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Red Hat Software Businesses

New Red Hat Beta 373

Posted by timothy from the anticipate-smoothliness dept.
Alkini writes "Red Hat just announced a new beta, codenamed Phoebe. Their highlight list includes Mozilla 1.2.1 with Xft antialiased fonts and glibc-2.3.1. The new beta can be downloaded from RH's FTP site or one of the mirrors."
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New Red Hat Beta More

New Red Hat Beta

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  • Ah linux betas... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Exiler ( 589908 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @03:07PM (#4946485)
    The most unstable of the most stable of the stable desktop OSes... Wait I think I messed that up
  • we might finally see java and other plugins compiled for glibc 2.3? Those have been lacking for quite a while now.

    • Re:Does this mean... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Tomah4wk ( 553503 )
      we might finally see java and other plugins compiled for glibc 2.3? Those have been lacking for quite a while now.
      They havent, blackdown has been producing them. Their version (especially java web start) is much better than that produced by Sun. And its based off of the sun sources before you ask.
  • Monica.

    My servers were really slowed down when I tried the Ross, and the network kept crashing after I installed the Joey.

  • 8.0 was great, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MrZeebo ( 331403 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @03:15PM (#4946550) Homepage
    ...it left me feeling it could have been much better. It showed promise, but had a few faults which keep it just short of being, well... perfect. I always felt that if Red Hat addressed just a few concerns, 8.1 could be great. Problems, in my opinion, were:

    *Lack of NTFS support by default: Near-neccessary for 2000/XP dual-booters

    *That silly "Extras" menu: you never quite know where software is going to turn up

    *Lack of a good package management front-end: That Windows-like one they include is good for managing the software on the RH8 CDs, but for removing, installing, and upgrading third-party RPMs, one must resort either to the command line, or better yet, apt4rpm. Apt4rpm should be in by default.

    *No MP3 support in XMMS

    *DMA is off by default on CD-ROM drives. This is easily fixed through config files, but for the average user, this is a hurdle to DVD playing and CD burning.

    *No nVidia drivers

    These were all easily fixed if you knew what you were doing, but kept RH8 out of the realm of being usable for average people -- or even being usable out of the box for techies. Does anyone know if any of these gripes have been addressed?

    • Windows XP was great, except.... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Drakantus ( 226374 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @03:34PM (#4946700)
      -Lack of EXT3 filesystem support by default: Near-neccessary for Linux dual-booters

      -That silly "start" menu: you never quite know where software is going to turn up, some make shortcuts on the desktop and in the menu, other programs only in the menu, some don't create any shortcuts

      -No MP3 encoding support in WMP

      -DMA is off by default on CD-ROM drives. This is easily fixed through device manager, but for the average user, this is a hurdle to DVD playing and CD burning.

      -No nVidia, ATI, S3, Creative Labs, Turtle Beach, AMD, Intel, 3Com, VIA, or Matrox drivers, except very limited (no openGL, poor directX) drivers for some older devices

      -These were all easily fixed if you knew what you were doing, but kept Windows XP out of the realm of being usable for average people
      • Don't forget the lack of zipping support. Yes, unzip is pretty seamless, but where is zipping?

        Disclaimer: I don't use Windows at all and haven't seen zip supported in any version yet. Perhaps you can zip stuff in WinXP, but that would be news to me.
        • but where is zipping?

          Windows XP...
          Right Click => Send to => Compressed (zipped) folder

          It compresses to minimize space, not time, in case you were wondering.
    • The NTFS thing is such a large thing to miss out - maybe they do it for licencing reasons, but if it's just out of bloody mindedness, well, they are shooting themselves in the foot.

      Lots more people are asking me (The 'Linux guy' ) to help them install Linux so they can try it out. And I curse Redhat for not including NTFS support. Sure, you can build your own kernel - but these are people that have never used Linux before. I know, I can do it myself, and build RPMs for them, but I roll my own as I use 3rd party patches.

      And with a dual-boot machine, you have to remove the necessity for them to reboot back into Windows, for once they do that, they remember how simple everything is (to them) and it's hard to drag them back to Linux land.

      The menu systems do suck, I must admit. Preferences, Server settings, System tools, System settings, and Control Panel. Anyone care to guess where a gui change password tool would be? All you need is: Prefs, System tools, games, media, office.
      And RedHat! For gods sake put a link to the konsole on the "Quick launch" thing. Start, System tools, Terminal is not at all useful.

      Has any one else noticed that when you do a man in KDE in RH 8, you get little boxes instead of dashes?

      And people, if you haven't used RedHat recently, don't slag it off. RPM isn't that bad either.
      • The NTFS thing is such a large thing to miss out - maybe they do it for licencing reasons, but if it's just out of bloody mindedness, well, they are shooting themselves in the foot.

        Red Hat is not including it because the legal status of the driver is unclear. Same thing as with the MP3 decoders and royalty payments, personally I think they're being too cautious.

        You don't however have to recompile your kernel just to get NTFS support! It's just one module you need, a single file. Grab it here [sourceforge.net] in convinient RPM format.
      • You don't even have to build a whole kernel. Here's what I do after installing a new kernel (and the kernel-source).

        cd /usr/src/linux-2.4
        make mrproper
        make xconfig
        ( load a file from /usr/src/linux-2.4/configs )
        ( enable NTFS module support )
        ( save & exit )
        ( set EXTRAVERSION in Makefile to match the kernel rpm )
        make dep && clean
        make _mod_fs
        mkdir /lib/modules//kernel/fs/ntfs
        cp fs/ntfs/ntfs.o \ /lib/modules//kernel/fs/ntfs
        depmod -a

        I admit it's close to compiling a new kernel, but you still get to run the stock binray kernel RPM and add the one module.
      • You can get an kernel-module RPM package for RedHat 7.3 and 8.0 that gives you instant NTFS (read-only) support, which is probably good enough for most users:

        http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/info/redhat.ht ml
    • Presumably NTFS is off by default because the code is a work in progress and writing to it may corrupt your filesystem. Also NVIDIA doesn't allow redistribution of its binary drivers. The other points are reasonable...
    • *Lack of NTFS support by default: Near-neccessary for 2000/XP dual-booters

      Unless you're a FAT32 user, such as myself. :)

  • Nice features (Score:3, Informative)

    by frooyo ( 583600 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @03:16PM (#4946565)
    First, this is old news at OSnews here [osnews.com] but also ... here is a small list of features to come:

    Gnome 2.2
    New HTree enable filesystem for ext3 (speeds enhancement). The HTree feature makes file creation, deletion, and lookup faster. On filesystems that have HTree enabled, these file operations should not get significantly slower as the directory grows in size.
    XFree 4.3
    CUPS is default

    but also note SENDMAIL is now only configured for LOCALHOST, if you want to serve you have to do some modifications:
    To use Sendmail as a server
    By default, the Sendmail mail transport agent (MTA) does not accept network connections from any host other than the local computer. If you want to configure Sendmail as a server for other clients, you must edit /etc/mail/sendmail.mc and change the DAEMON_OPTIONS line to also listen on network devices (or comment out this option entirely using the dnl comment delimiter). You must then regenerate /etc/mail/sendmail.cf by running the following command (as root): m4 /etc/mail/sendmail.mc > /etc/mail/sendmail.cf Note that you must have the sendmail-cf package installed for this to work.

    The RELEASE NOTES can be found HERE [planetmirror.com]

    NOTE: There has been problems upgrading if one if using Ximian Gnome, you must uninstall then reinstall using Gnome form gnome.org

    • Re:Nice features (Score:2, Informative)

      by fymidos ( 512362 )
      Sendmail was like this from 7.2 if i recall..

  • There goes my bandwidth (Score:4, Informative)

    by Znonymous Coward ( 615009 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @03:17PM (#4946566) Journal
    I was downloading at 300k till all the mirrors were slashdotted. Oh well, might as well Karma Whore.

    Note: Remove spaces from URLs:

    Soviet Russia
    ftp://ftp.chg.ru/pub/Linux/redhat/linux/be ta/phoeb e/
    http://ftp.chg.ru/pub/Linux/redhat/linux/beta/ phoe be/

    Canada
    ftp://ftp.nrc.ca/pub/systems/linux/redha t/ftp.redh at.com/linux/beta/phoebe/

    USA East
    ftp://ftp.rutgers.edu/pub/redhat/linux/beta/ phoebe /
    ftp://mirror.eas.muohio.edu/mirrors/redhat/linu x/b eta/phoebe/
    ftp://ftp.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu/pub/red hat/linux/bet a/
    http://www.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu/pub/redhat/linu x/be ta/phoebe/
    ftp://redhat.dulug.duke.edu/pub/redhat /linux/beta/ phoebe/
    ftp://mirror.hiwaay.net/redhat/redhat/lin ux/beta/p hoebe/
    http://mirror.hiwaay.net/redhat/redhat/lin ux/beta/ phoebe/
    ftp://mirror.cs.princeton.edu/pub/mirrors /redhat/l inux/beta/phoebe/
    ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/redhat/ beta/phoebe/
    ftp://chuck.ucs.indiana.edu/pub/linu x/redhat/redha t/linux/beta/phoebe/
    ftp://mirror.pa.msu.edu/linu x/redhat/linux/beta/ph oebe/
    ftp://ftp.cse.buffalo.edu/pub/Linux/redhat/ redhat/ linux/beta/phoebe/
    ftp://kickstart.linux.ncsu.edu /pub/redhat/linux/be ta/phoebe/

    USA Central
    ftp://linux.nssl.noaa.gov/linux/redhat/li nux/beta/ phoebe/
    ftp://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.edu/pub/red hat/linux /beta/phoebe/
    http://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.edu/ pub/redhat/linu x/beta/phoebe/
    rsync://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.ed u/pub/redhat/lin ux/beta/phoebe/
    ftp://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirr ors/linux/redhat/ beta/phoebe/
    ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/redhat/ redhat/linux/b eta/phoebe/
    http://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/redhat/linu x/beta/phoebe /
    http://redhat.netnitco.net/redhat/linux/beta/ph oeb e/

    USA West
    ftp://limestone.uoregon.edu/redhat/beta/phoe be/

    Pacific
    Australia
    ftp://planetmirror.com/pub/r edhat/linux/beta/phoeb e/
    ftp://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/redhat/redha t/li nux/beta/phoebe/
    http://redhat.pacific.net.au/red hat/linux/beta/pho ebe/

    Hawaii
    ftp://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mirrors/redha t/linux/be ta/phoebe/

  • No thanx. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Martigan80 ( 305400 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @03:17PM (#4946569) Journal
    Sorry but if it is like 8.0 they can keep it. I'm still running fine with 7.3. I appreciate the intense struggle for RH and other companies to improve their distro to help the community out, but are they not trying a little too hard to keep pushing out the newest release? I mean it almost feels like the CPU race where we are told that a 900Mhz is too slow to keep up with a 1.4GHz. It just seems a bit over kill. I'm not blaming RH, at least they make sure their Distro is beat and tested against many arch's and problems.
    I know this is a beta but come on, when was 8.0 released??
    • This is a beta version to a .1 release.. not a full release. In Redhat terms 8.0 is an alpha, 8.1 is beta, so this release is a beta of the beta of the redhat 8 series. Old bugs will have been replaced by new ones, but by the 8.2 or 8.3 release all the Redhat children will be as happy as with 7.3. I mean, consider the diff b/w 7.0 and 7.3.

      Basically my point is that this beta release wasn't all that soon after the initial 8.0. This is just the way redhat works.
    • If you want slower, more tested releases, then RH offers their Advanced Server product with a lifetime of at least 18 months, or you can use Debian which has a slower lifecycle.

      There's no reason why their normal distribution should sit around on its laurels, when there's GTK2/XFT Mozilla and new glib changes for the rest of us to play with.
    • Red Hat has always released about every 6 months. Did you think this was a problem back at 4.0?
    • I mean what are they thinking? Trying to improve their product so quickly. Especially beta testing for a few months so that its as stable and bug free as they can make it. IMO they sould just wait till a few weeks before release, rush through a beta period, and then release it bugs and all. I know they make releases every six months, and that this too will follow that pattern, but what are they thinking getting the community involved so early in the release cycle? It's almost like they want to get our input so they can make a better product, weird?

      Oh well, too bad I'm forced to download this beta and also the final release. They'll probably have the nerve to make this release free as well. Bastards.

  • Updated Mirror List (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Laven ( 102436 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @03:18PM (#4946574)
    This is a more complete mirror list. Mirrors will hide and unhide as they become full. Please e-mail me if you find additions or corrections for this list.

    http://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/phoebe_mirrors.html [hawaii.edu]

  • I was hoping they would wait. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FreeLinux ( 555387 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @03:22PM (#4946603)
    KDE 3.1 has been delayed until early/mid January for a security audit. KDE 3.1 is VERY nice and is another big step forward for KDE. I had hoped that Red Hat would delay their 8.1? release until KDE 3.1 could be included. Unfortunately it looks like we will still have the "crippled" KDE 3.0.5 in Red Hat 8.1.

    I definitely understand that Red Hat has an affinity for Gnome, and that's fine for them, but for full compatibility you really need to install both Gnome and KDE so why not have the best KDE?

    With Mandrake's newly returned cash crunch, Suse is looking like a strong contender on the distro front. However, don't forget Knoppix, the newest "distro".

    • Re:I was hoping they would wait. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Phillip Birmingham ( 2066 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @03:26PM (#4946626) Homepage
      KDE 3.1 has been delayed until early/mid January for a security audit. ... KDE 3.1 has been delayed until early/mid January for a security audit.

      I think you just answered your question before you asked it. RedHat has no assurance that the release of KDE 3.1 won't be delayed further. At some point, you just have to go with what you have.
      • But it does include KDE 3.1, and GNOME 2.2 too (plus tons of new GNOME2 applications) which is also still in beta. And the XFree version is also a new beta with cool features (rotate and resize, yay). With all these new additions I'd say the final is still 2-4 months away.
      • I think Redhat is still dumb as shit regarding KDE. Both X and GNOME-2.2 have not yet been released as stable versions, so they could very well have added KDE-3.1rc6. It is so stable that I regret compiling with debug enabled to get backtraces. So far in one month of heavy use I have had not a single KDE program segfault on me!

        But in the end, Redhat will have to include KDE-3.1 or they will lose market share to SuSE. Too bad, they have already lost all their KDE competence with their crippled version in Redhat-8.0. Bero quit Redhat over this. See http://slashdot.org/articles/02/09/25/2042208.shtm l?tid=110

        • Re:I was hoping they would wait. (Score:4, Informative)

          by lunenburg ( 37393 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @04:05PM (#4946941) Homepage
          I think Redhat is still dumb as shit regarding KDE. Both X and GNOME-2.2 have not yet been released as stable versions, so they could very well have added KDE-3.1rc6.

          Did you even bother doing basic research before flapping your yap?

          ncftp ...en/os/i386/RedHat/RPMS > pwd
          ftp://beta:PASSWORD@ftp.beta.redhat.com/pub/redhat /linux/beta/phoebe/en/os/i386/RedHat/RPMS/
          ncftp ...en/os/i386/RedHat/RPMS > ls kde* ...
          kdebase-3.1-0.9.i386.rpm
          kdebase-devel-3.1-0 .9.i386.rpm
          kdebindings-3.1-0.3.i386.rpm
          kdebind ings-devel-3.1-0.3.i386.rpm
          kdeedu-3.1-0.3.i386.r pm
          kdeedu-devel-3.1-0.3.i386.rpm ...

          Looks like just another "Red Hat is eeevil" fool.

    • I for one am glad that Red Hat doesn't wait for certain packages to be ready before shipping a distro. Predicting when a particular software package will be stable is very difficult and predicting when an open source package will be stable is practically impossible.

      As it is, Red Hat ships a distro every six months like clockwork and whatever packages are ready ship with it. If your favorite package couldn't get a stable release out then they have another chance in six months.

    • 1. KDE was never crippled. A release of 3.1 would have the same bluecurve theme that 3.0.5 did, so anyone who thinks bluecurve is the spawn of Satan, would likely think the same of this beta with or without a pre-release of KDE.

      2. Red Hat does not hold up a release unless they absolutely have to, otherwise they would never release. Making the call to go ahead without some key new development is always agonizing, but I don't think we can reasonably armchair quarterback those calls. I'd rather than both RH and KDE wait and make sure everything is ready for the public than get it all early in RH8.1 and find it's broken.

      3. Just because they're releasing a beta now doesn't mean that it's all final. If KDE 3.1 releases in time and has no significant changes from 3.0.5 that prevent fast Q/A, perhaps RH will include it.

      4. I don't think it's entirely fair to ascribe Red Hat's release timetable (which has been at a pretty steady pace of 6 months per release since the early days) to liking Gnome better than KDE.
      • Another poster noted that Redhat is, in fact, including KDE 3.1 (probably RC6, although I wouldn't put it past them to be using CVS from 3_1_BRANCH) with Phoebe.

        Also, note that RedHat is the _only_ distro that ships GNOME as the default desktop (aside from Debian, but Debian doesn't ship any default desktop. Every Debian-based desktop distro uses KDE, or a derivative/hack of KDE.)

        Just some thoughts.

    • Re:I was hoping they would wait. (Score:4, Informative)

      by CondeZer0 ( 158969 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @04:55PM (#4947397) Homepage
      Why don't you check your facts before posting?

      1) As others have pointed out, this is a *Beta*, RedHat 8.0.92 to be exact, so many things can change between now and when 8.1 is released
      2) This beta actually *includes* KDE 3.1(RC5 or CVS I guess) see http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=redh at [distrowatch.com] or check the RPMs in the FTP, or install the damn thing!
      3) This is *exactly* the same as with Gnome, the beta includes the latest Gnome 2.1(from CVS I think), that by the time 8.1 final is released will become Gnome 2.2(and the same is also true for XFree 4.3)
      4) KDE on RedHat is/was not "crippled", I will not bother arguing about this, but if you think the version in 8.0 was "crippled", then doesn't mater what version they ship in the next release you will think the same.
      5) You can be sure that RedHat 8.1 final release will include KDE 3.1, you may think that it's still "crippled" though...
      (BTW, Gnome 2.2 and KDE 3.1 are both looking very good, I'm sure RH8.1 will be a great release, even better than 8.0, and 8.0 was already very nice)

      Hope this sets some facts straight, BTW, I don't even run Linux or KDE/Gnome on my boxes(I administer a few RedHat desktops running both KDE and Gnome at work though), I love my FreeBSD box with Ion [cs.tut.fi], just hate to see people spreading misinformation.

      Best wishes and do some research before you post next time!

      \\Uriel
    • Since KDE has existed every single time a new KDE release is within a few months of a potential Redhat release(ie every freaking Redhat release) someone says this. I'll just make this clear in case you didn't know.

      Redat does not, cannot, will not, and should not, TIE THEIR EVERY RELEASE to what the KDE group is doing. If the latest KDE happens to be ready when Redhat begins its testing cycle then it gets included. If not, oh well, you'll need to download the new KDE rpms's when they are ready.

      In case you were wondering I AM a KDE user. I don't even use GNOME. But not matter how much I like KDE, I'm not foolish enough to think Redhat should dictate its release cycle on it. Maybe someday when KDE makes us more than .5% of the desktop market it will be worth considering. But until that day its not worth delaying.

    • Its just KDE 3.0 with less bugs.

      KDE 3.2 will have all the new features.
  • don't know about you... but these are things I patched into my system a long time ago to the last redhat release.

  • P2P to the rescue? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How bout someone with the full images put them up on a Distributed P2P network like Overnet [overnet.com] or eDonkey2000 [edonkey2000.com] so we can take the load off of the mirrors and help proove that P2P is usefull for something other than piracy.

  • Put blame where it belongs... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @03:36PM (#4946705) Homepage
    MP3 support is due to Fraunhofer licencing.

    Nvidia drivers is due to Nvidia licencing.

    DMA support, extra menu and NTFS support I agree is things RedHat should fix. But they can't do much about the rest.

    Kjella
    • Are you looking for NTFS read-only or read/write?

      NTFS read/write is currently known to cause bad corruption. It's being worked on, but it's not stable yet.
    • The DMA thing is due to the goofy shit that hardware manufactuers do. Namely VIA. Their chipsets are notorious for corrupting data when using DMA. Hence the default setting.

      The NTFS support, as is mentioned in another reply is goofy, at best. RedHat likes to keep their reputation clean. That is why their lawyers are so strict about licenses. That is also why they make the decisions they do. As for the extras menu... I don't like it... but it does keep me from having gargantuan menus that I end up clicking on the wrong app. ;)

      Cheers!

  • 8.1 will have to wait... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ACK!! ( 10229 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @03:38PM (#4946733) Journal
    I just got my RH8 laptop singing with the new kernel and they go out and release a beta!

    Well, I think I will just wait. Sit back and watch the flack and see what people like/dislike and have trouble with before I go jumping into a new release. I got a lot of the stuff they are pushing already from Nyquists apt repository. At least the stuff I wanted like fontillus and gstreamer and such.

    I think RH has come a long way so far and hope to see it progress even further.

    My wish list is:

    Larger set of server configuration tools like NIS server, client, LDAP server and client GUI apps. A network shares app that could handle samba and nfs would be really helpful (Ximian Setup Tools had one way back in the day).

    Menu-editing for individual users.

    Faster hardware check tool so bootup wouldn't hang there figuring out my configuration so long.

    Graphical boot messages screen so my bootup can get slower :->.

    System-wide font installer like KDE has. Fontillus installs fonts drag and drop for users.

    Package Management tied to apt freshrpms repository. I like the GUI package management tool but end up using synaptic because it is not tied to apt.

    I can think of other things. Can you?

    What things would you like to see?

    Constructive stuff not just RH sucks garbage.

    • I'm hoping for Gnome2 speedups. Certain gnome applications seem to run dog slow when just scrolling or drawing.

      If you have access to a machine with Redhat 8.0 and Redhat 7.3, try launching gnome-terminal and write something large to the screen. dmesg usually works well.
    • Note that the 0.2 release of fontilus is the second release. There are a number of areas where I can improve and extend it.

      Setting it up so that you can configure where fonts are placed when performing DnD font installation is a fairly simple imrpovement.

  • Don't forget kernel.org (Score:3, Informative)

    by caluml ( 551744 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMspamgoeshere.calum.org> on Monday December 23, 2002 @03:48PM (#4946795) Homepage
    Kernel.org mirrors Debian and Redhat. Or didn't you know? Plus they've moved from 100 to 250Mb/sec

    Grab em while they're hot.
    http://mirrors.kernel.org/redhat/redhat/linux/beta /phoebe/ [kernel.org]
    Don't forget to use your local mirror from kernel.org if the main one gets slow. I find .pk and .ph are fast for me in the UK, believe it or not.

    This is not whoring. It's showing people an alternative source for the future.
  • Xft antialiased fonts

    I can recall at more than one person who would set their screen rez incredibly high, so everything would be incredibly tiny.

    This way nothing would be readable except when you are really close to the screen. a good way to mess with managers and older ciollege professors.

    Now they'll have to set the rez even higher.

    the humanity

    • Too small text doesn't come from high physical resolutions, but from a wrong logical one. If you crank up your physical resolution, you have to adjust the dpi settings (called "User Defined Font Size" in Windows). A typical 17" running at 1152x864 has approx. 100 dpi, with 1600x1200, you're up to 140.

      Higher physical resolution means finer text, not smaller one.
      • At least, that's been my problem.. ok the most mainstream programs work. But many programs seems to have a completely fixed font size, or f*ck up things when the text "grows" in their buttons/panels. Which is why I'm running my monitor at less than max resolution (but then again I get 85Hz instead of 72Hz :)

        Kjella

    • I can recall at more than one person who would set their screen rez incredibly high, so everything would be incredibly tiny.

      That's called "Hardware antialiasing" on CRTs. :-)

  • ...and I just got around to installing RedHat 8.0.

    And to all of you out there bad-mouthing RedHat 8.0? Even though I don't really know what I'm talking about yet, I think you're all wrong and suck and stuff. It looks pretty good to me so far.

  • My comments.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Micah ( 278 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @04:50PM (#4947356) Homepage Journal
    Looking at the package list [duke.edu]...

    On the surface it seems good that they're upgrading to Mozilla 1.2.1, but I've had several problems with it compared to 1.0.1. It doesn't display updates to some XUL properties correctly after they update with JavaScript (Yes, I filed it... Bugzilla #185432). Also, it's not caching anything. If I press the BACK button or View Source, it always reloads the page. That's bad news.

    OpenOffice.org -- fine now at 1.0.1, but I think the OOo folks are planning a bugfix release soon. Hopefully that will make it in the final release. OOo in RH8 has, for me, crashed the whole X server several times when scrolling around in certain Word and Excel documents. The development branch 643C fixes that problem. Has that happened to anyone else?

    Anyone know what "musicbrainz" and "redland" are?

    PHP: still at 4.2.2. Apache: still at 2.0.40. PHP 4.3 sounds like it will have a boatload of improvements. They're including beta versions of KDE, Gnome, and X (which will probably be finalized by release date), so why not PHP? And Apache has had several updates since then.

    PostgreSQL 7.3. Nice, but upgrading requires a dump and restore. Is that a wise thing to do inside the 8.x series?

    Why don't they include SDL_ttf??? Several programs require it. For 8.0, I couldn't find a binary RPM and had to build a source RPM. That worked, except that it conflicted with a /usr/bin/showfont that was already installed. That's not too cool.

    Overall, it looks like it will definitely be better than 8.0, but not a revolutionary upgrade.
    • I believe they are including additional features in the install so something like PostgreSQL could be upgraded at a later time than the distro, assumings its dependencies are backwards compatible.
    • Rhythmbox depends on Musicbrainz - HTH :)

      Argh, and this comes up just when I'm going away on a Christmas break. Oh well :p
  • be called smelly cat. Red Hat Smelly Cat. Sure pheobe can make a charming lyric for it.
  • So what's new in the operating system? Red Hat has nothing to do with Mozilla or glibc. At least microsoft adds new operating system features with new releases (along with 3rd party programs).

    What's the point?
  • Ah, redhat, how about taking care of people who are paying you via the RHN and making the ISOs available through it? I just checked, not there. My company pays for an enterprise RHN license. It'd be nice if some of those couple grand a year we and others send your way could buy a nice fat pipe to download the latest ISO betas and get a jump on the paupers and cheapskates! :-)

    Remember, it's a big deal to be the first on the net block to install the latest!

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