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Red Hat Software Businesses

New Red Hat Beta: LIMBO 315

Posted by timothy from the to-prod-to-poke-to-torment dept.
joyoflinux writes: "Red Hat has released a beta version of its distribution, called LIMBO. It includes the latest desktop technology, gcc 3.1, Mozilla 1.0+, OpenOffice 1.0, and much more. You can download it here or use a mirror. Submit bugs here." Here's the announcement.
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New Red Hat Beta: LIMBO More

New Red Hat Beta: LIMBO

Comments Filter:

  • Version 8? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by reflexreaction ( 526215 )
    Will LIMBO eventually become RH 8.0? Or are RH major releases tied to another criteria?

    • Re:Version 8? (Score:5, Informative)

      by GigsVT ( 208848 ) on Thursday July 04, 2002 @01:06AM (#3820302) Journal
      New gcc version means this is most definitely destined to be Red Hat 8.0.

      They will probably change glibc versions in a major way also.

      • Re:Version 8? (Score:3, Funny)

        by emc ( 19333 )
        Unfortunatly, RH needs to wait for another broken version of GCC to come out, to base 8.0 on... so don't hold your breath

      • If glibc is going to break compatibility for its next version, I think the glibc maintainers should consider removing functions which KNOWN SECURITY RISKS, such as gets(), strcpy(), strcat(), sprintf(), and friends. There are safer alternatives, such as strncpy(), strncat(), and snprintf(). If glibc removes risky functions, then application writers will be forced to improve their applications by use safer functions and coding practices. Shouldn't known "best practises" be encouraged by the libraries we use as the foundation of our software?

        Unfortunately, even some of those "safe" functions can be difficult to use safely. OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Solaris libc libraries include strlcpy() and strlcat(). Theo de Raadt co-wrote an insightful paper about these new functions: strlcpy and strlcat - consistent, safe, string copy and concatenation [courtesan.com]. Why does glibc insist on not supporting these safer alternatives?

        If removing these risky functions is too controversial, then glibc could use a transitional approach. Move the risky functions' prototypes into a separate header file. Name it something scary like "unsafe.h", "securityrisk.h" or "bufferoverflow.h". Application writers who are too lazy to fix their use of risky functions, can simply #include "bufferoverflow.h".

    • Re:Version 8? (Score:5, Informative)

      by JPriest ( 547211 ) on Thursday July 04, 2002 @01:43AM (#3820452) Homepage
      If you want to know what package versions various distros and betas are using go to distrowatch.com [distrowatch.com]. A list of packages for the top 10 distros can be found here [distrowatch.com]

  • good stuff (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 04, 2002 @01:03AM (#3820290)
    It's got Gnome 2, KDE 3.01, GCC 3.1. Pretty good deal...

    But I will stay with Gentoo Linux. :)

  • Fear of Mandrake? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by io333 ( 574963 )
    It seems like every time I blink RedHat is releasing an updated version. Maybe they're beginning to acknowledge (read: "worry about") the surprising popularity of Mandrake?

    (Although Mandrake hasn't updated in quite a while; it's still at KDE2.2 over there with a semi-difficult KDE3.0 install option available).

    • Re:Fear of Mandrake? (Score:4, Informative)

      by T-Ranger ( 10520 ) <jeffw@NoSPAm.chebucto.ns.ca> on Thursday July 04, 2002 @01:09AM (#3820320) Homepage
      Redhat has consistantly produced releases about every 6 months for as long as I have been folowing them. If it takes a month for LIMBO to clear through beta then it will be just about on schedule.
      • But RedHat Linux 7.3 has been released less than three months ago. What's going on?

        • Re:Fear of Mandrake? (Score:4, Informative)

          by hdparm ( 575302 ) on Thursday July 04, 2002 @05:49AM (#3821119) Homepage
          I'd say nothing's going on.

          Limbo is just the first beta release of, dare I say, RH 8.0. New version of gcc may be pretty obvious indication of the next major release. Since it's been released 3 months after 7.3, that would give us a window of about 3 months to beta test this one, beta 2, RC1, perhaps RC2. 3 months doesn't sound as a helluva lot time - my money for this release is on December 2002.

          Since I use RH product extensivelly for quite some time now, predominantly as a server platform on a decently sized WAN, I want to take this opportunity to respond to all people in Limbo thread that have been bitching RH again, like they always do, without any apparent reason or, God forbid, technically biased justification.

          How can desktop oriented system be changed and improved in a way that IBM, HPQ, Oracle and the likes are supporting it as an Enterprise Class product? How does good chunk of Wall Street transactions get processed every minute of every day on desktop systems? What you're saying is so rediculous that it makes me wonder how would I run a WAN on say, Win98SE.

          On the other hand, I am more than pleased, hell - I'm extatic!!! - about all the desktop goodies included in the latest distro. If fine people from RH concentrate enough on this (and looks like they might, according to latest happenings around the embedded product), taking into account all negative publicity Microsoft keeps generating in last couple years, I would be expecting near future with a lot more confidence in possible desktop market earthquakes.

          Again, hats of all colours down to Red Hat!

    • Red Hat usually releases upgrades about four times per year. It varies, depending on how the development goes. Frequently the release cycle is roughly March, June, September, December. There is a lot of variability in the cycle though. Possibly they have been slowing down toward 3 releases per year.

      I'm not really sure what the Mandrake cycle is, or whether they are even that regular. They could time their releases to match significant changes in KDE.

      Both of them have already upgraded this year. So have many other distributions. Even Debian is coming close to an upgrade, and they tend to have the slowest cycle (though you can get on the unstable tree and run at the bleeding edge if you want to).

      I'm sorry if you are feeling impatient to move faster, but things are really moving at about as fast a clip as is safe already. Perhaps a little faster (even the major distributions don't always do enough testing before a release).

  • Code named software (Score:4, Insightful)

    by reflexreaction ( 526215 ) on Thursday July 04, 2002 @01:08AM (#3820312) Homepage
    Code naming software has really annoyed me. Jaguar for OsX. Longhorn for Windows. Palladium for the upcoming hardware software venture. AMD Corvette (before it was renamed). Does this kind of naming have any point or relevancy? What does naming an upcoming code base LIMBO mean?
  • Such beta software as LIMBO is not intended for use on mission critical or production systems. Use on such systems could lead to loss of uptime, data, money, employment, or sentience.

    Not that I NEED to upgrade, but I've got a 7.2 ISO I was going to put on another non-critical box (second desktop). Should I forge ahead, and head into beta-land?

    • From what I understand, Limbo (or whatever the whacked-out name crap means) is the 8.0 Beta.

      What I usually do is of the following (depending on what OS):

      If it's MS Windows, I wait about 6 months till most of the bugs are worked out. XP has been a show-stopper to me. I wont install that piece of Spyware-ridden crap.

      If it's Linux distro XYZ, I usually wait for about 1.5 to 2 months till I touch the new distro. If there's bugs, it'll be usually worked out in that time. Course, if something currently works, I'm gonna leave it alone.
    • Should I forge ahead, and head into beta-land?

      One question ... do you want something you can count on? Or ... would you rather play with the latest and greatest toys.

      It's been my experience that Linux apps (not to mention the kernel itself) tend to be stabler in bets than Windoze apps at approximately release level 4.0.

      Going to beta-land is a decision you can only make for yourself, but ... I have been running Debian woody (the current "testing" distro) for WELL over a year. I haven't had significant stability problems with it yet.
    • Well if you're interested in the newer software in LIMBO (sorry) you should run AT LEAST 7.3.
    • With servers I advise sticking with something that's been around a while and is known to be stable. With desktop machines, having the latest apps and desktop (GNOME, KDE) is more important and stability is less important, so I might be prepared to try LIMBO on a desktop machine. Danny.
    • It depends; first, the main reason for using beta software is to participate in bug-hunting, and request features.
      Second, if you need some non-RH rpms, you may run into dependency problems, since the beta is compiled against spanking new libraries.
      This problem may be fixed by compiling from the src rpms.
      Finally, some code doesn't compile on GCC 3.x, though RH probably ships a compat-2.9x-GCC.

      My suggestion: if you have the time, then do it. If you got more than one box, then eg. try to perform a network install. So if the beta sucks, then at least you learned something new.

    • 7.3 has been out for a while. There no reason not to install it instead of 7.2. It works fine for us. We run it on about twenty PCs.

  • Real Mirrors List (Score:3, Informative)

    by GigsVT ( 208848 ) on Thursday July 04, 2002 @01:17AM (#3820356) Journal
    The mirrors link in the writeup is all the mirrors, I checked and most of them havn't updated yet.

    These mirrors are from the announcement link, so they all have the beta:

    - ftp://redhat.dulug.duke.edu/pub/redhat/linux/beta/ limbo/ (http and also rsync access)
    - ftp://carroll.aset.psu.edu/pub/linux/distributions /redhat/redhat/linux/beta/limbo/
    - ftp://ftp.cse.buffalo.edu/pub/Linux/redhat/redhat/ linux/beta/limbo/
    - ftp://mirror.hiwaay.net/redhat/redhat/linux/beta/l imbo/
    - ftp://limestone.uoregon.edu/redhat/beta/limbo/
    - ftp://ftp.shuttleamerica.com/pub/mirrors/redhat/li nux/beta/limbo/ (also rsync access)
    - ftp://mirror.cs.princeton.edu/pub/mirrors/redhat/l inux/beta/limbo/ Europe:
    - ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/redhat-ftp/redh at/linux/beta/limbo/
    - ftp://ftp.linux.cz/pub/linux/redhat/linux/beta/lim bo/
    - ftp://alviss.et.tudelft.nl/pub/redhat/linux/beta/l imbo/
    - ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/site/ftp.redhat.com/redhat/linu x/beta/limbo/
    - ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/pub/linux/redhat.com/dist/li nux/beta/limbo/ (http and also rsync access)
    - ftp://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/MIRRORS/ftp.redhat.com/r edhat/linux/beta/limbo/ (also rsync access)
    - ftp://ftp.uni-bayreuth.de/pub/redhat/linux/beta/li mbo/
    • After trying several of the main mirrors listed and it not being there, I personally appreciated this list...

      Currently getting 1.1 MB/s transfer rate out of the psu.edu site. At about 10 minutes per ISO, I'll be done in less than an hour. Sweet....

      (My work has a 10 meg line to the net, it's a holiday, lines are dead, perfect timing...)

  • Gnome 2? (Score:2, Redundant)

    by jmv ( 93421 )
    The notes just mention "the latest desktop technology". Does anyone know whether that means it includes gnome 2?

  • Five Discs! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 0xA ( 71424 ) on Thursday July 04, 2002 @01:26AM (#3820386)
    So I go and connect to a nice mirror and get ready do d/l myself some ISOs. There are five of them. FIVE!

    I imagine some of them are SRPMs or something but they aren't labeled as such. They have open office and a bunch of stuff on there though, maybe not. I am afraid that if I don't d/l and burn all five I'm going to get half way through an install and need disc 5 for some silly package. The last time I installed 7.3 on a server I needed all three, the install size was only 400 MB too.

    Why can't Red Hat build thier disc images with Disc 1 being the base, disc 2 being X and Gnome, 3 being Open Office, etc. I can't imagine any benefit to spreading things out so much.

    • Re:Five Discs! (Score:5, Informative)

      by silvaran ( 214334 ) on Thursday July 04, 2002 @01:30AM (#3820408)
      This started with 7.3. Likely the first three discs contain RPMs, while the last three contain SRPMs. Why the overlap? Disc 3 is half RPM and half SRPM. Just d/l the first three. You might even be able to get away with the first two depending on the kind of install, but I don't know enough about how they position their RPMs on the discs to be able to tell. I recommend you check the listing of RPMs on the third disc (it should be available in the FTP tree) to see if you need it, or can do without it.
    • Simple: They want you to buy their distro. If downloading costs 5 days and buying costs 50 dollars more people will buy and not download. If downloading costs one day, noone will buy.

      I know it's a beta and people should try it. But Redhat won't change the disc layout. It's a beta and it should be a test for the final.

      Btw.: Most distros do it the Redhat way. SuSE has always needed all CDs for installing. Mandrake is one of the few exceptions. Normally 2 CDs are enough. And a second btw: This is a great opportunity for a small debian based distro: Install net access, X, hardware, etc. and then download everything else from the net.

      Bye egghat.

  • Kernel? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by cow_licker ( 172474 )
    Can someone tell me what version it's running?

  • I was just thinking today, as I was compiling Apache 2.0 and Mozilla 1.0.1 from Rawhide SRPMs, how nice it would be to have a Red Hat 7.3.999 with the new KDE and Gnome (actually, I'm hoping Gnome 2.0 will be nice enough for me to switch back from KDE, or at least have a KDE with more of these little bugs fixed).

    And of course I'd want Apache 2.0, Mozilla 1.latest, and whatever else. I guess since the gcc is upgraded this will be 8.0? I hope they change some more stuff besides Gnome, Apache, and GCC to justify a point-oh.

    Anyway, I'm anxious for the offical release of whatever this is.

    • Re:cool! (Score:2, Funny)

      by BJH ( 11355 )
      I hope they change some more stuff besides Gnome, Apache, and GCC to justify a point-oh.

      It's fairly likely they will look back at their earlier x.0 releases:

      4.0: First time RH released for three different architectures (x86, SPARC, Alpha) - SPARC/Alpha didn't really work until 4.2
      5.0: First major distribution to use glibc -locales were completely broken, lots of stuff didn't compile properly
      6.0: Moved to 2.2 kernel series - heaps of security problems
      7.0: Moved to 2.4 kernel series and glibc 2.2 - yet more security problems, major bug in release version

      So hopefully they'll have something all sparkling new and totally broken in 8.0 to keep up the tradition.
      • Actually, 7.0 only had lk 2.2 and 7.1 moved to lk 2.4.

        I believe the .0 are mainly a library/compiler issue which means a lot of brokeness with binary rpms between major release numbers. They also tend to shift stuff around in .0s, like location of files and how stuff is configured.

        7.x series also used the controversial gcc 2.96 to compile stuff... Looks like that issue will finally be behind us.

  • In the ISO dir there are 5 images. Now I'm fairly sure that the final version of RH 8(?) will still keep the 3CD binary RPMS + 2CDs of SRPMS format from RH 7.3. But there is one thing that really bothers me about that setup. Even for a fairly basic install, I was still required to use all 3 CDs.

    I know I included too many packages in the instalation, and if I were to do a clean install, I could trim it down a lot. Right now I have 2Gb in /usr, and I believe I could get a lot under that. But the problem is, it's still too much, and it's too hard to keep the installation small and easily manageable. If I chose any of the preconfigured instalation methods (I think server, kde, gnome workstation, custom system), none of them worked for me. The only one that did the job was custom, but it took a very long time to select individual packages. All the other options left me without some devel tools, or without some servers (e.g apache) or without some smaller apps.

    I've been using RH since 4.2, and I used to like the fact that it was an easy to install, configure, and maintain distribution. But ever since they moved to 3CDs of binaries, it doesn't feel like that anymore. It's cumbersome to install (with the individual package selection). It's not very easy to configure, especially for more esoteric configurations like mine (I need a bit of server, workstation and devel stuff). The config files are becoming more fragmented, moved into several directories. Sometimes the only way I can make sense of them is by using linuxconf and the other setup tools, which I don't like.

    And maintainance, well, that's a story in itself. The couple of times I used the up2date were a nightmare. The first time it installed amanda, and that thing filled up my 400Mb / partition to the brim before I figured out what was going on, and I managed to clean up the mess. The second time, many apps (including X) got broken. I suppose it works just fine with standard instalations, but with modified ones, it just doesn't. So I gave up on up2date. But there are so many packages that I don't know what they do exactly, that it's impossible to update them all manually.

    I'm not pretending to be a great RedHat admin. But I have been using that distro for 5 years, and I'm becoming lost. This is not happening to me with Slackware or gentoo (my other 2 distros) or with OpenBSD. While I'm getting much, much better in these other ones, I feel I'm getting worse in RH.

    I would really appreciate any ideeas, any help I can get with this problem. Maybe I'm doing it all wrong, but it feels that RH is getting far too complex to run. Is it just me, or does anyone else share this feeling?

    • Re:5 ISO images?!? (Score:2, Informative)

      by BJH ( 11355 )
      I've got a couple of servers running 6.2 at the moment (300-day uptimes), and at one time or another I've tried out 4.2, 5.0, 5.2 and 7.1.

      I've found the way to keep a Red Hat system running happily is to _never_ install anything that isn't an official RPM - and when you're doing updates, go back and diff all the updated config files against your older versions (RH got me once with an update to sendmail.cf that blocked connections from anywhere other than localhost - and that was our main mailserver...).

      Sure, that makes for a crappy desktop system, but if you're using it as a server, you don't really need that CVS version of Xine or mplayer.

      I suppose people will flame me for saying this, but hey, it works for me.

    • Re:5 ISO images?!? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Peter H.S. ( 38077 )
      My biggest gripe with RH is the install /configuration too. The standard options doesn't fit my need on my desktop or my servers. So I always end up using "costum" with "kernel-development" (and "XFree"), and then select the rest of the individual packages.
      The best solution is probably spending some time, learning to use "Kick-start".
      Another thing: if you dislike being a CD DJ, and have the disk space, then remember that it is possible to install RH directly from the downloaded ISO images on a harddisk partition.

      About maintance. Hm. My experience is different from yours. I think RH has become much easier to maintain, especially with RH-network. Mastering RPM to a certain degree is a must though.
      Simple stuff like "rpm -Fvh *.rpm --test" or "rpm -qa | grep foo" or "rpm -qf /etc/foo.conf" saves the day.
      And underappreciated tool is "mc" or Midnight Commander", a dual panel "Norton Commander" ncurses based clone. Among other things, it is able to browse inside rpm packages. Nifty.

      You mention that up2date filled "/". It is configurable where up2date dumps the downloaded rpms. On my servers "/var" and "/home" are on seperate partitions, so that eg. huge, growing log-files etc. doesn't spill over the "/" partition.

      Gentoo Linux looks very interesting, and the guy that makes it, D. Robbins has written some extremely well written tutorials for IBM on: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/

  • Complaints about 5 CDs (Score:5, Funny)

    by smallstepforman ( 121366 ) on Thursday July 04, 2002 @02:10AM (#3820548)
    For those people who are moaning about 5 disks, all you really need is the net install disk image, which conveniently fits on a 1.44 floppy. Then you can spend 4 hours downloading the beast, 3 hours configuring, 2 hours cursing, then reboot and continue playing MoH:AA on the other system which we wont mention ;-)

  • Changelog (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 04, 2002 @02:22AM (#3820586)
    Anonymous because karma is meaningless, but changelogs are not. This took a lot of hand editing to get past the lameness filter, thanks Malda and thanks crapflooders.

    The Netscape Web browser has been removed.

    The RPM Package Manager (RPM) verifies digital signatures when reading packages during installation. In order to verify signatures for packages after installation, the package's public key must be imported into the rpm database. For example, to import the Red Hat public key, type the following as root at a shell prompt:

    rpm --import /usr/lib/rpm/RPM-GPG-KEY
    After importing the public key, you can verify package digest and signature information using the following command:

    rpm --checksig package_name

    RPM will also suggest package(s) that will satisfy unresolved dependencies if the rpmdb-redhat package is installed. For example, if you are attempting to upgrade the gnumeric without a necessary library, you will see the following message:

    rpm -Uvh gnumeric-1.0.5-5.i386.rpm
    error: Failed dependencies:
    libbonobo-print.so.2 is needed by
    gnumeric-1.0.5-5

    libbonobo.so.2 is needed by
    gnumeric-1.0.5-5
    libbonobox.so.2 is needed by gnumeric-1.0.5-5

    Suggested resolutions:
    bonobo-1.0.20-3.i386.rpm
    The above mechanism is equivalent to (and will replace) the existing --redhatprovides mechanism.

    GNU Ghostscript has been upgraded to version 7.05.

    By default, top and ps only display the main (initial) thread of thread-aware processes. To show all threads, use the command ps -m or type [H] in top.

    The junkbuster proxy filter package has been replaced by the privoxy package which can now filter animations, pop-ups, refresh tags, and webbugs. Privoxy is configurable at run-time by pointing your browser to http://p.p and choosing options from the menu.

    Red Hat Linux 7.3.92 contains the following new configuration and system tools:

    Red Hat Log Viewer (redhat-logviewer)

    Red Hat NFS Configuration Tool (redhat-config-nfs)

    Red Hat Samba Configuration Tool (redhat-config-samba)

    Red Hat X Configuration Tool (redhat-config-xfree86)

    Red Hat Sound Card Configuration Tool (redhat-config-soundcard)

    Red Hat Language Selection Tool (redhat-config-language)

    Red Hat Keyboard Configuration Tool (redhat-config-keyboard)

    Red Hat Mouse Configuration Tool (redhat-config-mouse)

    Red Hat Root Password Tool (redhat-config-rootpassword)

    Red Hat Security Level Configuration Tool (redhat-config-securitylevel)

    Package Reorganization
    The following packages have been replaced.

    ucd-snmp - replaced by net-snmp
    gtop - replaced by gnome-system-monitor
    gphoto - replaced by gphoto2
    console-tools - replaced by kbd
    junkbuster - replaced by privoxy

    The following packages are currently not included but will be in a future version.

    gnomemeeting openh323 pwlib rpm2html rpmfind

    The following packages have been removed from this release of Red Hat Linux.

    alien blt dip fvwm2 ee elm extace gnomeicu gnome-pim gnorpm ical jikes kaffe metamailmi cq netscape playmidi rxvt sliplogin taper xbill xdaliclock xlockmore xmailbox xpilot

    The following packages have been deprecated and will be removed in a future release of Red Hat Linux.
    LPRng

    Kernel Notes
    The kernel used in this release supports the following list of improvements and new features. The kernel is based on the 2.4.19- pre10-ac2 release for this beta.

    HZ=1000 on i686 and Athlon means that the system clock ticks 10 times as fast as on other x86 platforms (i386 and i586); HZ=100 has been the Linux default on x86 platforms for the entire history of the Linux kernel. This change provides better interactive response, lower latency response from some programs, and better response from the scheduler. We have adjusted the /proc filesystem to report numbers as if using the default HZ=100, but it is possible that issues could arise -- please test and report bugs, as always. Adaptec's latest hardware that supports the new Ultra 320 SCSI standard is now supported. It is a new driver, so if you have the hardware, test and report any issues that you encounter.

    The latest aacraid driver now has 64-bit support, and so should have much higher performance on systems with more than 4GB of memory when you use the "bigmem" kernel.

    The network console and crash dump functionality from Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 2.1 has been ported to this release. Documentation for setting this up is included in the netdump and netdump-server packages and is also available as a whitepaper at the following URL:
    http://www.redhat.com/support/wpapers/redhat/netdu mp/index.html

    This beta contains a kernel providing EA and ACL support for the ext3 for setting this up is included in the netdump and netdump-server packages and is also available as aw whitepaper at the following URL:
    http://www.redhat.com/support/wpapers/redhat/netdu mp/index.html

    This beta contains a kernel providing EA and ACL support for the ext3 filesystem based on the patches and user-level tools from
    http://acl.bestbits.at/

    The support for EA and ACL is included in several packages:
    kernel provides the support for storing EAs and ACLs on disk for ext3 filesystems provides the system calls to manipulate EAs and ACLs; and provides the mechanisms to enforce ACLs on file access.

    e2fsprogs includes knowledge of the new on-disk extended attribute formats so that fsck can check filesystems using the new feature.

    attr provide access to extended attributes attached to libattr files

    acl provide tools to set, modify and query the ACLs set libacl on files

    libattr-devel libraries and include files to build programs using libacl-devel, acl, and attr
    • The following packages have been removed from this release of Red Hat Linux.

      alien blt dip fvwm2 ee elm extace gnomeicu gnome-pim gnorpm ical jikes kaffe metamailmi cq netscape playmidi rxvt sliplogin taper xbill xdaliclock xlockmore xmailbox xpilot

      Hmmm. Taking a quick look around my desktop, it looks like they've removed half of what I use on a daily basis... fvwm2, rxvt, ical, xdaliclock. I know RH are heading towards a brave new GNOME world, but removing fvwm2 and rxvt are criminal. Stranger is the removal of ee -- I haven't seen them adding anything to replace it. Not that it's a problem for me, as I still use xv, but it seems an odd move. I can compile up local versions of the missing bits, but it's looking like RH are heading in a direction that I'm not too happy with... maybe it's time to take a look at Gentoo.

      • ditto, I've been using rxvt for like 10 years (no kidding) and ee from the command line is really useful (also as an image displayer for gnus since sometimes inline image display doesn't work as well as I'd like).

        And what about elm? It's a really nice commandline mailer, I haven't used it for a looooong time, but sometimes it's useful to fire it up to look at your inbox without having to launch emacs.

        Not including netscape 4.7x is a really boneheaded move: while I do use galeon for my daily browsing, there are sites that don't work in anything but netscape 4.x or IE (notably, my public library site, their horrible java appplet doesn't work in anything but ns 4.7 on linux)

        Fvwm2, while something I haven't used on my *user* desktop for at least 5 years, is useful for when you want a *quick* login (i.e. you're logging in as root to fix something like the X configuration and you don't want to wait forever for gnome/kde to load up)

        I could go on and on (doh, I already have!) but these choices don't look that great, at least from the perspective of an 'old' unix person, what next, removing TeX for OpenOffice?
    • They removed jikes?? That sucks. Kaffe, I can understand, since it often confused users who installed Sun's JDK by having it's java/javac appear ahead of Sun's in the PATH. But jikes is a small package that conflicts with nothing, and provides a lot of value.

      Incidentally, Kaffe 1.0.7 is out (first release in over a year) and jikes 1.16 should be out shortly.

    • Re:Changelog (Score:3, Interesting)

      by guacamole ( 24270 )
      Does anyone know why package LPRng has been removed?

      • Re:Changelog (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        In the printing setups I've had to do recently with Red Hat 7.3, I've had to switch from LPRng to CUPS for various reasons anyway. IMO CUPS is just plain better at this point. Maybe that's why...

  • The first release for Joe the User? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pere ( 23710 ) on Thursday July 04, 2002 @03:34AM (#3820787)
    Even if I have used RedHat for several years, I have never recommended it to new PC users. The reason is that (even if they probably be satisfied if I set up a Linux ystem for them) they be more happy if I set up something running MS Windows.

    To be an alternative for the ordinary user on the desktop, Linux must have:
    * A decent office suite
    * A decent browser
    * A decent e-mail program
    * A streamlined desktop
    * A sentralized way to change the system settings

    A year ago, Linux didnt have any of this. Open Office 1.0, Mozilla 1.0 and Evolution (or KMail) are brilliant programs. I have no problems recommending them instead of MSOffice, IE, Outlook. (To be honest MS Office is a better program then OpenOffice, but MS Office is way to expencive for an ordinary user, and Open Office is GoodEnough(TM)).

    With Gnome 2 and KDE 3 the desktop starts to look fairly streamlined. It still some work to be done on Gnome 2, but hopefully Redhat will fix the most annoying bugs before releasing 8.0.

    With "a sentralized way to change system settings" I do mean that the most important settings should be reached from a "control panel"-like program. To the ordinary user it is very hard to explain that the desktop resolution have to be changed by editing a text-file, while the desktop backgroud can be changed by right-clicking the desktop. I hope Redhat have a better control-panel in 8.0.

    If they fix the last two items, this could be the first Linux distribution I recommend to a novice computer user. Im looking forward to it..:-)

    • I'm Joe new user, I hope someone listens to this (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      --I like redhat up to the point of security, then the default install, even checked on high security and NOT selecting the 'server" install, just doing a minimum "workstation" install, leaves ya wide open. Yep, I got owned fairly soon after that install. I've had to reinstall 3 times to finally have something that might be close to bare minimum secure. I had to find a third party GUI front end for IPtables to have some sort of maybe it's working firewall. NO WAY most n00bs can command line IP tables or even know what all that stuff is.

      My other serious major beef is I can go to gnorpm, I see a zillion packages, yet my gnome desktop only has very few clickable menu items. Wazzup with that? What IS all that other stuff, where is it, how do you get it to work, or is it working, or what? And just TRY to find out on the web, it's not happening. And WHY are so many services running by default, when you aren't running a server? Again, what is this stuff? Granted, I'm still on 7.2, I have been using up2date to up2date stuff I don't even use but it says I have! ARRRGHHH! I haven't even been able to find out how to use 9/10ths of the stuff on here. Ya, I know, somehow find the package correctly and do ./package, but how do you turn it off then? and sometimes that ./ doesn't work, but yet, I have all these packages.

      Is there some way to differentiate between the traditional "program start" from something that isn't a program but some library or widget or name I don't even know what it is? I have a smallish harddrive, do I REALLY need all this stuff on here just for casual home use? I had so little diskspace left over after installit ain't funny. I'll get another large hardrive when i can afford it, I'm on a low fixed income, I can't take what for me is a week's pay to buy a "new" hardrive. I got almost a 2 gig hardrive, why isn't this enough, why can't it fit on a much smaller area? Why does "boot" partition waste many many megs that are apparenbtly never used? Why is there this need for some huge "swap" partition if you have 200-odd megs of RAM? Ain't that enough? I've surfed for years with a maximum of 64 megs on both mac and windows, now I got over 200 megs of ram and a "swap partion" that is large than that. WHY? Why is a swap partition even needed? Isn't RAM enough as it is? the 7.2 install I have comes from a full release set of disks and what passes for a couple of manuals that are really just pamphlets, I was expecting actual books for 50 some bucks.

      I want to support linux, and I chose redhat after mandrake refused absolutely to dial out on a normal modem, I mean it just WOULD NOT DIAL, at least redhat dialed out. I'll support the company directly by getting their offical releases, but I'm not popping 60$ every 6 months or now less, and even though I have used cheapbytes to try the mandrake release, I would rather support the distro maker itself. I fully appreciate that they need the loot, they offer a product, they lose money on the bulk of the people who use their products. Bandwith isn't "free" although a lot of folks here seem to think it is. "Download the ISO image". That costs money for that company.

      And I honestly hope that someone will realise this isn't a troll, maybe a professional redhat sys admin will actually take the time to type a paragraph to answer a few of the questions I have. I've tried those newbie forums and stuff, I am not a newsgroup person though, not comfortable with huge volumes of email that are mostly flamewars and half of them have apparently malicious scripts in them.

      Thanks in advance to anyone.
      • These are good questions. These are the type of questions that a lot of experiences Linux advocates forget about or ignore.

        Well, I'm not going to be able to give a lot of very specific answers to everything here, but this should help. I would first point you to your local Linux Users Group (LUG), if there is one. I've found that there's almost always someone in the group who can help me. It's one of the closest things to true tech support the Linux community has. Chech out http://linux.com/usergroups.pl [linux.com] to find one nearby. You should also do a google search since not every LUG is listed.

        Many of the packages you see in gnorpm are libraries or applications that run only via the command line. Only a few of these are GUI applications you'll actually see under one of your menus. Now you may think that's a LOT of libraries and system utilities, but (from a Windows point of view) if you ever check out all that's in your C:\WINDOWS folder or C:\WINNT folder, you'll find all sorts of stuff you never seem to use (that doesn't make them unnecessary though!). I've been using Linux coming on two years now and it's only been in the last couple of months that I feel I really start to know what the different core packages are and what they do. And this is after doing many many installs of Linux. A good way to 'explore' what you've got is to check out the 'man' pages for the applications you find under /bin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, and all those other 'bin' [binary] directories you have. I wouldn't suggest just sitting down and going through them all unless you have a LOT of time, but searching through the 'man' and 'info' pages are how you can learn a lot about your system.

        You're 'boot' partition is where the libaries and programs that start up your computer reside. This partition in general does NOT have to be very large. Space is usually given on the boot partition if you what to do some configuration and cusomization. Try reading http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/Partition/partition -4.html#NUMBER [tldp.org] .

        As for the swap space, check out http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/Swap-Space.html [tldp.org] and also: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/Partition/partition -4.html#AEN347 [tldp.org] . In general the Linux Documentation Project [tldp.org] is a wonderful place to find answers.

        Linux still has a horrid learning curve to it. While some love that (I for one), it's a rough climb for many. Learning about your system and about linux is a process of doing exactly what you did here--ask questions, participate in the community. And eventually, you'll get the hang of it.

        As of Linux for Joe User, I would say we're getting close, very close, but there will always be more to do.
  • Or will it be v7.4? If I read correctly, GCC version major change result major change in Linux version for Red Hat. Is this still true?

    Thank you in advance. :)

  • What happened to Linuxconf? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jregel ( 39009 ) on Thursday July 04, 2002 @08:33AM (#3821454) Homepage
    There was a time when Red Hat were seemingly pushing Linuxconf as the system admin tool. Now they have developed their own. Anyone know why?
    • There was a time when Red Hat were seemingly pushing Linuxconf as the system admin tool. Now they have developed their own. Anyone know why?

      I don't know the details. But there were some serious problems with Linuxconf, since it had a tendency to mess up the config files.

      Besides, such monolitic configuration tools, are difficult to make and maintain for a Linux distro, since all the programs (and their config files), and the configuration program, all are made by different people, without any common standard for config files etc.

    • Generally because Linuxconf wasn't stable. It would often eat hand edited configuration files (though that improved with time), and had a nasty tendency of asking you to perform actions that weren't necessary to make your changes take effect (eg, wanting to postfix when you made a change to samba) with no logical explanation. The system also seemed to want to perform actions necessary for changes to take effect two or more times before it would let you quit.
  • I always do my installs over the network. That way i just d/l the files i need. Its no problem at all if you dont own an unusual obscure NIC. RH7.3 even installed over my toshiba 1100 cable modem connected over USB. Do THAT on a windows box anyone, i dare you!

    Try networked install, its real easy but remember to write down the full path to the directory of /i386 on you ftp of choice.

  • I hope that DVD sized images become more widespread. (Kudos to the distributions that use them now.)

    I also hope that soon DVD(+/-)RW drives are available at a price comparable that of CD-RW drives.

  • Anyone out there from Red Hat listening? If so, why not put the important stuff on CD1, & have something next to the packages saying which CD they are on? Or even making it possible to install from CD 1 & if there's anything you selected that wasn't on the CD, you can download it after the initial install?

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