 10% of what Gnome2 or KDE 3 can do ;)
Re:This is what is really needed (Score:2, Interesting)
If you look at how long it has taken Linux to evolve versus how long it has taken MS to evolve Windows, I think everyone will agree that the pace has been faster on the OSS side.
The moment you can get the average joe to move to a free OS like Linux, and the moment you can do it on a large scale, you're also fighting other MS technologies like DRM and other "customer experience enhancing" technologies because they get lower acceptance.
Now, don't flame me yet. This is looking at the long term and unifying KDE and Gnome is one way to really accelarate it. It'll take some time to do it, but if you really look at it, it just might be for the better good.
Re:USENET (Score:2, Interesting)
It's really not surprising people don't know what it is or how to use it. Anyways, much of the functionality is being replaced by web boards and the binary part is being replaced by the multitude of P2P apps.
I just discovered the other day that my provider does have a full feed available for free to it's subscribers, but I sure couldn't find mention of it anywhere in their literature or on the website.
mp3 removed ? not really (Score:5, Interesting)
RedHat says there is no mp3 support, but surprisingly there is! ;-) The trick. Mozilla :). They have by default added a plugin(plugger).
Plugger can play Quicktime, mpg and mp3 in the browser window. Well not many of us like to listen to mp3 in mozilla, but this completely refutes Red Hats claim about not including mp3 support coz "We dont want to be the first to be sued". To be frank, wether the support is in mozilla or xmms, if hypothetically there was a case of patent violation, it wouldnt really matter. Well now that the roayalty has been removed it dosent matter, but my guess is that this hindsight was there mostly due to lack of knowledge... or mebbe there is some developer sitting with a sense of humour!
Re:Taiwan Ceases to exist, according to RedHat. (Score:3, Interesting)
The amazing thing about this is that it seems to be on all versions of RH8 that this has happened (not just the ones sold to China) - so the versions sold in Taiwan won't even have their flag
The Taiwan Linux UG have an online petition [linux.org.tw] to reinstate the flag.
Linux is not about being nostalgic; it's adaptive! (Score:4, Interesting)
When developing for small platform devices (hand helds, tablets, etc.) one does not think "how do I fit Gnome or KDE on this little thing". On the contrary - it poses a problem that the open source community is ready to tackle. FLTK (fast lightweight tool-kit), among many others, was developed to bring graphics to small hand held devices. The spirit of "Linux", or rather the open source community and all of the software which it provides, lives on - on the hardware of old, hardware of new, and hardware of the extremely small.
The distributions which use Linux as the kernel are made up of all kinds of utilities and applications. All of which are considered modern and targetted for modern times. To be nostalgic and develop all software to run "antique" hardware is not intuitive - why not take advantage of what our computers have to offer? Do we not enjoy vehicles with anti-lock brakes, air conditioning, a quiet cabin, engines which start almost flawlessly, and all sorts of other amenities that we take for granted?
Software, as well as the hardware upon which it is run, is constantly changing - adapting to the needs of the people who use the computers and as well as the computers themselves. I find it ironic that over the years that Linux-based distributions have increasingly become more popular, more advanced, and more feature-rich the groaning has switched from "Linux doesn't have enough stuff or it isn't stable like my Windows box" to "Linux is so bloated it doesn't run on my four year old machine." Another old argument was "Linux is too hard to understand and configure" - now the argument has switched to "they hide too much of the specifics". Distributions were developed so that the users of those distributions had a convenient and consistent environment to take advantage of the latest and greatest software offerings. Of course the interfaces change over time but developing utilities to replace legacy applications within a distribution maintains a level of consistency to help, not restrict, the end-user.
Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, Debian, et al. are all attempting to take advantage of the modern offerings that our technologically elite provide us in terms of hardware and software concepts. To do so would be living in a era of restriction - preventing Linux-based distributions from forging ahead to utilize the technologies that only Microsoft could provide for (in the past).
Face the facts - most people want an easy to use operating system. Consistency is nice! Fancy features are nice! A good looking interface is nice! A faster, more responsive system is nice! It's frustrating to see people ready to tear down an honest effort of an organized entity to provide features requested by their paying customers and the comments of the open source community as a whole.
It's very confusing when the mob asks for "consistency and features like Windows" and then immediately gripes when the consistency and features are added into the distribution. Nonetheless - you have a choice. Use Red Hat's, Mandrake's, SuSE's, Debian's, or the other's offerings. Build a Linux distribution from scratch and add your home-grown, home-built installation of KDE. When a company attempts to differentiate its product to better suit its customers (paying and the open source community), be constructive in your criticism and inform the developers of your suggestions rather than finding a forum to gripe because a piece of 2002 software will not run on your 1996 hardware platform.
Re:An OS for all occasions... (Score:4, Interesting)
I really can't say MacOS X is a more attractive commercial solution than XP is. I hate to buck the anti-Microsoft trend, but the purchase of a G4 that ships with DDR RAM it can't use just to use a closed UNIX variant because it has throbbing default buttons doesn't strike me as a smart plan.
I don't think MacOS X is the best OS for the task.
I think RedHat and other distributions like SuSE et al who are making an effort at user interface usability and flexibility are on the right track. Get adoption first by office users and non-gamers, and as the userbase grows, the applications will come. It is becoming a better OS for the task.
Musings from an admin (Score:2, Interesting)
I built a new flex ATX box this past weekend and, after discovering that the world of Red Hat mirrors goes far beyond those listed on Red Hat's official page, downloaded 8.0 and installed it.
I use Linux on servers heavily at work and also have a web / imap / general purpose Linux (rh 7.2) server at home. However I have not used a Linux desktop very much.
After exploring GNOME, KDE, etc. for a few days, I have come to the conclusion that, for an administrator today, a Linux desktop is a good way to host multiple terminal sessions but the GUI is of little help.
What happened to linuxconf? Am I now supposed to begin the nightmare of configuring sendmail completely by hand? It looks like Red Hat has ripped out linuxconf completely and replaced it with the Helix stuff for SOME of the functions.
Does GNOME/Nautilus have a CD icon at all?
Why is there no applet to that centralizes metacity settings? Yet we have whole applications to manage a single binary switch.
The Mac and Windows do a lot more to let the administrator stay in the GUI for many simple tasks. Linux is definitely not there yet.
I am impressed with driver support (Score:3, Interesting)
There were some suprising results and not so surprising results. The most surprising was that my Firewire PCI controller and Iomega Predator Firewire CD-R/W drive was supported. The not so surprising result was that my USB Alcatel DSL modem was not supported out of the box.
Overall, I am impressed. Since my first RedHat installation was 5.2, 8.0 is eons ahead of my original RedHat experience.
Re:I feel for the writer (Score:2, Interesting)
I also upgraded (though MS says it's not possible) my Toshiba 2805-201s from WinME (Aaaaaiiiiieeeee! Help!) to Win2kPro.It, too, runs faster and much, much, oh my goodness, much more stable than WinME (Windows Masochist Edition).
However, right now I'm using my Toshiba with RH 8.0. . .fantastic. PCMCIA Orinoco Silver recognized and configured on the fly, sound working nicely, one apparent problem with APMD (when I pulled the plug the power shut off even though the battery was full; thank goodness for EXT3; no problem starting the machine in battery mode and I have had the guts to pull the plug yet today (but I will after this post). Oh, one note: I can't find the KAPMD application on the menus. No power management at all on the default Bluecurve menus. . .that's disconcerting but I'll look into it. But overall, RH 8 is fast, faster than Win2kPro and WinME on the same hardware. The fonts are generally beautiful, but suck badly with Mozilla and OpenOffice. Konq's fonts are beautiful as usual. Overall, I'm a happy camper. I'd be even happier with the ability to "Map Network Drives" like Windows -- not for me! -- so that my corporate users could possibly make the switch to Linux, too.
Notes on Red Hat 8.0 (Score:2, Interesting)
Some small portions that I would like to see in next RH 8.x release:
- abilitity to right click on menu item and change the same menu item, e.g. if I want galeon to be default Internet browser, I dont want to edit ~/.htmlview I want to change it thrue Control Center or directly from Menu
- set postfix as default MTA, Maildir support on
- add proftpd as choice for FTP daemon
- can someone tell me why my pcmcia modul is still loaded after any non-laptom install?
- in instalation process there are few unneeded steps, remove them
- installation process should have some game to play or bigger doc to read while instaling rpms (full installation is around 40minutes, avarage is around 20minutes)
- good collections of free Unicode ttf fonts
- existing gnome applications should dynamicaly pick up new ttf fonts placed in ~/.fonts (gnome-terminal)
- RH should work with OpenOffice to find solutions to incorporate ~/.fonts support to OpenOffice
- We need in next release only gnome2 apps, currently my old sheets are really ugly in Gnumeric
- RH need to make better manu organization (I cannot see licq, x-chat,
- xcdroast included in RH8.0 is still old bogus version; RH upgrade it and add gcombust
- Nautilus needs lan:// or smb:// feature (like konquerer)
- gcalc is removed from distribution, as fas as I can tell, current calculator sux
Something to add?
Red Hat Network does exactly that... (Score:2, Interesting)
Red Hat Network was developed with the philosophy in mind to manage a large installation of Red Hat Linux based machines. You can group your machines so that one group gets the KDE packages and the other group gets the Gnome packages. If you have 500 Linux boxes at your site, the Red Hat Network is really a useful tool for network administrators. It is quite a shame that their up2date tool is still "basic" compared to the advanced interface that the web-based front-end to the Red Hat Network provides. If it were more advanced, I would think that more people would be exposed to the many options that are provided by the Red Hat Network.
All editions includes one free subscription to the Red Hat Network, while the packaged editions include timed subscriptions to their basic and enterprise subscription packages. For home use, it's a good method of keeping "up2date" with the latest security fixes and feature upgrades. It would also be nice if Red Hat took the plunge and allowed everyone (including the free edition ISOs) to get their top-notch enterprise subscription for a limited time (perhaps 2 weeks). It's really hard to conceive the features by simply reading a feature list.
Be mindful - often, Red Hat releases packages that are not considered the latest and greatest only by version number of the package. Red Hat incorporates their own internal team of software engineers to patch the source and taylor the package to their distribution. Thus, sometimes, you may be "up2date" as far as the Red Hat Network is concerned, but behind the times as far as the latest and greatest vanilla source release from the original authors/contributors. The packages released by Red Hat are verified and supported (via their technical support and bugzilla) for use with their distribution.
Re:RH is just trying to fix a problem (Score:2, Interesting)
Pardon what? It's a sound daemon and afaik compatible to esound.
> Gnome and other applications that were formerly listed in its menus seem to have disappeared
Run kappfinder or complain to your distribution.
> KDE's drag-and-drop does not interoperate fully with non-KDE apps
Example? Btw which KDE version are you running?
> KDE flaunts many X11 conventions
I don't understand this, is this bad?
> If you try to start up a KDE application under a non-KDE desktop, it starts up big, noisy background processes.
Noisy? That's the price for an integrated environment.
> Under Debian, installing KDE automatically made kdm the default on my machine.
Blame Debian package maintainers, not KDE.
> KDE is probably due for a lot more cannibalization in the future.
You're a troll.